Burnet suffered from Halifax’s wit:  ‘In the House of Lords,’ says the first Earl of Dartmouth, ’he affected to conclude all his discourses with a jest, though the subject were never so serious, and if it did not meet with the applause he expected, would be extremely out of countenance and silent, till an opportunity offered to retrieve the approbation he thought he had lost; but was never better pleased than when he was turning Bishop Burnet and his politics into ridicule’ (Burnet, ed.  Airy, vol. i, p. 485).

Dryden understood Halifax, the Jotham of his Absalom and Achitophel: 

Jotham of piercing Wit and pregnant Thought:  Endew’d by Nature, and by Learning taught To move Assemblies, who but onely tri’d The worse awhile, then chose the better side; Nor chose alone, but turn’d the Balance too; So much the weight of one brave man can do.

See also Dryden’s dedication to Halifax of his King Arthur.

73.

The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North, Baron of Guilford, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, under King Charles II. and King James II....  By the Honourable Roger North, Esq; London, MDCCXLII. (pp. 223-6.)

Roger North’s lives of his three brothers, Lord Keeper Guilford, Sir Dudley North, and Dr. John North, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, were begun about 1710 but were not published till 1742-4, eight years after his death.  The edition of the ‘Lives of the Norths’ by Augustus Jessopp, 3 vols., 1890, contains also his autobiography.

The Life of Lord Keeper Guilford is invaluable as a picture of the bench and bar under Charles II and James II.

Page 240, l. 6.  Sir Francis Pemberton (1625-97), Lord Chief Justice, 1681, removed from the King’s Bench, 1683, ’near the time that the great cause of the quo warranto against the city of London was to be brought to judgment in that court.’  North had just described him as a judge.

Page 241, l. 1.  Compare Scott’s Monastery, ch. xiv:  ’"By my troggs,” replied Christie, “I would have thrust my lance down his throat."’ ‘Troggs’ is an altered form of ‘Troth’.  It appears to be Scottish in origin; no Southern instance is quoted in Wright’s Dialect Dictionary.  Saunders may have learned it from a London Scot.

l. 22.  Sir John Maynard (1602-90), ’the king’s eldest serjeant, but advanced no farther’.  Described by North, ed. 1890, p. 149; also p. 26:  ’Serjeant Maynard, the best old book-lawyer of his time, used to say that the law was ars bablativa’.

l. 30.  Sir Matthew Hale (1609-76), Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, described by North, pp. 79 ff.  Burnet wrote The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, 1682.

Page 243, l. 5.  The action taken by the Crown in 1682 contesting the charter of the city of London.  Judgement was given for the Crown.  See State Trials, ed. 1810, vol. viii, 1039 ff., and Burnet, ed.  Airy, vol. ii, pp. 343 ff., and compare Hallam, Constitutional History, ch. xii, ed. 1863, pp. 453-4.