Atrocious Judges : Lives of Judges Infamous as Tools of Tyrants and Instruments of Oppression

Being tired of revelling in Chester, he put a sudden end to his first assize there, that he might pay a visit to his native place; to which I am afraid he was less prompted by a pious wish to embrace his father, who had been so resolutely bent on making him a shopkeeper, and who, from the stories propagated about his conduct as a judge, still expressed some misgivings about him, as to dazzle his old companions with the splendor of his new state. Accordingly he came with such a train that the cider barrels at Acton ran very fast, and the larder was soon exhausted; whereupon the old gentleman, in a great fret, charged his son with a design to ruin him, by bringing a whole county at his heels, and warned him against again attempting the same prodigality.

But a violent political storm now arose, which threatened entirely to overwhelm our hero, and from which he did not escape unhurt. In the struggle which arose from the long delay to assemble Parliament, he had leagued himself strongly with the “Abhorrers” against the “Petitioners,” and proceedings were instituted in the House of Commons on this ground, against him along with Chief Justice Scroggs and Chief Justice North.

A petition from the city of London, very numerously signed, having been presented, complaining that the recorder had obstructed the citizens in their attempts to have Parliament assembled for the redress of grievances, a select committee was appointed, who, having heard evidence on the subject, and examined him in person, presented a report, on which the following resolutions were passed: —

“That Sir George Jeffreys, recorder of the city of London, by traducing and obstructing petitioning for the sitting of this Parliament, hath destroyed the right of the subject.

“That an humble address be presented to his majesty, to remove Sir George Jeffreys out of all public offices.

“That the members of this house serving for the city of London do communicate these resolutions to the Court of Aldermen for the said city.”

The king was stanch, and returned for answer to the address the civil refusal “that he would consider of it;”114 but Jeffreys, who, where he apprehended personal danger, was “none of the intrepids,” quailed under the charge, and, afraid of further steps being taken against him, came to an understanding that he should give up the recordership, which his enemies wished to be conferred upon their partisan, Sir George Treby. The king was much chagrined at the loss of such a valuable recorder, and said sarcastically that “he was not Parliament-proof.” But he was obliged to acquiesce, and Jeffreys, having been reprimanded on his knees at the bar, was discharged. The address of Speaker Williams was very bitter, and caused deep resentment in the mind of Jeffreys. On the 2d of December he actually did resign his office, and Treby was chosen to succeed him.

In a few days after there was exhibited one of Lord Shaftesbury’s famous Protestant processions, on the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth. In this rode a figure on horseback, to represent the ex-recorder, with his face to the tail, and a label on his back, “I am an Abhorrer.” At Temple Bar he was thrown into a bonfire, coupled with the devil; the preceding pair, who suffered the same fate, being Sir Roger L’Estrange115 and the Pope of Rome.

However, all these indignities endeared him to the court; and his pusillanimity was forgiven from the recollection of past and the hope of future services. A petition from the city being presented to the king at Hampton Court, he attended as a liveryman, though no longer the mouthpiece of the corporation, when he was treated with marked civility by Charles, and detained to dinner, while the lord mayor and aldermen and the new recorder were sent off with a reprimand.

To oblige the court, and to assist them in their criminal jobs, he accepted the appointment of chairman of the Middlesex sessions at Hicks’s Hall, although it was somewhat beneath his dignity, and it deprived him of a portion of his practice. Here the grand jury were sworn in; and as they were returned by sheriffs whom the city of London elected, and who were still of the liberal party, the problem was to have them remodelled, so that they might find bills of indictment against all whom the government wished to prosecute. With this view, Jeffreys declared that none should serve except true church of England men; and he ordered the under-sheriff to return a new panel purged of all sectarians. He had a particular spite against the Presbyterians, who had mainly contributed to his being turned out of the recordership. The under-sheriff disobeying his summons, he ordered the sheriffs to attend next day in person; but in their stead came the new recorder, who urged that, by the privileges of the city of London, they were exempted from attending at Hicks’s Hall. He overruled this claim with contempt, and fined the sheriffs one hundred pounds. It was found, however, that while the city retained the power of electing the sheriffs, all these attempts to pervert justice would be fruitless.

Jeffreys remained in a state of painful anxiety during Charles’s last Westminster Parliament, and during the few days of the Oxford Parliament. The popular party had such a majority in the House of Commons, and seemed so powerful, that it is said the renegade again expressed deep regret that he had left them; but late at night, on Monday, the 28th day of March, 1681, news arrived in London, that early that morning the king had dissolved the Parliament, and had declared his firm determination never to call another. If Jeffreys was still sober, and got drunk that night, we ought to excuse him.

Now his talents were to be brought into full play. In the conflict, the ranks of the enemy being thrown into disorder, the brigade of the lawyers, who had been kept back as a reserve, was marched up to hang on their broken rear, insulting, and to sweep them from the field.

First came on the trial of Fitzharris for high treason. Jeffreys, as counsel for the crown, argued the demurrer to the plea of the pendency of the impeachment; and then, having assisted the Duchess of Portsmouth to evade the questions which were put to her for the purpose of showing that the prisoner had acted under the king’s orders, he addressed the jury with great zeal after the solicitor general, and was mainly instrumental in obtaining the conviction.

Next came the trial of Archbishop Plunkett, the Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland, in which Jeffreys was so intemperate that the attorney general was obliged to check him, that the prisoner might have some show of fair play. But it was on the trial of College, “the Protestant joiner,”116 that he gave the earliest specimen of his characteristic ribaldry, and his talent for jesting in cases of life and death, which shone out so conspicuously when he was lord chief justice of the King’s Bench. He began with strongly justifying the act of taking from the prisoner the papers he was to use in his defence, saying, that to allow him to see them would be “assigning counsel to him with a vengeance.” A witness having stated that pistols were found in the prisoner’s holsters when he was attending the city members at Oxford, he exclaimed with a grin, “I think a chisel might have been more proper for a joiner.”

There was called as a witness, by the prisoner, one Lun, who, being a waiter at the Devil Tavern and a fanatic, had some years before been caught on his knees praying against the Cavaliers, saying, “Scatter them, good Lord! Scatter them!” from whence he had ever after borne the nickname of “Scatter’em.” Jeffreys thus begins his cross-examination: “We know you, Mr. Lun; we only ask questions about you that the jury too may know you as well as we.” Lun.– “I don’t care to give evidence of any thing but the truth. I was never on my knees before the Parliament for any thing.” Jeffreys.– “Nor I neither for much; yet you were once on your knees when you cried, ‘Scatter them, good Lord!’ Was it not so, Mr. Scatter’em?”

He had next an encounter with the famous Titus Oates, who was called by College, and who, when cross-examined by him, appealed to Sir George Jeffreys’s own knowledge of a fact about which he was inquiring. Jeffreys.– “Sir George Jeffreys does not intend to be an evidence, I assure you.” Dr. Oates.– “I do not desire Sir George Jeffreys to be an evidence for me; I had credit in Parliaments, and Sir George had disgrace in one of them.” Jeffreys.– “Your servant, doctor; you are a witty man and a philosopher.” He had his full revenge when the doctor himself was afterwards tried before him.

We may judge of the councillor’s general style of treating witnesses by his remark on the trial of Lord Grey de Werke for carrying off the Lady Henrietta Berkeley; when his objection was overruled to the competency of the young lady as a witness for the defendant, although she was not only of high rank and uncommon beauty, but undoubted veracity, he observed, “Truly, my lord, we would prevent perjury if we could.”

We now come to transactions which strikingly prove the innate baseness of his nature in the midst of his pretended openness and jolly good humor. He owed every thing in life to the corporation of the city of London. The freemen, in the exercise of their ancient privileges, had raised him from the ground by electing him common serjeant and recorder, and to the influence he was supposed to have in the Court of Common Council and in the Court of Aldermen must be ascribed his introduction to Whitehall and all his political advancement. But when, upon the failure of the prosecution against Lord Shaftesbury, the free municipal constitution of the city became so odious to the government, he heartily entered into the conspiracy to destroy it. It is said that he actually suggested the scheme of having a sheriff nominated by the lord mayor, and he certainly took a very active part in carrying it into execution. On Midsummer day, having planted Lord Chief Justice North in his house in Aldermanbury, that he might be backed by his authority, he himself appeared on the hustings in Guildhall; and when the poll was going against the court candidates, illegally advised the lord mayor to dissolve the hall, and afterwards to declare them duly elected. He did every thing in his power to push on and to assist the great quo warranto, by which the city was to be entirely disfranchised.117

When success had crowned these efforts, and Pilkington and Shute, the former sheriffs, with Alderman Cornish and others, were to be tried before a packed jury for a riot at the election, finding that he had the game in his hand, his insolence knew no bounds. The defendants having challenged the array, on the ground that the sheriffs who returned the panel were not lawfully appointed,118 as soon as the challenge was read, he exclaimed, “Here’s a tale of a tub indeed!” The counsel for the defendants insisted that the challenge was good in law, and at great length argued for its validity.

Jeffreys.– “Robin Hood

Upon Greendale stood.”

Thompson, Counsel for the Defendants.– “If the challenge be not good, there must be a defect in it either in point of law or in point of fact. I pray that the crown may either demur or traverse.” Jeffreys.– “This discourse is only for discourse sake. I pray the jury may be sworn.” Lord Chief Justice Saunders.– “Ay, ay, swear the jury.” The defendants were, of course, all found guilty; and as there were among them the most eminent of Jeffreys’s old city friends, he exerted himself to the utmost not only in gaining a conviction, but in aggravating the sentence.

But this was only a case of misdemeanor, in which he could ask for nothing beyond fine and imprisonment. He was soon to be engaged in prosecutions for high treason against the noblest of the land, in which his savage taste for blood might be gratified. The Ryehouse plot broke out, for which there was some foundation; and after the conviction of those who had planned it, Lord Russell was brought to trial at the Old Bailey, on the ground that he had consented to it.

Jeffreys, in the late state trials, had gradually been encroaching on the attorney and solicitor general, Sir Robert Sawyer and Sir Heneage Finch, and in Lord Russell’s case, to which the government attached such infinite importance, he almost entirely superseded them. To account for his unexampled zeal, we must remember that the office of chief justice of the King’s Bench was still vacant, Saunders having died a few months before, and Lord Keeper North having strongly opposed the appointment of Jeffreys as his successor.

These trials took place before a commission, at the head of which was placed Pemberton, chief justice of the Common Pleas, to whom a chance was thus afforded of earning a reappointment to the chief justiceship of the King’s Bench, in which he had been superseded by Saunders.

The case of Colonel Walcot was taken first; and here there was no difficulty, for he had not only joined in planning an insurrection against the government, but was privy to the design of assassinating the king and the Duke of York, and in a letter to the secretary of state he had confessed his complicity, and offered to become a witness for the crown. This trial was meant to prepare the public mind for that of Lord Russell, the great ornament of the Whig party, who had carried the exclusion bill through the House of Commons, and, attended by a great following of Whig members, had delivered it with his own hand to the lord chancellor at the bar of the House of Lords. In proportion to his virtues was the desire to wreak vengeance upon him. But the object was no less difficult than desirable, for he had been kept profoundly ignorant of the intention to offer violence to the royal brothers, from the certainty that he would have rejected it with abhorrence; and although he had been present when there were deliberations respecting the right and the expediency of resistance by force to the government after the system had been established of ruling without Parliaments, he had never concurred in the opinion that there were no longer constitutional means of redress; much less had he concerted an armed insurrection. Notwithstanding all the efforts made to return a prejudiced jury, there were serious apprehensions of an acquittal.

Pemberton, the presiding judge, seems to have been convinced that the evidence against him was insufficient; and although he did not interpose with becoming vigor, by repressing the unfair arts of Jeffreys, who was leading counsel for the crown, and although he did not stop the prosecution, as an independent judge would do in modern times, he cannot be accused of any perversion of law; and, instead of treating the prisoner with brutality, as was wished and expected, he behaved to him with courtesy and seeming kindness.

Lord Russell, on his arraignment at the sitting of the court in the morning, having prayed that the trial should be postponed till the afternoon, as a witness for him was absent, and it had been usual in such case to allow an interval between the arraignment and the trial, Pemberton said, “Why may not this trial be respited till the afternoon?” and the only answer being the insolent exclamation, “Pray call the jury,” he mildly added, “My lord, the king’s counsel think it not reasonable to put off the trial longer, and we cannot put it off without their consent in this case.”

The following dialogue then took place, which introduced the touching display of female tenderness and heroism of the celebrated Rachel, Lady Russell, assisting her martyred husband during his trial – a subject often illustrated both by the pen and the pencil.

Lord Russell.– “My lord, may I not have the use of pen, ink, and paper?” Pemberton.– “Yes, my lord.” Lord Russell.– “My lord, may I not make use of any papers I have?” Pemberton.– “Yes, by all means.” Lord Russell.– “May I have somebody write to help my memory?” Attorney General.– “Yes, a servant.” Lord Russell.– “My wife is here, my lord, to do it.” Pemberton.– “If my lady please to give herself the trouble.”

The chief justice admitted Dr. Burnet, Dr. Tillotson, and other witnesses, to speak to the good character and loyal conversation of the prisoner, and gave weight to their testimony, notwithstanding the observation of Jeffreys that “it was easy to express a regard for the king while conspiring to murder him.”

Lord Russell had certainly been present at a meeting of the conspirators, when there was a consultation about seizing the king’s guards; but he insisted that he came in accidentally, that he had taken no part in the conversation, and that he was not acquainted with their plans. The aspirant chief justice saw clearly where was the pinch of the case, and the attorney general, who was examining Colonel Rumsey, being contented with asking – “Was the prisoner at the debate?” and receiving the answer “Yes,” Jeffreys started up, took the witness into his own hands, and calling upon him to draw the inference which was for the jury, pinned the basket by this leading and highly irregular question – “Did you find him averse to it or agreeing to it?” Having got the echoing answer which he suggested, “Agreeing to it,” he looked round with exultation, and said, “If my Lord Russell now pleases to ask any questions, he may!”

Jeffreys addressed the jury in reply after the solicitor general had finished, and much outdid him in pressing the case against the prisoner, while he disclaimed with horror the endeavor to take away the life of the innocent.

The jury retired, and the courtiers present were in a state of the greatest alarm; for against Algernon Sydney, who was to be tried next, the case was still weaker; and if the two whig chiefs, who were considered already cut off, should recover their liberty, and should renew their agitation, a national cry might be got up for the summoning of Parliament, and a new effort might be made to rescue the country from a Popish successor. These fears were vain. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and Lord Russell expiated on the scaffold the crime of trying to preserve the religion and liberties of his country.

Jeffreys had all the glory of the verdict of guilty, and as the Lord Chief Justice Pemberton had rather flinched during this trial, and the attorney and solicitor general were thought men who would cry CRAVEN, and as the next case was not less important and still more ticklish, all objections to the proposed elevation of the favorite vanished, and he became chief justice of England, as the only man fit to condemn Algernon Sydney.119

The new chief justice was sworn in on the 29th of September, 1683, and took his seat in the Court of King’s Bench on the first day of the following Michaelmas term.

Sydney’s case was immediately brought on before him in this court, the indictment being removed by certiorari from the Old Bailey, that it might be under his peculiar care. The prisoner wishing to plead some collateral matter, was told by the chief justice that, if overruled, sentence of death would immediately be passed upon him. Though there can be no doubt of the illegality of the conviction, the charge against Jeffreys is unfounded, that he admitted the MS. treatise on government to be read without any evidence of its having been written by the prisoner, beyond “similitude of hands.” Two witnesses, who were acquainted with his handwriting from having seen him indorse bills of exchange, swore that they believed it to be his handwriting, and they were corroborated by a third, who, with his privity, had paid notes purporting to be indorsed by him without any complaint ever being made. But the undeniable and ineffaceable atrocity of the case was the lord chief justice’s doctrine, that “scribere est agere,” and that therefore this MS. containing some abstract speculations on different forms of government written many years before, never shown to any human being, and containing nothing beyond the constitutional principles of Locke and Paley, was tantamount to the evidence of a witness to prove an overt act of high treason. “If you believe that this was Colonel Sydney’s book, writ by him, no man can doubt that it is a sufficient evidence that he is guilty of compassing and imagining the death of the king. It fixes the whole power in the Parliament and the people. The king, it says, is responsible to them; the king is but their trustee. Gentlemen, I must tell you I think I ought more than ordinarily to press this upon you, because I know the misfortune of the late unhappy rebellion, and the bringing of the late blessed king to the scaffold, was first begun with such kind of principles. They cried he had betrayed the trust that was delegated to him by the people, so that the case rests not upon two but upon greater evidence than twenty-two witnesses, if you believe this book was writ by him.”

The chief justice having had the satisfaction of pronouncing with his own lips the sentence upon Sydney, of death and mutilation, instead of leaving the task as usual to the senior puisne judge, a scene followed which is familiar to every one. Sydney.– “Then, O God! O God! I beseech thee to sanctify these sufferings unto me, and impute not my blood to the country; let no inquisition be made for it, but if any, and the shedding of blood that is innocent must be revenged, let the weight of it fall only upon those that maliciously persecute me for righteousness sake.” Lord C. J. Jeffreys.– “I pray God work in you a temper fit to go unto the other world, for I see you are not fit for this.” Sydney.– “My lord, feel my pulse [holding out his hand,] and see if I am disordered. I bless God I never was in better temper than I now am.” By order of the chief justice, the lieutenant of the tower immediately removed the prisoner.

A very few days after, and while this illustrious patriot was still lying under sentence of death, the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys and Mr. Justice Withins, who sat as his brother judge on the trial, went to a gay city wedding, where the lord mayor and other grandees were present. Evelyn, who was of the party, tells us that the chief and the puisne both “danced with the bride and were exceeding merry.” He adds, “These great men spent the rest of the afternoon until eleven at night in drinking healths, taking tobacco, and talking much beneath the gravity of judges, who had but a day or two before condemned Mr. Algernon Sydney.”

The next exhibition in the court of King’s Bench which particularly pleased Jeffreys and horrified the public, was the condemnation of Sir Thomas Armstrong. This gentleman was outlawed while beyond the seas, and being sent from Holland within the year, sought, according to his clear right in law, to reverse the outlawry.120 I have had occasion to reprobate the conduct of Lord Keeper North in refusing him his writ of error, and suffering his execution; but Jeffreys may be considered the executioner. When brought up to the King’s Bench bar, Armstrong was attended by his daughter, a most beautiful and interesting young woman, who, when the chief justice had illegally overruled the plea, and pronounced judgment of death under the outlawry, exclaimed, “My lord, I hope you will not murder my father.” Chief Justice Jeffreys.– “Who is this woman? Marshal, take her into custody. Why, how now? Because your relative is attainted for high treason, must you take upon you to tax the courts of justice for murder when we grant execution according to law? Take her away.” Daughter.– “God Almighty’s judgments light upon you.” Chief Justice Jeffreys.– “God Almighty’s judgments will light upon those that are guilty of high treason.” Daughter.– “Amen. I pray God.” Chief Justice Jeffreys.– “So say I. I thank God I am clamor proof.” [The daughter is committed to prison, and carried off in custody.] Sir Thomas Armstrong.– “I ought to have the benefit of the law, and I demand no more.” Chief Justice Jeffreys.– “That you shall have, by the grace of God. See that execution be done on Friday next, according to law. You shall have the full benefit of the law!” Armstrong was hanged, embowelled, beheaded, and quartered accordingly.

When Jeffreys came to the king at Windsor soon after this trial, “the king took a ring of good value from his finger and gave it to him for these services. The ring upon that was called his blood stone.”121 In the reign of William and Mary, Armstrong’s attainder was reversed. Jeffreys was then out of reach of process, but for the share which Sir Robert Sawyer had in it as attorney general, he was expelled the House of Commons.