The Lord Keeper's first
task, when he returned home, was to ascertain by medical advice that
his daughter had sustained no injury from the dangerous and alarming
situation in which she had been placed. Satisfied on this topic, he
proceeded to revise the memoranda which he had taken down from the mouth
of the person employed to interrupt the funeral service of the late
Lord Ravenswood. Bred to casuistry, and well accustomed to practise the
ambidexter ingenuity of the bar, it cost him little trouble to soften
the features of the tumult which he had been at first so anxious to
exaggerate. He preached to his colleagues of the privy council the
necessity of using conciliatory measures with young men, whose blood
and temper were hot, and their experience of life limited. He did not
hesitate to attribute some censure to the conduct of the officer, as
having been unnecessarily irritating.
These were the contents of his public despatches. The letters which
he wrote to those private friends into whose management the matter was
likely to fall were of a yet more favourable tenor.
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