Sedgemoor; and that the whole of that great body of Englishmen which cannot be said to be steadily Whig or Tory, but which is zealous for decency and the domestic virtues, would see with indignation a signal mark of royal favour bestowed on one who had been convicted of debauching a noble damsel, the sister of his own wife.  But so capricious is public feeling that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find, in any of the letters, essays, dialogues, and poems which bear the date of 1699 or of 1700, a single allusion to the vices or misfortunes of the new First Lord of the Treasury.  It is probable that his infirm health and his isolated position were his protection.  The chiefs of the opposition did not fear him enough to hate him.  The Whig junto was still their terror and their abhorrence.  They continued to assail Montague and Orford, though with somewhat less ferocity than while Montague had the direction of the finances, and Orford of the marine.  But the utmost spite of all the leading malecontents were concentrated on one object, the great magistrate who still held the highest civil post in the realm, and who was evidently determined to hold it in defiance of them.  It was not so easy to get rid of him as it had been to drive his colleagues from office.  His abilities the most intolerant Tories were forced grudgingly to acknowledge.  His integrity might be questioned in nameless libels and in coffeehouse tattle, but was certain to come forth bright and pure from the most severe Parliamentary investigation.  Nor was he guilty of those faults of temper and of manner to which, more than to any grave delinquency, the unpopularity of his associates is to be ascribed.  He had as little of the insolence and perverseness of Orford as of the petulance and vaingloriousness of Montague.  One of the most severe trials to which the head and heart of man can be put is great and rapid elevation.  To that trial both Montague and Somers were put.  It was too much for Montague.  But Somers was found equal to it.  He was the son of a country attorney.  At thirty-seven he had been sitting in a stuff gown on a back bench in the Court of King’s Bench.  At forty-two he was the first lay dignitary of the realm, and took precedence of the Archbishop of York, and of the Duke of Norfolk.  He had risen from a lower point than Montague, had risen as fast as Montague, had risen as high as Montague, and yet had not excited envy such as dogged Montague through a long career.  Garreteers, who were never weary of calling the cousin of the Earls of Manchester and Sandwich an upstart, could not, without an unwonted sense of shame, apply those words to the Chancellor, who, without one drop of patrician blood in his veins, had taken his place at the head of the patrician order with the quiet dignity of a man ennobled by nature.  His serenity, his modesty, his selfcommand, proof even against the most sudden surprises of passion, his selfrespect, which forced the proudest grandees of the kingdom