sess one without the cost; as
far as he learned, he taught, and by publishing some useful tracts on
temporary occasions, he was enabled to purchase a library. He appears
never to have read a book without its furnishing him with some new
practical design, and he probably studied too much for his own
particular advantage. Such devoted studies was the way to become a
lord-chancellor; but the science of the law was here subordinate to that
of a money-trader.

When yet but a clerk to the Clerk in the Counter, frequent opportunities
occurred which Audley knew how to improve. He became a money-trader as
he had become a law-writer, and the fears and follies of mankind were to
furnish him with a trading capital. The fertility of his genius appeared
in expedients and in quick contrivances. He was sure to be the friend of
all men falling out. He took a deep concern in the affairs of his
master's clients, and often much more than they were aware of. No man so
ready at procuring bail or compounding debts. This was a considerable
traffic then, as now. They hired themselves out for bail, swore what was
required, and contrived to give false addresses, which is now called
leg-bail. They dressed themselves out for the occasion; a great
seal-ring flamed on the finger, which, however, was pure copper gilt,
and they often assumed the name of some person of good credit. Savings,
and small presents for gratuitous opinions, often afterwards discovered
to be very fallacious ones, enabled him to purchase annuities of easy
landowners, with their treble amount secured on their estates. The
improvident owners, or the careless heirs, were soon entangled in the
usurer's nets; and, after the receipt of a few years, the annuity, by
some latent quibble, or some irregularity in the payments, usually ended
in Audley's obtaining the treble forfeiture. He could at all times
out-knave a knave. One of these incidents has been preserved. A draper,
of no honest reputation, being arrested by a merchant for a debt of
L200, Audley bought the debt at L40, for which the draper immediately
offered him L50. But Audley would not consent, unless the draper
indulged a sudden whim of his own: this was a formal contract, that the
draper should pay within twenty years, upon twenty certain days, a penny
doubled. A knave, in haste to sign, is no calculator; and, as the
contemporary dramatist describes one of the arts of those citizens, one
part of whose business was

To