Charles’s reign.  The liveliness of his imagination was always too hard for his judgment.  A severe jest was preferred by him to all arguments whatsoever.  And he was endless in consultations:  For when after much discourse a point was settled, if he could find a new jest, to make even that which was suggested by himself seem ridiculous, he could not hold, but would study to raise the credit of his wit, tho’ it made others call his judgment in question.  When he talked to me as a philosopher of his contempt of the world, I asked him, what he meant by getting so many new titles, which I call’d the hanging himself about with bells and tinsel.  He had no other excuse for it, but this, that, since the world were such fools as to value those matters, a man must be a fool for company:  He considered them but as rattles:  Yet rattles please children:  So these might be of use to his family.  His heart was much set on raising his family.  But, tho’ he made a vast estate for them, he buried two of his sons himself, and almost all his grandchildren.  The son that survived was an honest man, but far inferior to him.

73.

SIR EDMUND SAUNDERS.

Lord Chief Justice 1682.  Died 1683.

By ROGER NORTH.

The Lord Chief Justice Saunders succeeded in the Room of Pemberton.  His Character, and his Beginning, were equally strange.  He was at first no better than a poor Beggar Boy, if not a Parish Foundling, without known Parents, or Relations.  He had found a way to live by Obsequiousness (in Clement’s-Inn, as I remember) and courting the Attornies Clerks for Scraps.  The extraordinary Observance and Diligence of the Boy, made the Society willing to do him Good.  He appeared very ambitious to learn to write; and one of the Attornies got a Board knocked up at a Window on the Top of a Staircase; and that was his Desk, where he sat and wrote after Copies of Court and other Hands the Clerks gave him.  He made himself so expert a Writer that he took in Business, and earned some Pence by Hackney-writing.  And thus, by degrees, he pushed his Faculties, and fell to Forms, and, by Books that were lent him, became an exquisite entering Clerk; and, by the same course of Improvement of himself, an able Counsel, first in special Pleading, then, at large.  And, after he was called to the Bar, had Practice, in the King’s Bench Court, equal with any there.  As to his Person, he was very corpulent and beastly; a mere Lump of morbid Flesh.  He used to say, by his Troggs, (such an humourous Way of talking he affected) none could say be wanted Issue of his Body, for he had nine in his Back.  He was a fetid Mass, that offended his Neighbours at the Bar in the sharpest Degree.  Those, whose ill Fortune it was to stard near him, were Confessors, and, in Summer-time, almost Martyrs.  This hateful Decay of his Carcase came upon him by continual Sottishness; for, to say nothing of Brandy,