The History of Oswestry: Comprising the British, Saxon, Norman, and English eras; the topography of the borough; and its ecclesiastical and civic history; with notices of botany, geology, statistics, angling, and biography: to which are added sketches of the environsCathrall, William
History
The History of Oswestry: Comprising the British, Saxon, Norman, and English eras; the topography of the borough; and its ecclesiastical and civic history; with notices of botany, geology, statistics, angling, and biography: to which are added sketches of the environs
Cathrall, William
Natural history -- England -- Shropshire; Oswestry (England) -- History
In 1695 a violent outcry was raised against
bribery, and a committee was appointed by the House of Commons, to
inquire into the charges, which were made against members, and it
reported that Sir John Trevor had received a bribe of a thousand
guineas for furthering a bill called the ‘Orphan’s Bill,’ promoted by
the City of London. Accordingly, March 12th, 1695, he was subjected
to the unparalleled humiliation of putting the resolution from the
chair, and declaring himself guilty. He then resigned the chair, and
was expelled from the House. Receiving money for voting in
parliament was in those days so common, that his offence was not
regarded in a very serious light, and he was permitted to retain his
high judicial office of Master of the Rolls, for the long period of
twenty-two years after his expulsion from the House of Commons. By
the death of his elder brother he succeeded to the paternal estates
of Brynkinalt, which, with large possessions of his own acquisition,
have descended through his only daughter Anne to the present Viscount
Dungannon. Sir John Trevor died May 20th, 1717, being nearly eighty
years of age, at his house in Chancery Lane, and was buried in the
Rolls Chapel.”
Yorke, in his “_Royal Tribes of Wales_,” relates a droll anecdote of Sir’
John, which is worthy of transplantation.
“Among his other virtues,” says Yorke, “Trevor was an economist. He
had dined by himself one day at the Rolls, and was drinking his wine
quietly, when his cousin Roderic Lloyd was unexpectedly introduced to
him from a side door. ‘You rascal,’ said Trevor to his servant, ‘and
you have brought my cousin Roderic Lloyd, Esquire, Prothonotary of
North Wales, Marshal to Baron Price, and so forth, and so forth, up
my _back stairs_. Take my cousin Roderic Lloyd, Esquire,
Prothonotary of North Wales, Marshal to Baron Price, and so forth,
and so forth; take him instantly back, down my _back stairs_, and
bring him up my _front stairs_.’ Roderic in vain remonstrated, and
whilst he was conveyed down one, and up the other stairs, his Honor
removed the bottle and glasses.”
Trevor had an obliquity of vision, or, in plainer words, he squinted
abominably! When he was expelled from the House of Commons for bribery,
pasquinades were issued against him, in one of which it was wittily said,
that “Justice was blind, but Bribery only squinted.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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