occasion, the Whigs vociferated "Hear, hear," so tumultuously
that the Tories complained of unfair usage. Seymour, the leader
of the minority, declared that there could be no freedom of
debate while such clamour was tolerated. Some old Whig members
were provoked into reminding him that the same clamour had
occasionally been heard when he presided, and had not then been
repressed. Yet, eager and angry as both sides were, the speeches
on both sides indicated that profound reverence for law and
prescription which has long been characteristic of Englishmen,
and which, though it runs sometimes into pedantry and sometimes
into superstition, is not without its advantages. Even at that
momentous crisis, when the nation was still in the ferment of a
revolution, our public men talked long and seriously about all
the circumstances of the deposition of Edward the Second and of
the deposition of Richard the Second, and anxiously inquired
whether the assembly which, with Archbishop Lanfranc at its head,
set aside Robert of Normandy, and put William Rufus on the
throne, did or did not afterwards continue to act as the
legislature of the realm. Much was said about the history of
writs; much about the etymology of the word Parliament. It is
remarkable, that the orator who took the most statesmanlike view
of the subject was old Maynard. In the civil conflicts of fifty
eventful years he had learned that questions affecting the
highest interests of the commonwealth were not to be decided by
verbal cavils and by scraps of Law French and Law Latin; and,
being by universal acknowledgment the most subtle and the most
learned of English jurists, he could express what he felt without
the risk of being accused of ignorance and presumption. He
scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of place all that
blackletter learning, which some men, far less versed in such