Affecting the munificence and exceeding the pride
of Wolsey, vain and false, a cringing time-server,
unprincipled and ostentatious, but at the same
time an accompliBhed courtier, plausible and in-
gratiating, Lord Crewe was, as a man and a priest,
an ornament to his own age, though he would
have been a scandal in the present. Descended
from a line of lawyers, he possessed the subtlety
of them all, but wanted their probity and moral
courage. His great-grand£ither was Sir Randolph
Crewe, Knight, the Chief Justice of the Court
of King's Bench, who was deprived of his office,
November the 9th, 1626, because he disapproved
of Charles the First raising money by loan. His
grandfather was Sir Thomas Crewe, Serjeant-at-
Law, and Speaker of the House of Commons in
the last Parliament of James the First, and in
the first of Charles the First The Serjeant's
reputation as a lawyer was proverbial; —

' Would you have your cause go true,
Take senior Crooke and junior Crewe.'



byGOOQiC



284 ANNALS OF OXFORD.
