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Attorney-General Masères, an able lawyer and constitutional writer, was in favour of a mixed system, but his views were notably influenced by his strong prejudices against Roman Catholics.
The answer cannot possibly leave the shadow of a doubt, even in the mind of Baron Maseres; and Dr. Rennel would be compelled to admit it, if three Bishops lay dead at the very moment the question were put to him. To this answer might be added also the solemn declaration and signature of all the Catholics in Great Britain.
His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron and me together." Baron Maseres, who was made a Bencher in 1774, died in 1824. Hookers and Seldens. London Magazine, November, 1821.
His own chief legal adviser, Francis Maseres, was a sturdy adherent of the older policy, though he agreed that the time was not yet ripe for setting up an Assembly and suggested some well-considered compromise between the old laws and the new. The Advocate General of England, James Marriott, urged the same course.
After a careful study of the country he came to the conclusion that the French civil law ought to be retained, although he was met by the earnest advice to the contrary of two able lawyers, Chief-Justice Hay and Attorney-General Masères, who believed a code adopted from English and French principles was preferable.
Maseres, an excellent Whig, a good mathematician, and a respected lawyer, is perhaps best known at present from his portrait in Charles Lamb's Old Benchers. It maybe noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes that in 1792 Paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions, for which the necessary funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace had abolished all military charges.
A generation or two would suffice, in the phrase of Francis Maseres himself a descendant of a Huguenot refugee but now wholly an Englishman for "melting down the French nation into the English in point of language, affections, religion, and laws."
He was made a Bencher in 1770 and died in 1787. Mingay. James Mingay, who was made a Bencher in 1785, died in 1812. He was M.P. for Thetford and senior King's Counsel. He was also Recorder of Aldborough, Crabbe's town. He lived at 4 King's Bench Walk. Baron Maseres. He lived at 5 King's Bench Walk, and at Reigate, and wore a three-cornered hat and ruffles to the end.
In April, 1801, Lamb wrote to Manning: "I live at No. 16 Mitre-court Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them!
Masères, who was of Huguenot descent and much prejudiced against Roman Catholics, was also an advocate of a legislative assembly to be exclusively Protestant in other words, of giving all power practically into the hands of a small British minority.
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