A ^°-^. ^ A ■a? ^ ^■^0^ :^ -n^-o^ :<^ ^•^ °^ \^ .. s*- A <^. 'o . » - .0^ C^ i^ /At*. A -^-^ 7 u NECROLOGICAL NOTICE Hon. RICHARD S. FIELD, LL.D. NECROLOGICAL XOTICE Hon. RICHARD STOCKTOiX FIELD, 11. D.. OF PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY- READ BEFORE THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, AT ITS Regular Monthly Meeting', Thursday Evening, October 6, 1870. BY CHAELES HENRY HART, LL. B., HISTOKIOGRAPHEK OF THE SOCIETY. PHILADELPHIA 1870. / /^ COLLINS, PRINTER. NECROLOGICAL NOTICE. At the meeting next following the demise of our late Honorary Vice-President for the State of New Jersey, ElCH- ARD Stockton Field, LL. D., I presented for your consider- ation some resolutions of respect to his memory, and I will now ask your attention while I sketch briefly his life. EiciiARD Stockton Field was born at Whitehill, in the county of Burlington, New Jersey, on the last day of Decem- ber, 1803. The history of the family descent is somewhat obscure, but it is certain that he was descended from the same family as John Field, the distinguished English astronomer of the middle of the sixteenth century, who was the first to use the Copernican system as a basis for calculations for prac- tical purposes, in his "Bphemeris anni 1557 currentis, juxta Copernici et Eeinhaldi Canones fideliter per Joannem Field." This work, which was of considerable magnitude, was under- taken at the suggestion of the celebrated Dr. Dee, and was probably the very first publication in which any notice was taken of the discoveries of Copernicus. This John Field was born about the year 1520, and was a son of Richard Fielde of Ardsley, who was likely a grandson of William Fielde or Feld of Bradford, who died in 1480. In 1555, the year before he published his first Bphemeris, he was admitted fel- low of Lincoln's College, Oxford. About 1560 he married Jane Amyas, a daughter of John Amyas, of Kent, and removed from London, where he had been living, to Ardsley, where he died in 1587. He published an Ephemeris for 1558, and another for 1559, in each of which he put forth more strongly than in the last, his support of the sj^stem which he had the honor of introducing into England. "It was in recognition of the great service which he had thus rendered to the cause of science, that he received a patent in 1558, authorizing him to wear as a crest over his family arms, a red rigid arm issuing from the clouds and supporting a golden sphere, thereby inti- mating the splendor of the Copernican discovery. There is a seal in the possession of the family at Princeton which was no doubt handed down from one generation to another — on one side is the family coat of arms, on another is the crest before referred to — an arm supporting a globe — and on the third side 'E. F.,' the initials of the name of Eobert Field," the emigrant ancestor of the family in this country. John Field had nine children, from the second of whom, Mathew, born at Ardley in 1563, it has been attempted to trace the American family of the name. This, however, is considered to be erroneous, while it is admitted that the American family are descended from the William of Bradford, the supposed great-grandfather of the astronomer, which if correct would make Eichard Fielde the father of John, and John Fielde the known ancestor of the emigrant, first cousins. The existence of the triangular seal with the initials of the emigrant ances- tor of the family in this country on one side, and the crest granted to the astronomer on a second, with the arms of the family on the third, does not prove by any means conclusively that the former was a direct descendant of the latter; as rib- bons and crests were often adopted by a family who had no hereditary right to them, and worn over their legitimate "coats armour," which might have been sans crest. It does, however, tend to show very strongly that they were descended from the same family, as has already been asserted; bat when the fact of the direct descent hangs merely upon tradition, w^hile that of collateral descent is based upon the evidence of ancient records, we are surely bound to regard the latter and discard the former, as I have done in the present case, therein following Osgood Field, Esq., of London, in his researches. The last-named John Fielde had a son William, who died in 1599, whose son, also William, died in 1619, and had Robert, born about 1605, who married May 18, 1630, Elizabeth Tay- lor, with whom he came to New England, according to one account, in 1635, while by another it was not until nine years later. In 1645 he removed with his family to Newtown, Long Island, and with others received from Governor Keift a patent for a tract of land known as the Flushing Patent, which was dated October 10, 1615. He had five children; the second, a son named Anthony, died in 1691, and had two children, the eldest of whom was John, who removed to Boundbrook, in New Jersey, about 1685, and was the founder of the family in that State. His direct descendants, as far as they can be traced, are his son, Robert Field, born January 6th, 1694, married Mary, daughter of Samuel and Susanna Taylor, by whom he had Robert, born May 9th, 1723, and married Mary, daughter of Oswald and Lydia Peale. He died January 29, 1775, and had posthumous issue Robert C. Field, born April 5th, 1775. This was the father of our late member. In 1793, he was graduated by Princeton College, and had for a classmate John Henry Hobart, afterwards the distinguished Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church for the Diocese of New York. "He married Abby, born 8th of April, 1778, daughter of Richard Stockton and Annis Bou- dinot, in 1797." He died in 1810, leaving five children, the fourth of whom was the subject of this notice. The next year after his father's death the family removed to Princeton, where was the residence of the family of Mrs. Field, and at this place he received his education, being graduated with high honors by Princeton College in 1821. On his leaving college he entered upon the study of the law with his mater- nal uncle, Richard Stockton, one of the most distinguished members of the New Jersey bar, and was admitted to practice in February, 1825. He at once removed to Salem, in his 6 native State, wliere he continued in the practice of his pro- fession until 1832, when he returned to Princeton and made it his future residence. In 1831, while still at Salem, he married Miss Mary Eitchie, and by her he had five children, she dying September 8th, 1852, after a union of twenty-one years. For several years Mr. Field was a member of the State Legislature, and in February, 1838, was appointed Attorney-General by Governor Pennington, and in this high and responsible position, which he resigned in 1811, he acquitted himself with ability and honor. He was a leading member of the Convention which met at Trenton on the 14th of May, 1844, and formed the present Constitution of the State, and when in 1851 it was resolved to form an Association of the surviving members of that Convention, he was appointed to deliver the address at its first annual meeting. This address, which was delivered February 1st, 1853, has been printed, and contains an elo- quent memorial of the great Convention which sixty-six years before met in this city, and with Washington as its President framed the Constitution of these United States. In the New Jersey Historical Society, of which he was at the time of his death its third President, he always took a lively interest. To its publications he contributed his most elaborate work, " The Provincial Courts of New Jersey, with Sketches of the Bench and Bar." It forms the third volume of the Collections of the Society, and was the subject of two discourses delivered by him in January and May, 1848. At the meeting of the Society in September, 1851, he read a valuable paper on the celebrated "Trial of the Rev. William Tenncnt for Perjury in 1742," which was printed in the pro- ceedings of the meeting; and to The Princeton Review for July, 1852, he contributed the leading article, on "The Pub- lications of the New Jersey Historical Society," but more particularly noticing its latest issue, "The Papers of Governor Lewis Morris." "Elected one of the Executive Committee in 1851, he continued to hold the position until 1865, when, on the elevation of the Hon. James Parker to the presidency on the death of the Hon. Joseph C. Hornblower, he was chosen .First Vice-President, and on the death of Mr. Parker in 1868, succeeded him in the Presidency." At the annual meeting in January, 1865, he delivered "An Address on the Life and Character of Chief Justice Hornblower," and at the January meeting, 1869, a similar one on his predecessor. President Parker. Copies of each of these we have, as also of most of his other publications, through his own kindness. Mr. Field was much interested in the great question of public education, and when, in 1855, the State Normal School was organized, he was chosen President of the Board of Trustees, and about this time he delivered an address on "The Power of Habit." (Allibone's Dictionary of Authors.) He continued in this position until the hour of his death, and every Annual Eeport made to the Legislature by this Board was written by him. Pie has been succeeded in the office by our corresponding member, the Hon. William A. "Whitehead, of Newark. For some years he was a Professor in the law school connected with Princeton College, which owed its very existence to his energy and talents, and in 1859, his Alma Mater conferred upon him her degree of Doc- tor of Laws. During the troublous times of the last decade of years he was a stanch supporter of the government, and although the writer cannot agree with him in some of his constitu- tional views and theories, still he must admire the force and earnestness with which they were expressed. By request of his fellow townsmen he delivered before them an oration on the 4th of July, 1861, with "The Constitution not a Compact between Sovereign States" as his subject. In this he strongly advances those views already referred to. On the death of Hon. John E. Thomson, a Senator in Congress from New Jersey, Mr. Field was appointed, Nov. 1862, by Governor 8 Olden to fill the unexpired term. But his service in the council of the nation was but brief; he being appointed bj President Lincoln, Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, on the 21st of January, 1863. During his occupancy of a seat in the Senate of the United States he had the opportunity, however, of making a speech or rather an argument on the Discharge of State Prisoners, January 7, 1863, which drew upon him the special attention of a large portion of the Eepublican party, and particularly of its press. In this speech he supported the position that the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus was vested in the President, and not in Congress. His views on this subject were in accordance with those expressed by the venerable Horace Binney in his celebrated pamphlets on the subject of the "Suspension of the Writ." That they were wrong and the act of the executive in suspending it unconstitutional, was virtually acknowledged by the act of March 8d, 1863, authorizing the suspension. On this subject the argument of Mr. Justice Eead, of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, written for Mr. Sumner, is exhaustive and unanswerable, and it may be well considered that the passage of the act just alluded to was based upon this argument. When Mr. Field took his seat upon the bench of the United States District Court, April 21st, 1863, he delivered a most learned and ex- cellent charge to the grand jury, which has been printed in a pamphlet of twenty -four pages. In his judicial life he has been described by one who knew him well. District Attorney Keasbey, as a "wise, upright, fearless, and merciful judge." The same gentleman then continues : — " Only one decision of his was ever reversed ; that was one in which the Supreme Court were at first almost evenly divided, and ordered a new argument. Even in the warmth of advocacy, or after that warmth had cooled a little, I scarcely ever felt that he was wrong. He had a keen perception of the real point and merits of a case. With all his rich culture he had sagacity 9 and sound common sense, . If he was at all complained of it was for the ardor and zeal with which he expressed him- self on the bench. This was in his nature. He always did it with courtesy and kindness, and so as to carry conviction to the minds he addressed. And I am sure there is not one of all who have been in this court, who will ever say that he was warped in his judgment by any impure or unworthy mo- tive. In these duties he had a wonderful mastery of the English tongue. He was fully acquainted with the fountains of English eloquence, and his mind was so stored with the fruits of his learning that he had a rare facility of expression. He always preferred to charge juries or decide cases on the spot. He could always do it better than if he stopped to think or write. I think that if we could reproduce simply his addresses to prisoners about to be sentenced, they would be striking models of manly and tender exhortation." Mr. Field was a warm admirer of the late President Lin- coln ; as he has expressed it himself, he was " one whom I loved while living, and whose death I deeply deplore." At the request of the Legislature of New Jersey, Mr. Field delivered before it, February 12, 1866, an oration on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln, it being the anni- versary of the President's birthday. At the Centennial Cele- bration of the American Whig Society of the College of New Jersey, in June, 1869, Mr. Field delivered his last public address, and it is one marked by great purity of style and graceful erudition. It is on his favorite theme of Education. In April last, while Mr. Field was in the discharge of his duties on the bench, he was stricken with a paralysis, and after uttering some incoherent remarks, fell senseless from his seat. He was carried from the court-room to his beauti- ful home, in which he so much prided himself, and after lingering some weeks totally unconscious, resigned his spirit to his Father on the 25th day of May, 1870, and was interred 10 in the rural graveyard at Princeton, "beside the wife be lost eighteen years before." One of the most striking points of his character, and one to be fondly cherished, for it reveals better, perhaps, than any other could, the inmost recesses of his heart, was his warm love. of nature and of nature's works. The spacious grounds about his residence at Princeton were remarkable for the rich collection of trees and flowers there cultivated, comprising specimens from the remotest parts of the earth. These he tended with an almost parental affection, and the name of each, with its peculiarity and locality, was firmly fastened on his memory. He attended the services of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in its councils was an active Avorker, being repeatedly a delegate both to the Diocesan and General Conventions. This record of his life I trust will afford ample reason for his being chosen at the annual meet- ing of this Society in January, 1866, an Honorary Vice- President, and to its library he has been a faithful contributor. He left three children to survive him, to one of whom. Miss Annis S, Field, I am indebted for much of the material for this sketch. file. % v<^ ^C .V 1 * ^-^ L / - -^ A% V- " • • * 4O O 'o , » A ^o j.0'7\ -^^0^ .0^" ^-^ ^^•n^^ V .-^^n •^9 V-^. .<^^°-^ '■: