Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/646

J E F J E F more particularly when an opportunity presented itself for the introduction of the pathetic element. Probably but for his rapid utterance and affected accent, his weak physique, and his too copious command of language, he might have attained to the highest rank as an orator. Jeffrey was twice, in 1820 and 1822, elected lord rector of the university of Glasgow. In 1829 he was chosen dean of the faculty of advocates. On the Whigs obtaining office in 1831, he became lord advocate, and entered parliament as member for the Perth burghs. After the passing of the Reform Act, in the framing of which measure he had the principal charge so far as it related to Scot land, he was returned for Edinburgh ; but his parliamen tary career, which, though not so brilliantly successful as some expected, had won him high general esteem, was terminated by his elevation to the judicial bench as Lord Jeffrey in May 1S34. He died at Edinburgh 26th June 1850. The Life of Lord Jeffrey, with a Selection from his Correspondence, by Lord Cockburn, appeared in 1852 in two volumes. See also the Selected Correspondence, of Macvcy Napier, 1877, and the sketch of Jeffrey in Carlyle s Reminiscences, vol. ii., 1881. (T. F. H.) JEFFREYS, GEORGE JEFFREYS, LORD (c. 1648-1689), lord chancellor of England, was born probably in 1648 at Acton in Denbighshire, of a respectable but not rich family. He was smitten with the desire of becoming a lawyer by seeing, when a boy at St Paul s school in London, the magnificent procession of the judges to the cathedral ; and, although his family was hard put to it by the expense, he spent some time at Westminster school before entering the Inner Temple as a student at sixteen. The allowance he received from home was quite unequal to the demands of the dissolute habits into which he quickly fell, but it is said that the promise of future eminence, afforded by the fits of studiousness which divided his orgies, procured for the dissipated student both long credit and presents of money. He was exceedingly popular as a table companion, especially with the inferior attorneys and attorneys clerks with whom, then as afterwards, he preferred to drink ; and in the low practice which he began at Old Bailey and the London Sessions immediately on being called to the bar in November 1668, he found his boon companions very useful in procuring him briefs. Voluble, unscrupulous, and overbearing, he rapidly developed in his constant dealings with the most degraded criminals the coarse bullying manner which disgraced him throughout his whole career. He sought every means of ingratiating himself with the city aldermen, and in 1671, at the singularly early age of twenty-three, became their common serjeant, and in 1678 recorder of London. He had by that time pushed his way into the higher courts, where his marvellous address in speaking and cross-examination made up for, if it did not conceal, his shallow legal know ledge. Jeffreys had hitherto nominally belonged to the anti-court or liberal party ; but, perceiving that they had but little patronage in their gift, he had opened secret negotiations with Charles II., and immediately on taking the oaths as recorder he openly declared himself a partisan of the court. The year before he had been knighted and appointed solicitor to the duke of York. To reward him for the servility which he displayed, especially in connex ion with the Popish plot trials, he was appointed chief justice of Chester, and advanced to a baronetcy. His insolence and intemperance, already notorious, became in his chief-justiceship well nigh intolerable. He received a rebuff in 1680 when for his conduct in obstructing the assembling of parliament he was reprimanded on his knees by the speaker, and forced to resign his recordership in December of the same year. Such indignities were merits in the eyes of the king, to whose favour Jeffreys laid additional claims by his efforts to abrogate the charter of London, and by his activity as counsel against the suspected Rye House conspirators. He received his reward. Lord Campbell remarks, " Jeffreys became chief- justice of England, as the only man fit to condemn Algernon Sidney." He was sworn in in November 1683, and shortly became privy councillor and member of the cabinet. In the court of the King s Bench, the new chief- justice let few considerations stand between him and his desire to satisfy the king. His iniquitous servility is to be traced in the State Trials. When Charles died in February 1685, Jeffreys exchanged a master who disliked him as a wretch " with no learning, no sense, no manners, and more impudence than ten carted street-walkers," for one who found in him a thoroughly congenial tool. In May 1685 Jeffreys was raised to the peerage by the style of Baron Jeffreys of Wem, and in August went into the western counties as president of a special commission appointed to try the numerous cases of treason arising from the duke of Monmouth s ill-fated rebellion. It was in this " bloody assize" that he was to deepen the stain that already tarnished his fame, and to make the name " Judge Jeffreys " a synonym for a monster of bloodthirsty cruelty, blasphe mous rage, and brutish intemperance. In the " campaign " he gave the rein to his ferocity ; he was maddened with slaughter, and his appetite for blood grew by what it fed on. The horrible glare of his eye, the savage lines of his face, his fierce shouts of WTath, terrified and confused guilty and innocent alike. With hateful cunning he let it be bruited that the only hope of mercy lay in pleading guilty, and by this cold-blooded artifice lightened his labours. He had a powerful incentive to active butchery : the vacant post of lord chancellor was to be won by good service. The estimates of the numbers of victims of the commission vary : 320 was the official return to the treasury ; Lord Lonsdale says 700, and Burnet 600. Upwards of 800 were transported as slaves to the AVest Indies, while others only escaped by purchasing their pardons from the judge at most exorbitant rates. W T hen the chief -justice returned to Windsor in September, the great seal of England was placed in his blood-stained hands. For the rest of his career the lord chancellor was an unresisting agent of King James in his most illegal schemes. Finding himself losing favour at court, he even revived the ecclesiastical court of high com mission, abolished in 1640 by an Act which forbade its re vival, and himself engaged to act as president. In the attempt against the rights of the fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, and in the trial of the seven bishops, Jeffreys was the king s right hand; but, when the proceedings of James had at last roused the indignation that cost him his crown, the lord chancellor was one of the first to advise concession. When the king fled in 1688, Jeffreys was in the utmost consternation. For him, he knew, there could be no mercy. Shaving off his shaggy eyebrows, and disguising himself as a common sailor, he attempted to escape to Hamburg in a small collier, but, while drinking in a low public-house at Wapping, he was recognized by a poor scrivener who had once encountered the wrath of the judge, and had never forgotten the glare of his eye. Jeffreys was only saved from being torn in pieces by the mob by the timely arrival of a strong guard, who conducted the trembling wretch to the Tower. There he lay for some months, tortured by anguish both of mind and body, which he endeavoured to drown in copious draughts of brandy. He died miserably on April 19, 1689. Jeffreys was twice married, and had ten children, but his title became extinct in 1703, in the person of his son John, notorious for having interrupted the funeral of Dryden. It is said that in 1688 Lord Jeffreys was about to be created earl of Flint ; and, though