The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) | Page 5

or swam, with this solemn proviso, however, for the soothing of his conscience: that if I sank my fate was to be upon my own head! I agreed also to that part of the business, and accepting the terms, started for London.

CHAPTER II.
IN MY UNCLE'S OFFICE.
I ought to mention, in speaking of my ancestors, that I had a very worthy godfather who was half-brother to my father. He was connected with a family of great respectability at Royston, in Cambridgeshire, and inherited from them a moderate-sized landed estate. A portion of this property was a little farm situate at Brampton, in Huntingdonshire, from which village I took the title I now enjoy.
The farm was left, however, to my aunt for life, who lived to a good old age, as most life-tenants do whom you expect to succeed, and I got nothing until it was of no use to me. When I came into possession I was making a very fair income at the Bar, and the probability is my aunt did me, unconsciously, the greatest kindness she could in keeping me out of it so long.
So much for my ancestors. About the rest of them I know nothing, except an anecdote or two.
There was one more event in my boyhood which I will mention, because it is historic. I assisted my father, on my little pony, in proclaiming William IV. on his accession to the throne, and I mention it with the more pride because, having been created a Peer of the Realm by her late gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, I was qualified to assist as a member of the Privy Council at the accession of his present most gracious Majesty, and had the honour to hear him announce himself as King Edward of England by the title of Edward the Seventh!
Arrived in London, full of good advice and abundance of warnings as to the fate that awaited me, I entered as a pupil the chambers of a famous special pleader of that time, whose name was Frederick Thompson. This was in the year 1841.
I have the right to say I worked very hard there for several months, and studied with all my might; nor was the study distasteful. I was learning something which would be useful to me in after-life. Moreover, being endowed with pluck and energy, I wanted to show that my uncles--for the godfather warned me as well--and my father were false prophets. So I gave myself up entirely to the acquisition of knowledge, this being absolutely necessary if I was to make anything of my future career. "Sink or swim," my father said, was the alternative, so I was resolved to keep my head above water if possible.
After being at Thompson's my allotted period, I next went to Mr. George Butt, a very able and learned man, who afterwards became a Queen's Counsel, but never an advocate. I acquired while with him a good deal of knowledge that was invaluable, became his favourite pupil, and was in due course entrusted with papers of great responsibility, so that in time it came to pass that Mr. Butt would send off my opinions without any correction.
These are small things to talk of now, but they were great then, and the foundation of what, to me, were great things to come, although I little suspected any of them at that time; and as I look back over that long stretch of years, I have the satisfaction of feeling that I did not enter upon my precarious career without doing my utmost to fit myself for it.
In those early days of the century prize-fights were very common in England. The noble art of self-defence was patronized by the greatest in the land. Society loved a prize-fight, and always went to see it, as Society went to any other fashionable function. Magistrates went, and even clerical members of that august body. As magistrates it may have been their duty to discountenance, but as county gentlemen it was their privilege to support, the noble champions of the art, especially when they had their money on the event.
The magistrates, if their presence was ever discovered, said they went to prevent a breach of the peace, but if they were unable to effect this laudable object, they looked on quietly so as to prevent any one committing a breach of the peace on themselves. Their individual heads were worth something.
It was to one of these exhibitions of valour, between Owen Swift and Brighton Bill, that a reverend and sporting magistrate took my brother John, a nice good schoolboy, in a tall hat. He thought it was the right thing that the boy should see the world. I thought also that what was good for John, as prescribed by his clerical adviser, would not be