The term ‘public servant’ tends to bring to mind a cadre of no-nonsense individuals working within the machinery of government for the good of the country. The professional lives of the four men considered here certainly correspond to this notion, though their individual careers were very different. What unites them is a resolute sense of public duty which governed all that they did and, even though they all attained high office, the subordination of their own ambitions or popularity to the public good. The achievements or failings of such individuals are judged not just by their contemporaries but also by generation upon generation of historians who rake over their papers and other official records in a process of fluid reappraisal. Few reputations survive this process untarnished, often damned by subsequent events. It is incumbent upon historians not to judge the actions of such men as ‘prophets facing backwards’ through the convenient prism of hindsight but to examine them in the context of the age in which they lived and of the dilemmas they faced.

For example, the conservatism of the distinguished lawyer of the late-Georgian period, Sir Thomas Plumer, appears positively draconian when comparisons are drawn with today's legal and social structures. Indeed, Plumer was considered something of a stick-in-the-mud by some of his peers, so convinced was he that legal or social reform was both unnecessary and unwise.