George Jeffreys,1st Baron Jeffreys,PC (15 May 1645–18 April 1689),also known as "the Hanging Judge",[1] was a Welsh judge. He became notable during the reign of King James II,rising to the position of Lord Chancellor (and serving as Lord High Steward in certain instances). His conduct as a judge was to enforce royal policy,resulting in a historical reputation for severity and bias.
Jeffreys was born at the family estate of Acton Hall,in Wrexham,in North Wales,the sixth son of John and Margaret Jeffreys. His grandfather,John Jeffreys (died 1622),had been Chief Justice of the Anglesey circuit of the Great Sessions. His father,also John Jeffreys (1608–1691),was a Royalist during the English Civil War,but was reconciled to the Commonwealth and served as High Sheriff of Denbighshire in 1655.
His brothers were people of note. Thomas,later Sir Thomas (knighted in 1686),was the English Consul in Spain and a Knight of Alcántara. William was vicar of Holt,near Wrexham,from 1668 to 1675. His younger brother,James,made a good ecclesiastical career,becoming Vice-Dean of Canterbury in 1685.
Jeffreys distinguished himself with black humour,for example noting that two brothers convicted of stealing lead from the roof of Stepney Church had "zeal for religion ... so great as to carry you to the top of the church",and noting that they had narrowly avoided committing a capital offence.[3]
Recorder of London
Jeffreys was knighted in 1677,became Recorder of London in 1678 when Dolben resigned,and by 1680 had become Chief Justice of Chester and Counsel for the Crown at Ludlow and Justice of the Peace for Flintshire. During the Popish Plot he was frequently on the bench which condemned numerous innocent men on the perjured evidence of Titus Oates. These condemnations were remembered against him in 1685 when he secured the conviction of Oates for his perjury at the same trials. Charles II created him a baronet in 1681,and two years later,he was Chief Justice of the King's Bench and a member of the Privy Council.
Lord Chief Justice
Jeffreys became Lord Chief Justice in 1683 and presided over the trial of Algernon Sidney,who had been implicated in the Rye House Plot. Sidney was convicted and executed:Jeffreys' conduct of the trial caused some unease,in particular,his ruling that while two witnesses were normally required in a treason trial,and the Crown had only one,Sidney's own writings on republicanism were a second "witness" on the ground that "to write is to act". John Evelyn,meeting him at a wedding two days later,thought his riotous behaviour unbecoming to his office,especially so soon after Sidney's trial. Jeffreys' elevation was seen by many as a reward for the successful conviction of Lord Russell in connection with the same conspiracy as Sidney:Jeffreys,who had led for the prosecution at Russell's trial,replaced Sir Francis Pemberton,who had presided at the same trial and made clear his doubts about Russell's guilt,much to the King's displeasure. Jeffreys conducted the prosecution with far more dignity and restraint than was usual with him,stressing to the jury that they must not convict unless they were certain of Russell's guilt.
A less well-known act of Jeffreys occurred on assize in Bristol in 1685 when he made the mayor of the city,then sitting fully robed beside him on the bench,go into the dock,and fined him £1000 for being a 'kidnapping knave'. Some Bristol traders were known at the time to kidnap their own countrymen and ship them away as slaves.[4]
James II,following his accession to the throne,named Jeffreys as Lord Chancellor in 1685,and elevated him to the peerage as Baron Jeffreys of Wem. In 1687 he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire and of Buckinghamshire.[5] His first major trial in James' reign was that of Titus Oates. While there is no doubt of Oates' guilt,Jeffreys' conduct was no more decorous than usual;the latter part of the trial has been described as such an exchange of insults between Jeffreys and Oates as to make it doubtful if proceedings could continue.[6] Unable to impose the death penalty,Jeffreys and his colleagues apparently tried to achieve the same result by sentencing Oates to a series of whippings so savage that he might well have died;although,as Kenyon remarks,it was arguably no more than he deserved.[7] Jeffreys was much criticised for his conduct of the trial of the aged and much-respected clergyman Richard Baxter,but these criticisms must be treated with caution since the actual records have disappeared and all the surviving accounts of the trial were written by partisans of Baxter.
Jeffreys' historical notoriety comes from his actions in 1685,after Monmouth's Rebellion. Jeffreys was sent to the West Country in the autumn of 1685 to conduct the trials of captured rebels. The centre of the trials was Taunton,Somerset. Estimates of the numbers executed for treason have been given as high as 700;however,a more likely figure is between 160 and 170 of 1,381 defendants found guilty of treason. Although Jeffreys has been traditionally accused of vindictiveness and harsh sentencing,none of the convictions has been considered improper,except for that of Alice Lisle tried at Winchester. Furthermore,as the law of the time required a sentence of death for treason,Jeffreys was required to impose it,leaving the king the option of commuting the sentence under the prerogative of mercy. Arguably,it was James II's refusal to use the prerogative as much as was customary for the time rather than Jeffreys' actions that made the government's reprisals so savage.[8]
Alice Lisle was accused of sheltering some members of the defeated rebel army who had not yet been found guilty of treason. There was no evidence that she had taken an active part in the rebellion itself,and she was not accused of this. When the jury asked whether her actions could in law be considered treasonable,Jeffreys replied affirmatively. The jury then returned a guilty verdict.[9] She was executed at Winchester by beheading (although the original sentence had been that she was to be burned at the stake). The King's refusal to reprieve her gave rise to a belief that he was taking posthumous revenge on her husband,the regicide Sir John Lisle,who had been one of his own father's judges at his trial in 1649. Lisle had been murdered by Royalist agents at Lausanne in 1664,but the King had a long memory and may well have felt that Alice should suffer judicial punishment in her husband's place.
James considered making Jeffreys Viscount Wrexham and Earl of Flint. James refrained only because Jeffreys remained a Protestant.[10] Despite his loyalty to the king,Jeffreys never hid his contempt for Roman Catholicism:in the last months of James' reign,as the Government drifted without leadership,Jeffreys remarked cynically that "the Virgin Mary is to do all".
President of the Ecclesiastical Commission
As Lord Chancellor,Jeffreys was given the presidency of the Ecclesiastical Commission,a body established by James II under the royal prerogative to control the governance of the Church of England and coerce it.[11] Despite his misgivings and concerns that James was being overly influenced by hardline Roman Catholics,the Ecclesiastical Commission took proceedings against various clergy including the Bishop of London and academics of Oxford and Cambridge universities considered by James II to be overly Protestant. The Ecclesiastical Commission's activities came to an end with the Glorious Revolution.
Residences
Jeffreys,presumably after being granted the title 1st Baron of Wem,took the residence of Lowe Hall in Wem,Shropshire. The extant Wem Hall was built in 1666,although it has subsequently been significantly remodelled.[12] He also had Bulstrode Park built for him in 1686.
In 1667, he married Sarah Neesham or Needham, by whom he had seven children; she died in 1678. She was the daughter of the impoverished vicar of Stoke d'Abernon, Thomas Neesham. A story is published, that Jeffreys sought to marry a daughter of a rich City merchant and had a secret correspondence with her, through Sarah, her kinswoman and companion. When the merchant discovered the plot he refused his home to Sarah and George did a noble act by marrying her.[13] They married in the church of All Hallows-by-the-Tower in the City of London.
He married secondly, in 1679, Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Bloodworth, who was Lord Mayor of London, 1665–66; she was the widow of Sir John Jones of Fonmon Castle, Glamorgan. Being only 29 at the time of her second marriage, she was described as a 'brisk young widow' and there were some rumours about her. She was said to have a formidable temper: Jeffreys' family went in awe of her, and it was said she was the only person he was afraid of. A popular ballad joked that while St. George had killed a dragon and thus saved a maiden in distress, Sir George had missed the maiden and married the dragon by mistake.
Fall, death and burial
During the Glorious Revolution, when James II fled the country, Jeffreys stayed in London until the last moment, being the only high legal authority in James's abandoned kingdom to perform political duties. When William III's troops approached London, Jeffreys tried to flee and follow the King abroad. He was captured in a public house in Wapping,[14] now named The Town of Ramsgate. Reputedly he was disguised as a sailor, and was recognised by a surviving judicial victim, who claimed he could never forget Jeffreys' countenance, although his ferocious eyebrows had been shaven. Jeffreys was terrified of the public when dragged to the Lord Mayor and then to prison "for his own safety". He begged his captors for protection from the mob, who intended "to show him that same mercy he had ever shown to others".
In his London Journal,Leigh Hunt gives the following account of Judge Jeffreys' death and burial:
Jeffreys was taken on the twelfth of September, 1688 [sic]. He was first interred privately in the Tower; but three years afterwards, when his memory was something blown over, his friends obtained permission, by a warrant of the queen's[16] dated September 1692, to take his remains under their own care, and he was accordingly reinterred in a vault under the communion table of St Mary, Aldermanbury, 2nd Nov. 1694. In 1810, during certain repairs, the coffin was uncovered for a time, and the public had sight of the box containing the mortal remains of the feared and hated magistrate.[17]
During the Blitz, St Mary Aldermanbury was gutted by a Germanair raid and all traces of Jeffreys' tomb were destroyed. (The remains of the church were transported to the United States in 1966 and re-erected in Fulton, Missouri, as a memorial to Winston Churchill.)
Descendants
Jeffreys's only son by Sarah Neesham, John (or Jacky as he was called at home) succeeded to his father's peerage. He married Charlotte, a daughter of Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke, and Henrietta de Kérouaille, sister of the Duchess of Portsmouth, a mistress of Charles II and a supporter of Jeffreys in the early stages of his career.[18] John and Charlotte Jeffreys had one daughter, named Henriette-Louise after the two Kérouaille sisters, but no son, so that the male line of George Jeffreys became extinct. There are descendants through his daughter and granddaughters. John Jeffreys retained his father's loyalty to the Stuart cause. In 1701 he was one of five peers of the realm who voted against the Act of Settlement in the House of Lords, and felt strongly enough to enter written protests in the House of Lords Journal. All five, including Jeffreys, were Jacobite sympathisers who felt that it was wrong to exclude the Stuarts from the throne.[19]
Reputation
Black and white oval frame portrait of Jeffreys
Jeffreys' reputation today is mixed. Some say he was a personally vengeful man. He had bitter personal and professional rivalries with Sir William Williams. His political animus was displayed during his legal career. He suffered from a painful kidney disease that may well have affected his unbridled temper and added to this reputation, and his doctors apparently recommended alcohol to dull the pain, which may have explained his often shocking conduct in court.
In The Revolution of 1688, the historian J. R. Jones refers to Jeffreys as "an alcoholic".
G. W. Keeton in Lord Chancellor Jeffreys and the Stuart Cause (1965) claimed the historical Jeffreys "to be a different person from the Jeffreys of legend".[specify]
After reviewing the Lisle case and contemporary opinion Brian Harris QC concludes that 'Given that [Jeffreys] had to administer a largely inchoate criminal procedure and impose the bloody sentences that the law then required, a balanced judgement would regard Jeffreys as no worse, perhaps even a little better than most other judges of his era.'[20]
Legacy
One session of the Bloody Assizes was held in Dorchester on 5 September, in the Oak Room (now a tea room) of the Antelope Hotel. Jeffreys lodged nearby at 6 High West Street, and is said to have used a secret passage from his lodgings to the Oak Room. In 2014 the passage was discovered and was found to be wide enough for three judges to walk through side by side.[21]
After his fall from power, a portrait of Jeffreys was taken from Gray's Inn and left in the cellar of Acton Hall (the family home). When Acton Hall was demolished in the 1950s, that painting and one of his brother Thomas were acquired by Simon Yorke, Squire of Erddig and hung in the entrance hall of Erddig Hall. They can still be seen there. Both portraits are reproduced in Keeton's Lord Chancellor Jeffreys and the Stuart Cause.
The Bloody Assizes were a series of trials started at Winchester on 25 August 1685 in the aftermath of the Battle of Sedgemoor, which ended the Monmouth Rebellion in England.
Titus Oates was an English priest who fabricated the "Popish Plot", a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II.
Francis North, 1st Baron Guilford, PC, KC(22 October 1637 – 5 September 1685) was the third son of Dudley North, 4th Baron North, and his wife Anne Montagu, daughter of Sir Charles Montagu of Boughton House and Mary Whitmore. He was created Baron Guilford in 1683, after becoming Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in succession to Lord Nottingham.
Baron Jeffreys is a title that has been created twice, once in the Peerage of England and once in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The first creation came in the Peerage of England on 16 May 1685 when the lawyer and later Lord Chancellor, Sir George Jeffreys, 1st Baronet, was made Baron Jeffreys, of Wem. He had already been created a Baronet, of Bulstrode in the County of Buckingham, in the Baronetage of England in 1681. The titles became extinct on the death of his son, the second Baron, in 1702, who had no male heir: his daughter, the writer Henrietta Fermor, married the 1st Earl of Pomfret. The estates passed to Jeffreys' widow, Lady Charlotte Herbert, who later remarried as Viscountess Windsor.
The Popish Plot was a fictitious conspiracy invented by Titus Oates that between 1678 and 1681 gripped the kingdoms of England and Scotland in anti-Catholic hysteria. Oates alleged that there was an extensive Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II, accusations that led to the executions of at least 22 men and precipitated the Exclusion Bill Crisis. Eventually, Oates's intricate web of accusations fell apart, leading to his arrest and conviction for perjury.
Alice, Lady Lisle, commonly known as Alicia Lisle or Dame Alice Lyle, was a landed lady of the English county of Hampshire, who was executed for harbouring fugitives after the defeat of the Monmouth Rebellion at the Battle of Sedgemoor. While she seems to have leaned to Royalism, she combined this with a decided sympathy for religious dissent. She is known to history as Lady Lisle although she has no claim to the title; her husband was a member of the "Other House" created by Oliver Cromwell and "titles" deriving from that fact were often used after the Restoration.
Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, PC was a Peer of England during the 17th century, and the most famous of the Lords Arundell of Wardour. He served as Lord Privy Seal and Lord High Steward, and was appointed to the Privy Council. During the Popish Plot he suffered a long period of imprisonment, although he was never brought to trial.
Sir William Scroggs was Lord Chief Justice of England from 1678 to 1681. He is best remembered for presiding over the Popish Plot trials, where he was accused of showing bias against the accused.
Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Aylesford, PC, KC was an English lawyer and statesman.
Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon, PC was an English aristocrat and politician. He held high office at the beginning of the reign of his brother-in-law, King James II.
Henry Booth, 1st Earl of Warrington was a Member of Parliament, Privy Councillor, Protestant protagonist in the Revolution of 1688, Mayor of Chester and author.
Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley,, known as 1st Baron Ellesmere from 1603 to 1616, was an English nobleman, judge and statesman from the Egerton family who served as Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor for twenty-one years.
William Herbert, 1st Marquess of Powis, PC KG (1626 – 2 June 1696) was an English nobleman, best remembered for his suffering during the Popish Plot. He succeeded his father as 3rd Baron Powis in 1667 and was created Earl of Powis in 1674 by King Charles II and Viscount Montgomery, of the Town of Montgomery, and Marquess of Powis in 1687 by King James II, having been appointed to the Privy Council in 1686.
William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, FRS was the youngest son of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, and his wife, the former Alethea Talbot. A Fellow of the Royal Society from 1665, he was a Royalist supporter before being falsely implicated by Titus Oates in the later discredited "Popish Plot", and executed for treason. He was beatified as a Catholic martyr by Pope Pius XI in 1929.
Sir George Wakeman was an English doctor, who was royal physician to Catherine of Braganza, Consort of Charles II of England. In 1678, in the allegations of the fabricated Popish Plot, he was falsely accused of treason by Titus Oates, who had gained the backing of Thomas Osborne, 1st Earl of Danby, the effective head of the English government. Oates accused Wakeman of conspiring to kill the King with the help of the Jesuits, and to put his brother James, Duke of York on the throne in his place. At his trial in 1679 Wakeman was acquitted, the first sign that the public was beginning to lose faith in the reality of the Plot.
William Petre, 4th Baron Petre was an English peer and victim of the Popish Plot.
Lionel Anderson, alias Munson was an English Dominican priest, who was falsely accused of treason during the Popish Plot, which was the fabrication of the notorious anti-Catholic informer Titus Oates. He was convicted of treason on the technical ground that he had acted as a Catholic priest within England, contrary to an Elizabethan statute, but was reprieved from the customary death sentence. He was eventually released and sent into exile, after a biased trial, and after serving a term of imprisonment.
The Loyal Parliament was the only Parliament of England of King James II, in theory continuing from May 1685 to July 1687, but in practice sitting during 1685 only. It gained its name because at the outset most of its members were loyal to the new king. The Whigs, who had previously resisted James's inheriting the throne, were outnumbered both in the Commons and in the Lords.
Richard Wallop (1616–1697) was an English judge.
Nicholas Nugent was an Anglo-Irish judge, who was hanged for treason by the government that appointed him. He had, before his downfall, enjoyed a highly successful career, holding office as Solicitor General for Ireland, Baron of the Irish Court of Exchequer, and Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, but he was ruined by the rebellion of his nephew William Nugent, which he was accused of supporting.
↑ Mary II, daughter of the deposed James II. She ruled jointly with her husband William III, the former William of Orange.
↑ Leigh Hunt, "Memoirs of Judge Jeffries," in London Journal, Wednesday April 9, 1834. Vol I, p. 14.
↑ Wynne, S. M. "Kéroualle, Louise Renée de Penancoët de, suo jure duchess of Portsmouth and suo jure duchess of Aubigny in the French nobility (1649–1734)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 14 Nov 2010
Halliday, Paul D. "Jeffreys, George, first Baron Jeffreys (1645–1689)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 accessed 15 July 2017doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/14702
Hyde, H. M. Judge Jeffreys (2nd edn 1948).
Keeton, G. W. Lord Chancellor Jeffreys and the Stuart cause (1965)· online review
Winn, Christopher (2007). I Never Knew That About London. London: Ebury Press. ISBN978-0-09-194319-6.
Zook, Melinda. "“The Bloody Assizes:” Whig Martyrdom and Memory after the Glorious Revolution." Albion 27.3 (1995): 373–396. online
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