Descripción
Exquisite 1840s Steel Engraving -Engraved by: W. T. FRY Published by JOHN TALLIS & COMPANY, LONDON & NEW YORK Approximate Portrait Image Area Size: 4 X 5 inches Approximate Size With Decorated Border and vignettes: 6 X 7 1/4 inches Approximate Overall Size with margins: 7 X 11 inches Philip Yorke, 1st earl of Hardwicke(1690-1764), English jurist. As lord chancellor (1737-56) he did much to systematize the laws of equity and established the principle that equity must follow its precedents. An influential member of the government, he was active in suppressing the Jacobite uprising of 1745. English lord chancellor, son of Philip Yorke, an attorney, who was born at Dover, on the 1st of December 1690. Through his mother, Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Richard Gibbon of Rolvenden, Kent, be was connected with the family of Gibbon the historian. At the age of fourteen, after a not very thorough education at a private school at Bethnal Green, where, however, he showed exceptional promise, he entered an attorney's office in London. Here he gave some attention to literature and the classics as well as to law; but in the latter he made such progress that his employer, Salkeld, impressed by Yorke's powers, entered him at the Middle Temple in November 1708; and soon afterwards recommended him to Lord Chief Justice Parker (afterwards earl of Macclesfield) as law tutor to his sons. In 1715 he was called to the bar, where his progress was, says Lord Campbell, "more rapid than that of any other d?butant in the annals of 'our profession," his advancement being greatly furthered by the patronage of Macclesfield, who became lord chancellor in 1718, when Yorke transferred his practice from the king's bench to the court of chancery, though he continued to go on the western circuit. In the following year he established his reputation as an equity lawyer in a case in which Sir Robert Walpole's family was interested, by an argument displaying profound learning and research concerning the jurisdiction of the chancellor, on lines which he afterwards more fully developed in a celebrated letter to Lord Kames on the distinction between law and equity. Through Macclesfield's influence with the duke of Newcastle Yorke entered parliament in 1719 as member for Lewes, and was appointed solicitor-general, with a knighthood, in 1720, although he was then a barrister of only four years' standing. His conduct of the prosecution of Christopher Layer in that year for treason as a Jacobite further raised Sir Philip Yorke's reputation as a forensic orator; and in 1723, having already become attorney-general, he passed through the House of Commons the bill of pains and penalties against Bishop Atterbury. He was excused, on the ground of his personal friendship, from acting for the crown in the ,impeachment of Macclesfield in 1725, though he did not exert himself to save his patron from disgrace largely brought about by Macclesfield's partiality for Yorke himself. He soon found a new and still more influential patron in the duke of Newcastle, to whom he henceforth gave his political support. He rendered valuable service to Walpole's government by his support of the bill for prohibiting loans to foreign powers (1730), of the increase of the army (1732) and of the excise bill (1733). In 1733 Yorke was appointed lord chief justice of the king's bench, with the title of Lord Hardwicke, and was sworn of the privy council; and in 1737 he succeeded Talbot as lord chancellor, thus becoming a member of Sir Robert Walpole's cabinet. One of his first official acts was to deprive the poet Thomson of a small office conferred on him by Talbot. Enlarged view of the top vignette. A beautiful elaborate fleur de lis scrollwork decorative border surrounds the image, with a tiny vignette at the top of the portrait image. The vignette may represent the family coat of arms or crest. The celtic like ornamental perimeter scrollwork surrounding the portrait is a beautiful work of art, typi. N° de ref. del artículo 11482
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