Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Fall 2014, Vol. 40, No. 3 | Page 14

by Paul S. Gillies, Esq.

RUMINATIONS
Royce Dynasty

Stephen Royce, Jr., and Homer Royce,
uncle and nephew, look out at us from their
portraits. Stephen is stern; Homer is serious. Stephen is certain; Homer is troubled.
Both appear to be disappointed with what
they see, although Stephen’s gaze is the
more direct, and so more threatening. It
seems we have neglected something important, and he is about to remind us of
it. Look at their lips. These are men who
speak only when necessary, who are not to
be taken lightly.
The Royces are one of the dynasties of
the Vermont bench.1 Stephen came first,
starting in 1825 and 1826, then stepped
down for two years before being reelected
in 1829 and serving until 1852, the last six
years as chief. Homer, raised by Stephen,
was appointed to the Court in 1870 and,
through successive biennial elections by
the legislature, served until 1890, the last
eight years as chief. Royces gave a combined forty-five years of their lives to the
Vermont Supreme Court.
Stephen was born in Tinmouth in 1787.2
He was the son of another Stephen Royce,
one of the first settlers of Berkshire, in
Franklin County, and grandson of Major
Stephen Royce, who was Tinmouth’s representative to the convention at Cephas
Kent’s tavern in July of 1775, where independence of Vermont was first voted. The
major’s son, our Stephen’s father, moved
north and settled in Berkshire, as one of
its first settlers, in 1793, building the first
frame house in town, on property that
served as home for his son Stephen, and
his grandson Homer.
Stephen attended Tinmouth schools, entered Middlebury College in 1801, walking the eighty-five miles from his Berkshire
home to the college after working on his
father’s farm in summers, and graduated
in 1807. He taught at the district school
in Sheldon after college, and studied law
with his uncle Ebenezer Marvin, Jr., in Sheldon. He was admitted to practice at age
twenty-two. He was elected to represent
Sheldon in the Vermont House of Representatives in 1815 and 1816, and again in
1822-1825, and served two years as Franklin County state’s attorney (1816-1818). In
his last year in the legislature he was elected an associate judge of the state’s highest court.3 After he retired from the Court
in 1852, Stephen was elected governor in
1854 and 1855, the first Republican to hold
that office in Vermont and the first elected Republican in the country.4 He returned
14

Senate (1849-1852; 1856-1858; 1868),
and four years in the U.S. Congress (18571861).5 He was first appointed to the Supreme Court in 1870, elected Chief Judge
in 1882, retired in ill health in 1890, and
died in 1891, age seventy-two.6
Stephen and Homer never served on the
high court at the same time. There was a
lapse of eighteen years when there was
no Royce on the Court. Homer was elected a representative to the Congress from
Vermont’s third district in 1856, the year
Stephen finally retired from public life as
governor. He died before his nephew was
elected to the Court.
Before the birth of the Republican Party,
Stephen was a Whig, a party whose policy included the prohibition of slavery in
the territories. Homer was no less an abolitionist, as seen in his speech before the
Thirty-Fifth Congress on the annexation of
Cuba in 1859. In religion, Stephen began
his adult life as a nonbeliever, but after a
conversion became an Episcopalian, which
was the religion of his nephew as well. Both
were successful farmers and excellent lawyers. Stephen was known for his “serene
majesty of manner”; Homer, reflecting his
times, led a more complicated life.7 Stephen never married. Homer wedded the
former Mary T. Edmunds of Boston, and
they had three children. Homer’s two sons
became attorneys. Neither of those boys
attained the offices or the respect of their
father or granduncle.
Stephen Royce, Jr.

to private practice, and in later years handed over his financial affairs to his nephew
Homer. He died in 1868, at the family farm
in East Berkshire, age eighty-one.
Homer was born in Berkshire in 1819.
His father Elihu, Stephen’s brother, the first
child known to have been born in Berkshire, died in 1826, at the age of thirtytwo, when Homer was eight, and Stephen
took in the children and wife of his brother. Homer grew up in the home of a Vermont Supreme Court judge. When he was
of age, after working at the Royce farm,
Homer studied at St. Albans and Enosburgh academies, and read law with attorney Thomas Child in East Berkshire. He
never attended college. After admission to
the courts, he moved his office to Highgate
and then St. Albans. Homer served two
years in the Vermont House (1846-1848),
two years as Franklin County State’s Attorney (1846-1848), six years in the Vermont
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SUMMER 2013

Fathers (and father figures) influence the
character of sons. Stephen’s father was a
very serious man. “His perceptions of right
and wrong were so quick and discriminating as to appear more like intuitions, than
the mature deductions of thought and reason, and they were supported and made
effective by the aid of an almost invincible moral courage.” He never “followed
the multitude or was led by them, but he
bravely and constantly followed what he
believed to be the right.”8 He served in
most town offices in Berkshire over the
years. The model of a serious, public figure
was not lost on the son or grandson.
Stephen was a monument of moral rectitude. “In personal transactions,” his eulogist Mrs. B.H. Smalley wrote, “where there
was any doubtful matter, he always gave
the benefit of the doubt to his opponent,
more anxious to do entire justice to all othwww.vtbar.org