it could, just possibly, be the case that the typo is that of the gutenburg project (our only on-line ref.); i.e., they might have dropped the 'r' from drearest (more probable than adding an extraneous letter). I imagine that I got the citation from OED (i'll check), and it made sense to me that this MP would be complaining that a chief justice wasn't paying attention to his (the MP's) constituents' dreary or sad interests. indeed, what jackpudding would want to be so burdened? [of course if *I somehow added that extraneous letter...]

but I digress; I guess we'll just have to wait for someone to peruse the original source in order to settle our conundrum.