Excerpt from Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, Vol. 5 of 10: From the Earliest Times Till the Reign of King George IV Keck and Rawlinson are wholly uninteresting characters, and there could be no amusement or instruction in recording the dates Of their birth, of their going to the university, of their being called to the bar, and of their death, -which would comprehend the whole of their known history, beyond their accidental appointment to their present Ofiice.f 'but the career Of the first Lord Commissioner is very curious, were it for nothing else than that it lasted much longer than that of any other English lawyer or statesman, as he had been called to the bar and sat in the House Of Commons in the year 1625, in the very beginning Of the reign Of Charles I., and he held a high office in the law, and was a member Of the House of Commons, in the year 1690, in the second year of the reign of William and Mary. Having been en gaged in the most important state trials during that period, - having been a representative of the people in every inter mediate parliament, whether held by Kings or Protectors, having assisted in passing the Bill of Rights as well as the Petition of Right, -having seen the government car ried on by prerogative for many years, without popular assem blies, - the constitution first reformed and then subverted by the Long Parliament, - the vicissitudes of the civil war, - the trial and execution of the King, - the establishment of mili tary despotism, - the recall of the ancient dynasty, two turbulent reigns, in which the voice of the law and the lessons of experience were despised, - he lived to see the Stuarts for ever banished from their native country, and the foundation laid of a constitutional monarchy which still flourishes, and has conferred upon Britons a greater degree of civil and religious freedom, and of public prosperity, than ever fell to the lot of any other nation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.