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Show CHI\.PTER XI. JOHN KELYNGE. AFTER the sudden death of Sir Robert IIyde, Lord Chancellor Clarendon was again thrown into distress by the difliculty of filling up the office of chief justice of the King's Bench, and he allowed it to remain vacant seven months. Only five years had elapsed since the Restoration, and no loyal lawyer of eminence had sprung up. At last th~. Chancellor thought he could not do betler than promote Su· John 1\:elynge, then a puisne, to be the head of the court. The appointment was considered a very bad one; and some aceonnteJ. for it by supposing that a liberal contribution had f t. " Dunkirk been matle towards the expen. e o erec 1ng Ilou"e," * which was exciting the adn1iration and envy of the town; while others a serted that the collar of S. S. i" had _,. · uy the been put around the neck of the new legal utgn1lary Dnche. s of . Cleveland. I beh. eve t lu 1.t . l ' . l ntr·onaO'e had JUllCUl P<-l I:) not yet l>een drawn into the yortex of· ycna1 r' ty, an(1 that Clar- c • endon, left to the f.r eed01n o f' 1n . s own W'l1 1 , pr· ef'crred hlln whon1 ho cons1' de red t l1 c 1e u t 1. ne l1' g 't bl e cant l't u_,·u'l te · But we * Tlu. s was an expensi.v e res1'c l cnce b m' l t 1> y C,1 a . 1 n to which the pop- 1 cnc o ' f ·t . 1 1 t th expense o 1 ulace gave that name under the unfounded lC ea i 1a c " D ' . . • ,.. · t tl sale of uu· was defrayed out of bnbcs rccc1ved ror conscntmg o lC ·' kirk.- Ed. · f the E'n g l1'sh t This has been from great antiquity the dccoratwn ° . 1' . 15 chief justices. Dugdale says it is derived from the n ame of St. SlmDp ~Clr~e: . 1 )-;' nperor 10 a Christian judge, who suffered martyrdom under t lC • 1 tian.- Ed. (152) A. D. 16GO:l JOliN KELY~GE. ]53 cannot wonder at the suspicions which were generally entertained, for Sir John l(elynge's friends could only say in hi~ favor that he was a "violent Cavalier,'' and his enemies observed that ''however fit he might have been to charge the Roundheads under Prince Ilu pert. he was very unfit to cha r,qe a jury in \Vestn1in. ter Ilall." I can find nothing of his origin, or of his career, prior to the Restoration ; anu I mn unable to say whether, like some loyal lawyers, he actually had carried arn1s for the king, or, like other , had continued obscurely to practise his profession in London. The fir ... t notice I find of hitn is by him elf; in the account which he has left us of the conferences of the judges at Serjeants' Inn, preparatory to the trial of the regicides, when he says he nttendeu thaL ~e rvice as junior counsel for the crown. lie 1night have Lccn en1ployed from a notion that he would be useful in olving the knotty points likely to arise,* or, (what is quite a likely,) without any proressional reputation, he 1n ight have got a lJrief by favor, in a case which was to draw the eye of the whole world upon all engaged in it. \Vhcn the trials c~une on, he was very bu ... y and bu "tling, and eagerly impro\·ed every opportunity of bringing hi1n elf forward. Befo re they were O\~er, he took upon himself the degree of serjeant at law, and, to his unspenkaLle J elight, he was actually in.trusted with the task of conducting the * Among these was, "wheth er the act of scYering the head of Cha~lcs I. from his uody could be alleo-cd to h ave been committed in his own hfe-b 1 time," and "whether it should be laid as against the peace of the ate or of the presen t king." Judge Mallet made the co~~n:io~ ~n.ore confounded by maintaining that by the law of England a day IS mchns1ble; and that, as Charles II. certainly wa.s our LLwful king during a part of that day, 110 part of it h ad been in the rejgn of Charles I. |