Among the few great lawyers who have married "for love," Hyde, Lord Clarendon, deserves a place. While yet a young man, he became desperately enamored of the daughter of Sir George Aycliffe, a Wiltshire gentleman of good family, though of small fortune. A marriage was the result, but the beautiful young wife died only six months after, of the malignant small-pox (then a frightful scourge in this country), and Hyde was for some time so inconsolable, that he could scarcely be restrained from throwing up his profession and going abroad. Two years after, however, he married again into a good family, his second wife being the daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Master of the Mint; and the marriage proved highly auspicious. This worthy lady was his companion in all his vicissitudes of fortune--lived with him for many years in exile--shared all his dangers and privations, when at times the parents could with difficulty provide food and raiment for their children; but the wife was yet preserved to see her husband Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor and Prime Minister of England. As an instance of the straits to which the family was occasionally reduced, we may quote the following extract from a letter written by Hyde to a friend, when at Madrid in 1650, in which he says: "All our money is gone, and let me never prosper, if I know or can imagine how we can get bread a month longer;" and again, "Greater necessities are hardly felt by any men than we for the present undergo, such as have almost made me foolish. I have not for my life been able to supply the miserable distress of my poor wife." Francis North, afterward Lord-Keeper Guildford, went about marrying in a business-like way. He was a reader at Lincoln's Inn, but much desired to wed, because he had "grown tired of dining in the hall, and eating a costelet and salad at Chateline's in the evening with a friend." Besides, he wished to mend his fortune in the most summary way. He first tried a rich, coquettish young widow, but she jilted him. Then he found out an alderman who was reputed to be rich, and had three marriageable daughters with a fortune of £6000 each. He made his approaches, was favorably received, and proceeded to broach the money question to the alderman. The sum named as the young lady's portion was £5000; but as North had set his heart on the £6000, he was disappointed, and at once took his leave. The alderman, running after him (at least so relates Lord Campbell), offered him to boot £500 on the birth of the first child. But North would not take a penny under the sum he had fixed upon, and the match fell through. At last he found a lady with £14,000, one of the daughters of the Earl of Devon, whom he courted in a business style, and ultimately married.