Joseph Jekyll - Master of The Rolls

Master of The Rolls

On 13 July 1717, Jekyll was appointed Master of the Rolls, and the same year became a Privy Councillor. His time as Master "was distinguished by legal ability, integrity and despatch", and during this period he helped write The Judicial Authority of the Master of the Rolls. He was given the Great Seal on 7 January 1725, and held it until June 1. On 19 August 1738 he died of "a mortification in the bowels", and was buried in the Rolls Chapel. In his will he left £20,000 to help pay off the national debt, something Lord Mansfield described as "a very foolish bequest.. he might as well have attempted to stop the middle arch of Blackfriars Bridge with his wig full-bottomed wig".

Read more about this topic:  Joseph Jekyll

Famous quotes containing the words master and/or rolls:

    Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything—except his own nature.
    Henry Miller (1891–1980)

    It was easy to recognize in him the anti-social animus of a born evangelist, but there was also something else—a kind of voluptuous delight in the shabby and preposterous, a perverted aestheticism like that of a latter-day movie or radio fan, a wild will to roll in and snuffle balderdash as a cat rolls in and snuffles catnip.
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)