John Somers, 1st Baron Somers - Legacy

Legacy

In the eighteenth century Somers was hailed as the chief constitutional architect of the Protestant succession. The achievements of Somers and other Whig lawyers defined Whiggism for those living in the reigns of King George I and George II. William Pitt the Elder stated in 1761 that "he learnt his maxims and principles" from "the greatest lawyers, generals and patriots of King William's days: named Lord Somers". For the later eighteenth century Whig politician, Edmund Burke, Somers was of the "Old Whigs" whom he admired against the New Whigs who supported the French Revolution. Burke wrote that: "I never desire to be thought a better whig than Lord Somers". The Whig historian Thomas Macaulay, writing in the nineteenth century, held Somers in high esteem:

...the greatest man among the members of the Junto, and in some respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper Somers. He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator, and as a writer. His speeches have perished; but his State papers remain, and are models of terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence. He had left a great reputation in the House of Commons, where he had, for four years, been always heard with delight; and the Whig members still looked up to him as their leader, and still held their meetings under his roof. ... In truth, he united all the qualities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive, quick and acute, diligence, integrity, patience, suavity. In council, the calm wisdom, which he possessed in a measure rarely found among men of parts so quick and of opinions so decided as his, acquired for him the authority of an oracle. ... From the beginning to the end of his public life he was a steady Whig.

A fire at the law offices of Charles Yorke in Lincoln's Inn Square on 27 January 1752 destroyed a large amount of Somers' surviving private papers.