HOLT, SIR JOHN

HOLT, SIR JOHN, Lord Chief-Justice of the Court of King's Bench in the reign of King William, eldest son of Sir Thomas Holt, serjeant-at-law, was born at Thame, Oxfordshire, in 1642. He entered himself at Gray's Inn in 1658, and applied to the common law with so much industry that he soon became an eminent barrister. In the reign of James II. he was made recorder of London, an office which he discharged with much approbation for about a year and a half; but he lost his place by refusing to expound the law suitably to the king's designs. On the arrival of the Prince of Orange he was chosen a member of the Convention Parliament, which afforded an opportunity of displaying his abilities; and as soon as the government was settled, he was made Lord Chief-Justice of the Court of King's Bench and a privy counsellor. In 1700, when Lord Somers resigned the great seal, King William pressed Chief-Justice Holt to accept of it; but he replied that he never had in his life but one chancery cause, which he lost, and that consequently he could not think himself qualified for so great a trust. He continued as chief justice for twenty-two years, during which time he obtained great reputation for steadiness, integrity, and thorough knowledge in his profession. Upon great occasions he asserted the law with intrepidity, though he thereby ventured to incur by turns the indignation of both houses of parliament. Holt was a perfect master of the common law, and as his judgment was sound, his capacity great, and his understanding clear, so he possessed a firmness of mind, and a vigour of resolution, which nothing could overcome when he found himself called upon to assert the authority of the law, and to vindicate the purity of justice. Several causes of the utmost importance, as affecting the lives, rights, liberties, and property of the people, came in judgment before him, and his decisions were all marked by the same high qualities. His defini-

tions were remarkable for clearness and perspicuity; his arguments displayed equal powers of analysis and arrangement; and he possessed the invaluable faculty of rendering perceptible and obvious the natural differences of things, at the same time that he discriminated, with the nicest tact, between real and fanciful resemblances. His great secret consisted in the rigid and scrupulous adjustment of his premises; and hence he seldom erred in his conclusions. His arguments were instructive and convincing, whilst his integrity shrank from any accommodation of judicial opinion to existing interests or prejudices. His decisions are, most of them, faithfully and judiciously reported by Chief-Justice Raymond, himself an eminent lawyer; and his integrity and uprightness as a judge are celebrated by the author of the Tatler (No. 14), under the character of Verus the magistrate. The following reports were published by him, in 1708, folio, with notes: "A Report of divers Cases in Pleas of the Crown, adjudged and determined in the reign of King Charles II. with directions for justices of the peace and others, collected by Sir John Keyling, knight, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, from the original manuscript under his hand; to which is added, the Report of three modern cases, viz. Armstrong and Lisle, the King and Plumer, the Queen and Mawgridge." A pretended second edition appeared in 1739, but the title only was new.