of Assembly as member for William Henry, for which he sat through three parliaments, till in 1808 he became chief justice of Quebec, speaker of the legislative council, and president of the executive council.
One of his earliest acts as chief justice produced a remarkable episode in Canadian history. In 1809 he introduced rules of practice into the procedure of the courts. In 1814 they were attacked by the assembly, under the leadership of James Stuart (1780–1853) [q. v.], as a breach of privilege by law-making and as affecting the liberty of the subject. Sewell was impeached for subverting the constitution, and charged with malicious influence over the governor, leading to various specified acts which covered the whole range of conflict between the house and the government under Sir James Henry Craig [q. v.], the press cases, the Bedard case, and the John Henry scandal. Monk, chief justice of Montreal, was joined in the indictment. The new governor, Sir George Prevost (1767–1816) [q. v.], tried to bring the assembly to reason and incurred its wrath. Sewell went to England to defend himself, and was by its order in 1815 restored to his post. It was clear to the home government that the action of the assembly was due to political and religious animosity which had probably been inflamed by Sewell's sarcasm and indifference; but Sir John Coape Sherbrooke [q. v.], who had succeeded Prevost, stated that Sewell's reinstatement added enormously to the difficulties of the government. Early in 1817 an effort was made to revive the impeachments, but Stuart suddenly seemed to lose his influence; the matter was dropped, and Sewell received compensation for ill-treatment. The rest of his career was uneventful. In 1829 he resigned his seat on the council, and in 1838 the post of chief justice. He died in Quebec on 12 Nov. 1839, and was buried amid general mourning. Sewell was married, and had three sons, who settled in Quebec.
Sewell was an excellent chief justice, stern, but with great command of temper. He was created an honorary LL.D. by Harvard University.
He published:
- ‘A Plan for the Federation of the British Provinces of North America,’ 1814.
- ‘An Essay on the Judicial History of France,’ 1824.
- ‘The Advantages of Opening the St. Lawrence,’ 1824.
- ‘Dark Days of Canada,’ 1831.
[Morgan's Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, and Bibliotheca Canadensis; Quebec Mercury, 12 Nov. 1839, and a letter in issue of 16 Nov. 1839; Roger's History of Canada, pp. 254–7, 321, 326.]
SEWELL, MARY (1797–1884), authoress, was born on 6 April 1797, at Sutton in Suffolk. She was daughter of John Wright, a gentleman-farmer, and his wife Ann, daughter of John Holmes of Tivetshall, Norfolk. Both parents were members of the Society of Friends. When Mary was twelve her father gave up farming, and joined business with a shipowner at Yarmouth. With the exception of a year spent at a school at Tottenham, Mary received her education at home. All regular study ended at the age of fifteen, when she commenced reading on her own account such authors as Moore, Byron, Southey, and Scott. Her father's affairs not prospering, she was for a time governess in a school in Essex. In 1819 she married Isaac Sewell, youngest son of William Sewell of Great Yarmouth, who had courted her for five years. They settled at Yarmouth, and there a daughter Anna was born on 30 March 1820. Soon afterwards they came to London, where a son Philip was born on 14 Jan. 1822. Isaac Sewell was not successful in business. At one time he kept a small shop near Bishopsgate Street, at another travelled for a large Nottingham lace factory. At length, in 1835, he was appointed manager of the London and County Joint-Stock Bank at Brighton. For the next ten years the family lived at Brighton, and subsequently at Lancing, Hayward's Heath, and Grayling Wells, until 1857 (when Sewell retired from the bank). Mrs. Sewell busied herself with the training of her children, writing for them her first book, ‘Walks with Mamma,’ in words of one syllable. In 1835 she left the Society of Friends for the church of England, into which she was eventually baptised. Her tone of mind was deeply religious, and she took great interest in philanthropic movements. She was a member of the Anti-Slavery Association.
In her sixtieth year Mrs. Sewell began seriously to write verses, with the object of inculcating moral virtues in all relations of life. ‘Homely Ballads’ was printed for private circulation in 1858 (it reached a fortieth thousand in 1889). Shortly afterwards Mrs. Sewell went to live at Blue Lodge, Wick, within a short distance of both Bath and Bristol, and there most of her works were written. In 1860 appeared her ballad, ‘Mother's Last Words,’ which had an unprecedented sale of 1,088,000 copies. It tells in simple language the story of two poor boys who were kept from evil courses by the memory of their mother's last words. Of another ballad, ‘Our Father's Care,’ 1861, no fewer than 776,000 copies were sold; ‘Chil-
