Paragraph No. 14.--‘In what degree and to what extent the Court will interfere in the case against parental authority, cannot be finally determined till after the Master’s Report.’ Paragraph No. 15.--‘In the meantime I pronounce the following Order:’ This Order, forbidding Shelley to take possession of the children or meddle in any way with them, was dated on 17th March, 1817. It appears, therefore, that in no single paragraph does the Lord Chancellor refer to Shelley’s principles, without at the same time referring to the _conduct_ referable to those principles. What was the _conduct_ thus steadily kept in view? The answer can be given briefly. The petition set forth the circumstances of Shelley’s marriage, withdrawal from his wife’s society, and cohabitation with Mary Godwin; representing also that in thus withdrawing from his wife and cohabiting with Mary Godwin, he was in 1814, and from that year till his wife’s death, acting on the principles set forth in 1813, in the anti-matrimonial Note to _Queen Mab_, which was one of the Petitioner’s principal ‘exhibits.’ This was _the conduct or misconduct_ the Lord Chancellor kept so steadily in view. Given in a nutshell the Lord Chancellor’s judgment was this, ‘Mr. Shelley in _Queen Mab_ and the anti-matrimonial note attached thereto, printed in 1813, declared himself an enemy of lawful marriage; in the summer of 1814, Mr. Shelley acted on his avowed disregard for the obligations of marriage; Mr. Shelley’s action and _conduct_ on his avowed disregard for the obligations of marriage, makes me believe he will educate these children to hold his views respecting marriage, if they are committed to his care; taking this view of his _conduct_ to his wife I decree that the two children shall be withheld from his control.’ The judgment was based wholly on consideration of the poet’s conduct to his wife, regarded as the result of his zealous adoption of the views of the anti-matrimonial innovators.--Yet the _Edinburgh_ Reviewer says that Shelley’s paternal claim to his offspring was ‘rejected by Lord Eldon on petition, on the ground not of Shelley’s misconduct to his wife, but of the opinions expressed in his writings.’ From the substance of the petition, the affidavits supporting the allegations, the chief ‘exhibit,’ and the terms of the judgment, it is certain, that the whole suit from petition to decree ‘went’ on what may be called Free Contract considerations,--the evidence that Shelley had avowed himself a vehement enemy of lawful marriage in 1813, and acted on the avowal in 1814 and afterwards:--on the evidence of conduct, in accordance with, and consequent on the views, set forth in the book, printed when he was only twenty years of age.