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 to respect him, his urbanity, which won the hearts of the youngest lawyers of the Chancery Bar, gained for him many private friends and admirers among the most respectable members of the opposition.

But such men as Howe and Seymour hated him implacably; they hated his commanding genius much; they hated the mild majesty of his virtue still more.

They sought occasion against him everywhere; and they at length flattered themselves that they had found it.
Some years before, while the war was still raging, there had been loud complaints in the city that even privateers of St.Malo's and Dunkirk caused less molestation to trade than another class of marauders.