HENEAGE FINCH,

EARL OF NOTTINGHAM.

FEW families have produced so many consi

derable men as the house of Finch has in late reigns; men who have owed their preferments to themselves, not to favour. The lord in question rose, through the great steps of the law, from solicitor to attorney-general, to lord-keeper, to lord-chancellor, to an earldom. Though employed in the most difficult part of the reign of Charles the second, his character remained untainted. Anthony Wood represents him as a great temporizer. He certainly neither offended the court nor the patriots. Had he shown great partiality to the latter, there is no doubt but the king would have dismissed him, being by no means so dangerous a man as his predecessor Shaftesbury. That his complaisance for the prero

2

? [Qu. Whether the following lines do not allude to some secession from the parliament?

Ask me no more why little Finch
From parliament began to winch?
Since such as dare to hawk at kings,

Can easie clip a Finch's wings.

Loyal Songs, vol. i. p. 42.]

gative was not unbounded, was manifest by the king being obliged to set the seal himself to the earl of Danby's pardon. The truth is, the earl of Nottingham was neither violent nor timid. When he pronounced sentence on the lord viscount Stafford, he did not scruple to say, "Who can doubt now that London was burned by the Papists ?" Burnet calls this declaration indecent: if it was so to the unhappy convict, it was certainly no flattery to the predominant faction at court. This speech was reckoned the masterpiece of his eloquence; and his eloquence was much celebrated. Burnet says, it was affected, laboured, and too constant on all occasions ; and that his lordship lived to find it much despised. The bishop allows his probity; and, in another place, speaks of him with the greatest encomiums. Dryden has drawn a beautiful character of him in his Absalom and Achitophel, under the name of Amri.

Vol. i. p. 365.

4 Preface to the second volume of his History of the Reformation.

[This character is too honourable to be omitted here; though not drawn, as lord Orford supposed, by Dryden, but by his coadjutor Tate.

"Our list of nobles next let Amri grace,

Whose merits claim'd the Abethdin's high place;

Others have called him "The English Cicero, the English Roscius."

Pieces of his published, are

"Several Speeches and Discourses on the Trials of the Regicides, &c. 1660:" he was then solicitor-general.

66

Speeches to both Houses of Parliament," while lord-keeper and lord-chancellor."

66

Speech at pronouncing Sentence on William Lord Viscount Stafford, December 7. 1680."

Printed with the trial.

66

Speech against the Bill of Exclusion." " "Answers, by his Majesty's Command, to several Addresses presented to his Majesty at

Who, with a loyalty that did excel,

Brought all th' endowments of Achitophel.
Sincere was Amri, and not only knew,
But Israel's sanctions into practice drew:
Our laws, that did a boundless ocean seem,
Were coasted all, and fathom'd all by him.
No rabbin speaks, like him, their mystick sense,
So just, and with such charms of eloquence;
To whom the double blessing does belong,
With Moses' inspiration, Aaron's tongue."

39

Second Part of Abs. and Achit.]

6 Wood, vol. ii. p. 719.; where see the following account of

his works.

7 [In the years 1673, 1675, 1676, 1678, and 1679. Biog. Dict. vol. vi. p. 161.]

• Vide Buckingham's Works, vol. ii.