Some Virginia Lawyers of the Past and Present.
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SOME VIRGINIA LAWYERS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT. By Sallif. E. Marshall Hardy. II. very early days, members of the legal I Nfraternity or, as they are called in an act of the House of Burgesses, " the mercenarie attorneys," had a hard time in Virginia. In 1642 their fees were limited by law, in 1645 they were "expelled from office," in 1647 they were forbidden to "take any fee," the court either to open the cause for a weak party or to appoint some fit man out of the people to do it. In 1656 all these acts were repealed and they were licensed, but in 1658 they were forbidden to " plead in any court, to give council in any cause or controversy, for any kind of reward or profit." The fact that one of the greatest men of this or any country, Thomas Jefferson, was educated as a lawyer had much to do with his success in life, and his professional train ing was of eminent service to him in drawing the documents that aided in the establish ment of American Independence and in ful filling the duties of the many great offices to which he was chosen. He was born in 1743. The following short sketch of his life was written by himself: " I came of age in 1764 and was soon put into nomination for justice of the county in which I lived, and at the first election following I became one of its representatives in the legislature; was thence sent to the old Congress; then em ployed two years with Mr. Pendleton and Mr. Wythe on the rcvisal and reduction to a single code of the whole body of the British Statutes, the acts of our assembly, and cer tain parts of the common law; then elected governor, next to the legislature, and to Congress again; sent to Europe as minister plenipotentiary; appointed secretary of state to the new government; elected vice-president and president, and, lastly, a visitor and
rector of the University of Virginia." He died July 4, 1826. At seventeen he was sent to William and Mary College. He was tall, his figure " angu lar and far from beautiful," his face sun-burnt, his eyes gray, and his hair sand-colored. It is said : "His disposition was gay and bright, he was an excellent performer on the violin; a squire of dames, and a participant in all the gayeties of the little capital." His first love was Rebecca Burwell, who was one of the great est beauties of her day and a daughter of one of the oldest and most renowned families of York and Gloucester counties. She dis carded Jefferson to marry Col. Jaquelin Ambler, treasurer of Virginia and the best loved man in the State, and was the mother of the wife of Chief-Justice John Marshall. Many of Jefferson's early letters mention her and his love for her. When he was thirty he married a beautiful woman of Charles City who was very wealthy. John Esten Cooke says: "To sum up the character of this remarkable man, he was a skeptic, a democrat, an over-turner and a rebuilder." The Tuckers, father, son, grandson and great-grandson, are numbered among the great lawyers of Virginia. St. George Tucker was born in the Island of Bermuda, June 29, 1732, and there he began the study of law. Coming to Virginia he finished at William and Mary College. He took part in the Revolutionary War and distinguished him self at Guilford Court House and at Yorktown; conducted an expedition to Bermuda, and captured a large quantity of military stores which were used by Washington in the siege of Boston. His grandson, the late Randolph Tucker, told of an interview he had with Judge Tucker's body servant, who
