CHAPTER I

THE YORKE FAMILY


The family of Yorke first came into prominence with the great
Chancellor Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke. This remarkable man,
who was the son of an attorney at Dover, descended, it is claimed, from
the Yorkes of Hannington in North Wiltshire, a family of some
consequence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was born in that
town in the year 1690, and rose from a comparatively humble station to
the commanding position he held so long in English public life.

My object in this chapter is to recall some of the incidents of his
career and of those of his immediate successors and descendants.

Philip Yorke was called to the bar in 1715, became Solicitor-General
only five years later, and was promoted to be Attorney-General in 1723.
In 1733 he was appointed Lord Chief Justice of England, and received the
Great Seal as Lord Chancellor in 1737, and when his life closed his
political career had extended over a period of fifty years.

Lord Campbell, the author of the 'Lives of the Chancellors,' 'that
extraordinary work which was held to have added a new terror to death,
and a fear of which was said to have kept at least one Lord Chancellor
alive,' claimed to lay bare the shortcomings of the subjects of his