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Home  »  Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men  »  Sir John Maynard

S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.

Sir John Maynard

  • [An English lawyer; born in Devonshire, 1602; actively promoted the revolution of 1688; one of the lords commissioners of the Great Seal, 1689; died 1690.]
  • I have forgotten more law than you ever knew; but allow me to say, I have not forgotten much.

  • To the infamous Judge Jeffreys, who taunted him with having grown so old as to forget his law.
  • When the Prince of Orange, soon to be William III., remarked, on meeting Sir John, that he must have outlived all the lawyers of his time, the octogenarian replied, “If your Highness had not come over to our aid, I should have outlived the law itself.” James II. had asked but a short time previously, “Do you not know that I am above the law?” (See James II.)