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

It is very much to be regretted that we have not from a Roger North more minute information with respect to the manner in which his character was formed, and his abilities were cultivated. He seems to have been a most precocious young man. While still in his twentieth year, he was not only familiarly acquainted with the town, and completely a man of the world, exciting confident expectations of great future eminence, but he was already received among veteran statesmen as a member of an important party in the state, consulted as to their movements, and regarded as their future leader.

After keeping all his terms, and doing all his exercises, he was regularly called to the bar on the 22d day of November, 1668 – having been on the books of the society five years and six months – the requisite period of probation having been previously, by a general regulation, reduced from seven to the present period of five years.

Although he does not ever appear to have been chosen “reader” or “treasurer” of the society, yet in the year 1678, on being elected recorder of London, he was made a bencher, and he continued to be so till he took the coif, when he necessarily left it for Serjeants’ Inn.

During his early career he was involved in difficulties, which could only have been overcome by uncommon energy. Pressed by creditors, and at a loss to provide for the day that was passing over him, he had burdened himself with the expenses of a family. But this arose out of a speculation, which, in the first instance, was very prudent. Being a handsome young fellow, and capable of making himself acceptable to modest women, notwithstanding the bad company which he kept, he resolved to repair his fortunes by marrying an heiress; and he fixed upon the daughter of a country gentleman of large possessions, who, on account of his agreeable qualities, had invited him to his house. The daughter, still very young, was cautiously guarded, and almost always confined to her chamber; but Jeffreys contrived to make a confidant and friend of a poor relation of hers, who was the daughter of a country parson, and lived with her as a companion. Through this agency he had established a correspondence with the heiress, and an interest in her affections, so that on his last visit she had agreed, if her father’s consent could not be obtained, to elope with him. What was his disappointment, soon after his return to his dismal chamber in the Inner Temple, which he had hoped soon to exchange for a sumptuous manor-house, to receive a letter from the companion, informing him “that his correspondence with the heiress had been discovered by the old father, who was in such a rage, that locking up her cousin, he had instantly turned herself out of doors, and that having taken shelter in the house of an acquaintance in Holborn, she was there in a state of great destitution and distraction, afraid to return to her father, or to inform him of what had happened.” The conduct of Jeffreys on this occasion may be truly considered the brightest passage in his history. He went to her, found her in tears, and considering that he had been the means of ruining her prospects in life, (to say nothing of her being much handsomer than her rich cousin,) he offered her his hand. She consented. Her father, notwithstanding the character and circumstances of his proposed son-in-law, out of regard to his daughter’s reputation, sanctioned their union, and to the surprise of all parties, gave her a fortune of three hundred pounds.

She made an excellent wife, and I do not find any complaint of his having used her ill till near the time of her death, a few years after, when he had cast his affections upon the lady who became the second Mrs. Jeffreys. Meanwhile he left her at her father’s, occasionally visiting her; and he continued to carry on his former pursuits, and to strengthen his connections in London, with a view to his success at the bar, on which he resolutely calculated with unabated confidence.

He was not disappointed. Never had a young lawyer risen so rapidly into practice. But he cut out a new line for himself. Instead of attending in Westminster Hall to take notes in law French of the long-winded arguments of serjeants and eminent counsel, where he would have had little chance of employment, he did not go near any of the superior courts for some years, but confined himself to the Old Bailey, the London Sessions, and Hicks’s Hall. There he was soon “the cock of the walk.”

Some of his pot companions were now of great use to him in bringing him briefs, and recommending him to business. All this pushing would have been of little avail if he had not fully equalled expectation by the forensic abilities which he displayed. He had a very sweet and powerful voice, having something in its tone which immediately fixed the attention, so that his audience always were compelled to listen to him, irrespective of what he said. “He was of bold aspect, and cared not for the countenance of any man.” He was extremely voluble, but always perspicuous and forcible, making use of idiomatic, and familiar, and colloquial, and sometimes of coarse language. He never spared any assertion that was likely to serve his client. He could get up a point of law so as to argue it with great ability, and with the justices, as well as with juries, his influence was unbounded. He was particularly famous for his talent in cross-examination, indulging in ribaldry and banter to a degree which would not now be permitted. The audience being ever ready to take part with the persecuted witness, the laugh was sometimes turned against him. It is related that, about this time, beginning to cross-examine a witness in a leathern doublet, who had made out a complete case against his client, he bawled forth – “You fellow in the leathern doublet, pray what have you for swearing?” The man looked steadily at him, and “Truly, sir,” said he, “if you have no more for lying than I have for swearing, you might wear a leathern doublet as well as I.” This blunt reply got to the west end of the town, and was remembered among the courtiers against Jeffreys when he grew to be a great man.

While a trial was going on, he was devotedly earnest in it; but when it was over, he would recklessly get drunk, as if he never were to have another to conduct. Coming so much in contact with the aldermen, he ingratiated himself with them very much, and he was particularly patronized by a namesake (though no relation) of his own – Jeffreys, alderman of Bread Street Ward, who was very wealthy, a great smoker, (an accomplishment in which the lawyer could rival him, as well as in drinking,) and who had immense influence with the livery.

Pushed by him, or rising rapidly by his own buoyancy, our hero, before he had been two years and a half at the bar, and while only twenty-three years of age, was elected common serjeant of the city of London – an office which has raised a Denman as well as a Jeffreys to be chief justice of England. This first step of his elevation he obtained on the 17th of March, 1671.

But his ambition was only inflamed by this promotion, which disqualified him for a considerable part of his bar practice, and he resolved entirely to change the field of his operations, making a dash at Westminster Hall. He knew well that he could not be employed to draw declarations and pleas, or to argue demurrers or special verdicts; but he hoped his talent for examining witnesses and for speaking might avail him. At any rate, this was the only road to high distinction in his profession, and he spurned the idea of spending his life in trying petty larcenies, and dining with the city companies.

Hard drinking was again his grand resource. He could now afford to invite the great city attorneys to his house as well as carouse with them at taverns, and they were pleased with the attentions of a rising barrister as well as charmed with the pleasantry of the most jovial of companions. He likewise began to cultivate fashionable society, and to consider how he might contrive to get an introduction at court. “He put himself into all companies, for which he was qualified by using himself to drink hard.” Now was the time when men got forward in life by showing their hatred of puritanism, their devotion to church and king, and an affectation of vice, even if actually free from it.

Yet such was the versatility of Jeffreys, that for the nonce he could appear sanctimonious, and even puritanical. Thus he deceived the religious, the moral, the immaculate Sir Matthew Hale, then chief justice of the King’s Bench. Roger North, in drawing the character of this extraordinary man, says, – “Although he was very grave in his own person, he loved the most bizarre and irregular wits in the practice of the law before him most extravagantly. So Sir George Jeffreys gained as great an ascendant in practice over him as ever counsel had over a judge.”

As a King’s Bench practitioner, Jeffreys was first employed at Nisi Prius in actions for assaults and defamation; but before long the city attorneys gave him briefs in commercial causes tried at Guildhall, and though in banc he could not well stand up against regularly-bred lawyers, like Sir Francis North, Sir William Jones, Sir Creswell Levinz, and Heneage Finch, the son of the Lord Chancellor Nottingham, he was generally equal to them before a jury, and he rapidly trod upon their heels.

He anxiously asked himself how he was to climb to high office. He had started with the disaffected party, and they had been of essential use to him; but though they were growing in strength, no chance existed of their being able to make attorney generals, chief justices, or chancellors. At the same time he did not like yet to break with those who might still serve him – particularly in obtaining the recordership, which he coveted as a stepping stone to something better. He resolved so to manage as to be a favorite of both parties till he could devote himself entirely, and exclusively, and openly to the one which should be dominant; and he again succeeded.

From his well-known influence in the city he found no difficulty in making the acquaintance of Will Chiffinch, “the trusty page of the back stairs,” who, besides other employments of a still more confidential nature, was intrusted by Charles II. to get at the secrets of all men of any consequence in every department of life. “This Mr. Chiffinch,” says Roger North, “was a true secretary as well as page, for he had a lodging at the back stairs, which might have been properly termed ‘the Spy Office,’ where the king spoke with particular persons about intrigues of all kinds; and all little informers, projectors, &c., were carried to Chiffinch’s lodging. He was a most impetuous drinker, and in that capacity an admirable spy; for he let none part with him sober, if it were possible to get them drunk, and his great artifice was pushing idolatrous healths of his good master, and being always in haste; for the king is coming; which was his word. Being an Hercules well breathed at the sport himself, he commonly had the better, and so fished out many secrets, and discovered men’s characters, which the king could never have obtained the knowledge of by any other means. It is likely that Jeffreys, being a pretender to main feats with the citizens, might forward himself, and be entertained by Will Chiffinch, and that which at first was mere spying turn to acquaintance, if not friendship, such as is apt to grow up between immense drinkers, and from thence might spring recommendations of him to the king, as the most useful man that could be found to serve his majesty in London.”

Thus, while Mr. Common Serjeant was caballing in the city with Lord Shaftesbury, who had established himself in Aldersgate Street, and talked of becoming lord mayor, he had secretly got a footing at court, and by assurances of future services disposed the government to assist him in all his jobs. His opposition friends were a little startled by hearing that he had been made solicitor to the Duke of York; but he assured them that this was merely a professional employment, unconnected with politics, which, according to professional etiquette, he could not decline; and when he was knighted as a mark of royal favor, with which he was silly enough to be much tickled, he said that he was obliged reluctantly to submit to the degradation as a consequence of his employment.

By some mischance, which is not explained, he missed the office of recorder on the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Sir John Howel, who so outraged public decency on the trial of Penn and Mead; but Sir William Dolbein, the successful candidate, being made a judge on the 22d of October, 1678, Jeffreys was then elected his successor. Upon this occasion there were three other candidates; but he was so warmly supported by both parties in politics, that they all withdrew before the day of nomination, and he is said in the city records to have been “freely and unanimously elected.”

The new recorder had hardly been sworn in, when feeling that the liberals could do nothing more for him, he utterly cast them off, becoming for the rest of his life the open, avowed, unblushing slave of the court, and the bitter, persecuting, and unappeasable enemy of the principles he had before supported, and of the men he had professed to love.

He entirely forsook Thanet House, in Aldersgate Street, and all the meetings of the Whigs in the city; and instead of secret interviews with Will Chiffinch in the “Spy Office,” he went openly to court, and with his usual address, he contrived, by constant assiduities and flatteries, to gain the good graces both of Nell Gwyn and of the Duchess of Portsmouth, who, since the fall of Lady Castlemaine, held divided empire at Whitehall, balancing the Roman Catholic and Protestant parties. To each of these ladies, it would appear from the libels of the day, his rise was attributed.

However, not long after he had openly ratted, an accident happened that had like to have spoiled all his projects; and that was the breaking out of the Popish plot. Although there is no reasonable ground for saying that it was contrived by Shaftesbury, he made such skilful and unscrupulous use of it, that suddenly, from appearing the leader of a small, declining, and despairing party, he had the city and the nation at his beck, and with a majority in both houses of Parliament, there seemed every probability that he would soon force himself upon the king, and have at his disposal all the patronage of the government. Jeffreys was for some time much disconcerted, and thought that once in his life he had made a false move. He was utterly at a loss how to conduct himself, and his craft never was put to so severe a trial.

Being called into council, he recommended that the government should profess to credit the plot, and should outvie the other side in zeal for the Protestant religion, but should contrive to make Shaftesbury answerable for the reality of the conspiracy; so that, if hereafter it should blow up, or the people should get tired of it, all that was done to punish the supposed authors of it might be laid to his account.

He immediately began diligently to work the Popish plot according to his own scheme. Coleman, Whitbread, Ireland, and all whom Oates and Bedloe accused being committed to prison, it was resolved to prosecute them for high treason in having compassed the death of the king, as well as the overthrow of the Protestant religion; and their trials were conducted by the government as state trials, partly at the bar of the Court of King’s Bench, and partly at the Old Bailey. In the former Jeffreys acted as a counsel, in the latter as a judge. It is asserted, and not improbably, that he had a real horror of Popery, which, though he could control it in the presence of the Duke of York, and when his interest required, at other times burst out with sincerity as well as fierceness.

Scroggs presided at the Old Bailey, but Jeffreys whetted his fury by telling him that the king was a thorough believer in the plot, and by echoing his expressions; as, when the chief justice said to the jury, “You have done like honest men,” he exclaimed in a stage whisper, “They have done like honest men.” As mouthpiece of the lord mayor, the head of the commission, after conviction he had the pleasing duty of passing sentence of death by the protracted tortures which the law of treason prescribed.

He had a still greater treat in passing the like sentence on Richard Langhorne, an eminent Catholic barrister, with whom he had been familiarly acquainted. He first addressed generally the whole batch of the prisoners convicted, whom he thus continues to upbraid for trying to root out “the best of religions:” “I call it the best of religions, even for your sakes; for had it not been for the sake of our religion, that teaches us not to make such requitals as yours seems to teach you, you had not had this fair, formal trial, but murder would have been returned to you for the murder you intended to commit both upon the king and most of his people. What a strange sort of religion is that whose doctrine seems to allow them to be the greatest saints in another world who have been the most impudent sinners in this! Murder and the blackest of crimes were the best means among you to get a man to be canonized a saint hereafter.” Then he comes to his brother lawyer – “There is one gentleman that stands at the bar whom I am very sorry to see, with all my heart, in this condition, because of some acquaintance I have had with him heretofore. To see that a man who hath understanding in the law, and who hath arrived at so great an eminency in that profession as this gentleman hath done, should not remember that it is not only against the rules of Christianity, but even against the rules of his profession, to attempt any injury against the person of the king! He knows it is against all the rules of law to endeavor to introduce a foreign power into this land. So that you have sinned both against your conscience and your own certain knowledge.” Last of all, he offers his friend the assistance of a Protestant divine to prepare him for a speedy departure, and, referring him to the statute whereby the ministration of a Catholic priest is made illegal, he himself, though “a layman,” gives him some “pious advice.” He had carried the sympathies of his audience along with him, for, when he had concluded with the “quartering,” he was greeted with a loud shout of applause.

Thus, by the powerful assistance of the recorder, did the government obtain popularity for prosecuting the plot, till the people at last actually did get tired of it, and Shaftesbury was prevented from deriving any fruit from it beyond the precarious tenure, for a few months, of his office of president of the council.

The recorder was equally zealous, on all other occasions, to do what he thought would be agreeable at court. With the view of repressing public discussion, he laid down for law, as he said, on the authority of all the judges, “that no person whatsoever could expose to the public knowledge any thing that concerned the affairs of the public without license from the king, or from such persons as he may think fit to intrust with that power.”

The grand jury having several times returned “ignoramus” to an indictment against one Smith for a libel, in respect of a very innocent publication, though they were sent out of court to reconsider the finding, he at last exclaimed, “God bless me from such jurymen. I will see the face of every one of them, and let others see them also.” He accordingly cleared the bar, and, calling the jurymen one by one, put the question to them, and made each of them repeat the word “ignoramus.” He then went on another tack, and addressing the defendant, said, in a coaxing tone, “Come, Mr. Smith, there are two persons besides you whom this jury have brought in ignoramus; but they have been ingenuous enough to confess, and I cannot think to fine them little enough; they shall be fined twopence for their ingenuity in confessing. Well, come, Mr. Smith, we know who hath formerly owned both printing and publishing this book.” Smith.– “Sir, my ingenuity hath sufficiently experienced the reward of your severity; and, besides, I know no law commands me to accuse myself; neither shall I; and the jury have done like true Englishmen and worthy citizens, and blessed be God for such a jury.” Jeffreys was furious, but could only vent his rage by committing the defendant till he gave security for his good behavior.

Such services were not to go unrewarded. It was the wish of the government to put the renegade Jeffreys into the office of chief justice of Chester, so often the price of political apostasy; but Sir Job Charlton, a very old gentleman, who now held it, could not be prevailed upon voluntarily to resign, for he had a considerable estate in the neighborhood, and was loath to be stripped of his dignity. Jeffreys, supported by the Duke of York, pressed the king hard, urging that “a Welshman ought not to judge his countrymen,” and a message was sent to Sir Job that he was to be removed. The old gentleman was imperfectly consoled with the place of puisne judge of the Common Pleas, which, in the reign of James II., he was subsequently allowed to exchange for his beloved Chester. Meanwhile he was succeeded by Jeffreys, “more Welshman than himself,” who was at the same time made counsel for the crown, at Ludlow, where a court was still held for Wales.

Immediately afterwards, the new chief justice was called to the degree of the coif, and made king’s serjeant, whereby he had precedence in Westminster Hall of the attorney and solicitor general. The motto on his rings, with great brevity and point, inculcated the prevailing doctrines of divine right and passive obedience – “A Deo Rex, a Rege Lex.” As a further mark of royal favor, there was conferred upon him the hereditary dignity of a baronet. He still retained the recordership of London, and had extensive practice at the bar.

The great prosperity which Jeffreys now enjoyed had not the effect which it ought to have produced upon a good disposition, by making him more courteous and kind to others. When not under the sordid dread of injuring himself by offending superiors, he was universally insolent and overbearing. Being made chief justice of Chester, he thought that all puisne judges were beneath him, and he would not behave to them with decent respect, even when practising before them. At the Kingston assizes, Baron Weston having tried to check his irregularities, he complained that he was not treated like a counsellor, being curbed in the management of his brief. Weston, B.– “Sir George, since the king has thrust his favors upon you, and made you chief justice of Chester, you think to run down every body; if you find yourself aggrieved, make your complaint; here’s nobody cares for you.” Jeffreys.– “I have not been used to make complaints, but rather to stop those that are made.” Weston, B.– “I desire, sir, that you will sit down.” He sat down, and is said to have wept with anger. His intemperate habits had so far shaken his nerves, that he shed tears very freely on any strong emotion.

We may be prepared for his playing some fantastic tricks before his countrymen at Chester, where he was subject to no control; but the description of his conduct there by Lord Delamere, (afterwards Earl of Warrington,) in denouncing it in the House of Commons, must surely be overcharged: —

“The county for which I serve is Cheshire, which is a county palatine; and we have two judges peculiarly assigned us by his majesty. Our puisne judge I have nothing to say against; he is a very honest man, for aught I know; but I cannot be silent as to our chief judge; and I will name him, because what I have to say will appear more probable. His name is Sir George Jeffreys, who, I must say, behaved himself more like a jack-pudding than with that gravity which becomes a judge. He was witty upon the prisoners at the bar. He was very full of his jokes upon people that came to give evidence, not suffering them to declare what they had to say in their own way and method, but would interrupt them because they behaved themselves with more gravity than he. But I do not insist upon this, nor upon the late hours he kept up and down our city; it’s said he was every night drinking till two o’clock, or beyond that time, and that he went to his chamber drunk; but this I have only by common fame, for I was not in his company; I bless God I am not a man of his principles and behavior; but in the mornings he appeared with the symptoms of a man that overnight had taken a large cup. That which I have to say is the complaint of every man, especially of them that had any lawsuits. Our chief justice has a very arbitrary power in appointing the assize when he pleases, and this man has strained it to the highest point; for whereas we were accustomed to have two assizes, the first about April or May, the latter about September, it was this year the middle (as I remember) of August before we had any assize; and then he despatched business so well that he left half the causes untried; and, to help the matter, has resolved we shall have no more assizes this year.”