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

CHAPTER XVI.
ROBERT WRIGHT

I now come to the last of the profligate chief justices of England; for since the Revolution they have all been men of decent character, and most of them have adorned the seat of justice by their talents and acquirements, as well as by their virtues. Sir Robert Wright, if excelled by some of his predecessors in bold crimes, yields to none in ignorance of his profession, and beats them all in the fraudulent and sordid vices.

He was the son of a respectable gentleman who lived near Thetford, in Suffolk, and was the representative of an ancient family, long seated at Kelverstone, in Norfolk; he enjoyed the opportunity of receiving a good education at Thetford Free Grammar School, and at the University of Cambridge; and he had the advantage of a very handsome person and agreeable manner. But he was by nature volatile, obtuse, intensely selfish, with hardly a particle of shame, and quite destitute of the faculty of distinguishing what was base from what was honorable. Without any maternal spoiling, or the contamination of bad company, he showed the worst faults of childhood, and these ripened, while he was still in early youth, into habits of gaming, drinking, and every sort of debauchery. There was a hope of his reformation when, being still under age, he captivated the affections of one of the daughters of Dr. Wren, Bishop of Ely, and was married to her. But he continued his licentious course of life, and, having wasted her fortune, he treated her with cruelty.

He was supposed to study the law at an Inn of Court, but when he was called to the bar he had not imbibed even the first rudiments of his profession. Nevertheless, taking to the Norfolk Circuit, the extensive influence of his father-in-law, which was exercised unscrupulously in his favor, got him briefs, and for several years he had more business than North, (afterwards Lord Keeper Guilford,) a very industrious lawyer, who joined the circuit at the same time. “But withal,” says Roger, the inimitable biographer, “he was so poor a lawyer that he could not give an opinion upon a written case, but used to bring such cases as came to him to his friend, Mr. North, and he wrote the opinion on a paper, and the lawyer copied it and signed under the case as if it had been his own. It run so low with him, that when North was at London, he sent up his cases to him, and had opinions returned by the post; and in the mean time he put off his clients upon pretence of taking more serious consideration.”

At last the attorneys found him out so completely that they entirely deserted him, and he was obliged to give up practice. By family interest he obtained the lucrative sinecure of “treasurer to the chest at Chatham,” but by his voluptuous and reckless course of life he got deeper and deeper in debt, and he mortgaged his estate to Mr. North for fifteen hundred pounds, the full amount of its value. From some inadvertence, the title deeds were allowed to remain in Wright’s hands, and being immediately again in want, he applied to Sir Walter Plummer to lend him five hundred pounds on mortgage, offering the mortgaged estate as a security, and asserting that this would be the first charge upon it. The wary Sir Walter thought he would make himself doubly safe by requiring an affidavit that the estate was clear from all incumbrances. This affidavit Wright swore without any hesitation, and he then received the five hundred pounds. But the money being spent, and the fraud being detected, he was in the greatest danger of being sent to jail for debt, and also of being indicted for swindling and perjury.

He had only one resource, and this proved available. Being a clever mimic, he had been introduced into the circle of parasites and buffoons who surrounded Jeffreys, at this time chief justice of the King’s Bench, and used to make sport for him and his companions in their drunken orgies by taking off the other judges, as well as the most eminent counsel. One day, being asked why he seemed to be melancholy, he took the opportunity of laying open his destitute condition to his patron, who said to him, “As you seem to be unfit for the bar, or any other honest calling, I see nothing for it but that you should become a judge yourself.” Wright naturally supposed that this was a piece of wicked pleasantry, and when Jeffreys had declared that he was never more serious in his life, asked how it could be brought about, for he not only felt himself incompetent for such an office, but he had no interest, and, still more, it so happened, unfortunately, that the Lord Keeper Guilford, who made the judges, was fully aware of the unaccountable lapse of memory into which he had fallen when he swore the affidavit for Sir Walter Plummer, that his estate was clear from all incumbrances, the lord keeper himself being the first mortgagee. Jeffreys, C. J.– “Never despair, my boy; leave all that to me.”

We know nothing more of the intrigue with certainty, till the following dialogue took place in the royal closet. We can only conjecture that in the meanwhile Jeffreys, who was then much cherished at court, and was impatient to supersede Guilford entirely, had urgently pressed the king that Wright might be elevated to the bench as a devoted friend of the prerogative, and that, as the lord keeper had a prejudice against him, his majesty ought to take the appointment into his own hands. But we certainly know that, a vacancy occurring in the Court of Exchequer, the lord keeper had an audience of his majesty to take his pleasure on the appointment of a new baron, and that he named a gentleman at the bar, in great practice and of good character, as the fittest person to be appointed, thinking that Charles would nod assent with his usual easy indifference, when, to his utter amazement, he was thus interrogated: “My lord, what think you of Mr. Wright? Why may not he be the man?” Lord Keeper.– “Because, sir, I know him too well, and he is the most unfit person in England to be made a judge.” King.– “Then it must not be.” Upon this, the lord keeper withdrew, without having received any other notification of the king’s pleasure; and the office remained vacant.

Again there is a chasm in the intrigue, and we are driven to guess that Jeffreys had renewed his solicitation, had treated the objections started to Wright as ridiculous, and had advised the cashiering of the lord keeper if he should prove obstinate. The next time that the lord keeper was in the royal presence, the king, opening the subject of his own accord, observed, “Good my lord, why may not Wright be a judge? He is strongly recommended to me; but I would have a due respect paid to you, and I would not make him without your concurrence. Is it impossible, my lord?” Lord Keeper.– “Sir, the making of a judge is your majesty’s choice, and not my pleasure. I am bound to put the seal as I am commanded, whatever the person may be. It is for your majesty to determine, and me, your servant, to obey. But I must do my duty by informing your majesty of the truth respecting this man, whom I personally know to be a dunce, and no lawyer; who is not worth a groat, having spent his estate by debauched living; who is without honesty, having been guilty of wilful perjury to gain the borrowing of a sum of money. And now, sir, I have done my duty to your majesty, and am ready to obey your majesty’s commands in case it be your pleasure that this man be a judge.” The king thanked the lord keeper, without saying more, but next day there came a warrant under the sign manual for creating the king’s “trusty and well-beloved Robert Wright” a baron of his Exchequer, and orders were given for making out the patent in due form; and the detected swindler, knighted, and clothed in ermine, took his place among the twelve judges of England.

People were exceedingly shocked when they saw the seat of justice so disgraced; but this might be what Jeffreys intended; and one of his first acts, when he himself obtained the great seal, was to promote his protégé from being a baron of the Exchequer to be a judge of the Court of King’s Bench.

Wright continued to do many things which caused great scandal, and, therefore, was dearer than ever to his patron, who would have discarded him if he had shown any symptoms of reformation. He accompanied General Jeffreys as aide de camp in the famous “campaign in the west;” in other words, he was joined in commission with him as a judge in the “bloody assize,” and, sitting on the bench with him at the trial of Lady Lisle and the others which followed, concurred in all his atrocities. He came in for very little of the bribery; Jeffreys, who claimed the lion’s share, tossing him by way of encouragement one solitary pardon, for which a small sum only was expected.

But on the death of Sir Henry Beddingfield he was made chief justice of the Common Pleas; and very soon afterwards, the unexpected quarrel breaking out between Sir Edward Herbert and the government about martial law and the punishment of deserters,¹⁵¹ the object being to find some one who by no possibility could go against the government, or hesitate about doing any thing required of him, however base or however bloody, Wright was selected as chief justice of the king’s bench. Unluckily we have no account of the speeches made at any of his judicial installations, so that we do not know in what terms his learning and purity of conduct were praised, or what were the promises which he gave of impartiality and of rigorous adherence to the laws of the realm.

On the very day on which he took his seat on the bench he gave good earnest of his servile spirit. The attorney general renewed his motion for an order to execute at Plymouth the deserter who had been capitally convicted at Reading for deserting his colors. The new chief justice, without entering into reasons, or explaining how he came to differ from the opinion so strongly expressed by his predecessor, merely said, “Be it so!” The puisnies now nodded assent, and the prisoner was illegally executed at Plymouth under the order so pronounced.

Confidence was entirely lost in the administration of justice in Westminster Hall, for all the three common law courts were at last filled by incompetent and corrupt judges. Pettifogging actions only were brought in them, and men settled their disputes by arbitration, or by taking the opinion of counsel. The reports during the whole reign of James II. hardly show a single question of importance settled by judicial decision. Thus, having no distinct means of appreciating Chief Justice Wright’s demerits as a judge in private causes, we must at once follow him in his devious course as a political judge.

The first occasion on which, after his installation, he drew upon himself the eyes of the public was when he was sent down to Magdalene College, Oxford, for the purpose of turning it into a Popish seminary. Upon a vacancy in the office of president, the fellows, in the exercise of their undoubted right, had elected the celebrated Dr. Hough, who had been duly admitted into the office; and the preliminary step to be taken was to annul the election, for the purpose of making way for another candidate, named by the king. There were associated with Wright, in this commission, Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, who was ready to be reconciled to Rome in the hope of higher preferment, and Sir Thomas Jenner, a baron of the Exchequer, a zealous follower in the footsteps of the chief justice of the King’s Bench. Nothing could equal the infamy of their object except the insolence of their behavior in trying to accomplish it. They entered Oxford escorted by three troops of cavalry with drawn swords, and, having taken their seats with great parade in the hall of the college, summoned the fellows to attend them. These reverend and gallant divines appeared, headed by their new president, who defended his rights with skill, temper and resolution; steadily maintaining that, by the laws of England, he had a freehold in his office, and in the house and revenues annexed to it. Being asked whether he submitted to this royal visitation, he answered: —

“My lords, I do declare here, in the name of myself and the fellows, that we submit to the visitation as far as it is consistent with the laws of the land and the statutes of the college, and no further.” Wright, C. J.– “You cannot imagine that we act contrary to the laws of the land; and as to the statutes, the king has dispensed with them. Do you think we come here to break the laws?” Hough.– “It does not become me, my lords, to say so; but I will be plain with your lordships. I find that your commission gives you authority to alter the statutes. Now, I have sworn to uphold and obey them; I must admit no alteration of them, and by the grace of God never will.” He was asked whether one of the statutes of the founder did not require mass to be said in the college chapel; but he answered, “not only was it unlawful, but it had been repealed by the act of Parliament requiring the use of the Book of Common Prayer.” However, sentence was given that the election of Hough was void, and that he be deprived of his office of president. Hough.– “I do hereby protest against all your proceedings, all you have done, or shall hereafter do, in prejudice of me and my right, and I appeal to my sovereign lord the king in his courts of justice.” “Upon which (says a contemporary account) the strangers and young scholars in the hall gave a hum, which so much incensed their lordships that the lord chief justice was not to be pacified, but, charging it upon the president, bound him in a bond of one thousand pounds, and security to the like value, to make his appearance at the King’s Bench bar on the 12th of November; and, taking occasion to pun upon the president’s name, said to him, “Sir, you must not think to huff us.” He then ordered the door of the president’s house to be broken open by a blacksmith; and a fellow observing, “I am informed that the proper officer to gain possession of a freehold is the sheriff with a posse comitatus,” Wright said, “I pray who is the best lawyer, you or I? Your Oxford law is no better than your Oxford divinity. If you have a mind to a posse comitatus, you may have one soon enough.”

Having ejected Hough, he issued a mandate for expelling all the contumacious fellows, and insured the expulsion of James from his throne, when the commissioners returned in triumph to London.

Wright was likewise a member of the Ecclesiastical Court of High Commission, of which Jeffreys was president, and he strenuously joined in all the judgments of that illegal and arbitrary tribunal, which, with a non obstante, had been revived in the very teeth of an existing act of Parliament. He treated with ridicule the scruples of Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others who refused to sit upon it, and he urged the infliction of severe punishment on all who denied its jurisdiction.

Although he was not a member of the Cabinet, he usually heard from the chancellor the measures which had been resolved upon there, and he was ever a willing tool in carrying them into effect.

When the clergy were insulted, and the whole country was thrown into a flame, by the fatal order in Council for reading the “Declaration of Indulgence” in all churches and chapels on two successive Sundays, he contrived an opportunity of declaring from the bench his opinion that it was legal and obligatory. Hearing that the London clergy were almost unanimously resolved to disobey it, he sent a peremptory command to the priest who officiated in the chapel of Serjeants’ Inn to read the declaration with a loud voice; and on the famous Sunday, the 20th of May, 1688, he attended in person, to give weight to the solemnity. However, he was greatly disappointed and enraged to find the service concluded without any thing being uttered beyond what the rubric prescribes. He then indecently, in the hearing of the congregation, abused the priest as disloyal, seditious, and irreligious, for contemning the authority of the head of the church. The clerk ingeniously came forth to the rescue of his superior, and took all the blame upon himself by saying that “he had forgot to bring a copy,” and the chief justice, knowing that he had no remedy, was forced to content himself with this excuse.¹⁵²

The seven bishops being committed to the Tower, and prosecuted for a conspiracy to defame the king and to overturn his authority, because they had presented a petition to him praying that they might not be forced to violate their consciences and to break the law, Wright, the lowest wretch that had ever appeared on the bench in England, was to preside at the most important state trial recorded in our annals. The reliance placed upon his abject subserviency no doubt operated strongly in betraying the government into this insane project of treating as common malefactors the venerable fathers of the Protestant church, now regarded by the whole nation with affectionate reverence. The consideration was entirely overlooked by the courtiers, that, from the notorious baseness of his character, his excessive zeal might be revolting to the jury, and might produce an acquittal. It is supposed that a discreet friend of the government had given him a caution to bridle his impetuosity against the accused, as the surest way of succeeding against them; for, during the whole proceeding, he was less arrogant than could have been expected, and it is much more probable that his forbearance arose from obedience to those whom he wished to please, than from any reverence for the sacred character of the defendants or any lurking respect for the interests of justice.

They were twice placed at the bar before him – first when they were brought up by the lieutenant of the Tower to be arraigned, and afterwards when a jury was empannelled for their trial. On the former occasion the questions were whether they were lawfully in custody, and were then bound to plead. The chief justice checked the opposing counsel with an air of impartiality, saying, “Look you, gentlemen, do not fall upon one another, but keep to the matter in hand.” And, before deciding for the crown, he said, “I confess it is a case of great weight, and the persons concerned are of great honor and value. I would be as willing as any body to testify my respects and regards to my lords the bishops, if I could see any thing in their objections worth considering. For here is the question, whether the fact charged in the warrant of commitment be such a misdemeanor as is a breach of the peace. I cannot but think it is such a misdemeanor as would have required sureties of the peace, and if sureties were not given, a commitment might follow.” He was guilty of gross injustice in refusing leave to put in a plea in abatement; but he thus mildly gave judgment: “We have inquired whether we may reject a plea, and, truly, I am satisfied that we may if the plea is frivolous; and this plea containing no more than has been overruled already, my lords the bishops must now plead guilty or not guilty.”

When the trial actually came on, he betrayed a partiality for which, in our times, a judge would be impeached; but, compared with himself, so decorous was he, that he was supposed to be overawed by the august audience in whose presence he sat. It was observed that he often cast a side glance towards the thick rows of earls and barons by whom he was watched, and who, in the next Parliament, might be his judges. One bystander remarked that “he looked as if all the peers present had halters in their pockets.”

The counsel for the crown having, in the first instance, failed to prove a publication of the supposed libel in the county of Middlesex, and only called upon the court to suppose or presume it, the chief justice said: “I cannot suppose it; I cannot presume any thing. I will ask my brothers their opinion, but I must deal truly with you; I think there is not evidence against my lords the bishops. It would be a strange thing if we should go and presume that these lords did it when there is no sort of evidence to prove that they did it. We must proceed according to forms and methods of law. People may think what they will of me, but I always declare my mind according to my conscience.” He was actually directing the jury to acquit, and the verdict of not guilty would have been instantly pronounced, when Finch, one of the counsel for the bishops, most indiscreetly said they had evidence on their side to produce. The young gentleman was pulled down by his leaders, who desired the chief justice to proceed. And now his lordship showed the cloven foot, for he exclaimed, “No, no, I will hear Mr. Finch. Go on; my lords the bishops shall not say of me that I would not hear their counsel. I have been already told of being counsel against them, and they shall never say I would not hear counsel for them. Such a learned man as Mr. Finch must have something material to offer. He shall not be refused to be heard by me, I assure you. Why don’t you go on, Mr. Finch?”

At this critical moment it was announced that the Earl of Sunderland, the president of the council, – who was present in the royal closet when the bishops presented their petition to the king at Whitehall, – was at hand, and would prove a publication in Middlesex. The chief justice then said, with affected calmness, but with real exultation, “Well, you see what comes of the interruption. I cannot help it; it is your own fault.” There being a pause while they waited for the arrival of the Earl of Sunderland, the chief justice, addressing Sir Bartholomew Shower, one of the counsel for the crown, whom he had stopped at an early stage of the trial, and against whom he had some private spite, observed with great insolence, “Sir Bartholomew, now we have time to hear your speech, if you will. Let us have it.”

At last the witness arrived, and, proving clearly a publication in Middlesex, the case was again launched, and, after hearing counsel on the merits, it was to be left to the determination of the jury.

The chief justice, thinking to carry it all his own way, was terribly baffled, not only by the sympathy of the audience with the bishops, which evidently made an impression on the jury, but by the unexpected honesty of one of his brother judges, Mr. Justice John Powell, who had been a quiet man, unconnected with politics, and, being a profound lawyer, had been appointed to keep the Court of King’s Bench from falling into universal contempt. Sir Robert Sawyer beginning to comment upon a part of the declaration which the bishops objected to, “that from henceforth the execution of all laws against nonconformity to the religion established, or the exercise of any other religion, should be suspended,” Wright, C. J., exclaimed, “I must not suffer this; they intend to dispute the king’s power of suspending laws.” Powell, J.– “My lord, they must necessarily fall upon the point; for, if the king hath no such power, (as clearly he hath not, in my judgment,) the natural consequence will be that this petition is no diminution of the king’s regal power, and so not seditious or libellous.” Wright, C. J.– “Brother, I know you are full of that doctrine; but, however, my lords the bishops shall have no occasion to say that I deny to hear their counsel. Brother, you shall have your will for once; I will hear them; let them talk till they are weary.” Powell, J.– “I desire no greater liberty to be granted them than what, in justice, the court ought to grant; that is, to hear them in defence of their clients.”

As the speeches for the defendants proceeded, and were producing a great effect upon all who heard them, the solicitor general made a very irregular remark, accompanied by a fictitious yawn – “We shall be here till midnight.” The chief justice, instead of reprimanding him, chimed in with the impertinence, saying, “They have no mind to have an end of the cause, for they have kept it up three hours longer than they need to have done.” Serjeant Pemberton.– “My lord, this case does require a great deal of patience.” Wright, C. J.– “It does so, brother, and the court has had a great deal of patience; but we must not sit here only to hear speeches.” In trying to put down another counsel, who was making way with the jury, he observed, “If you say anything more, pray let me advise you one thing – don’t say the same thing over and over again; for, after so much time spent, it is irksome to all company, as well as to me.”

When it came to the reply of Williams, the renegade solicitor general, who in his day had been “a Whig and something more,” he laid down doctrines which called forth the reprobation of Judge Powell, and even shocked the chief justice himself, for he denied that any petition could lawfully be presented to the king except by the lords and commons in Parliament assembled. Powell, J.– “This is strange doctrine. Shall not the subject have liberty to petition the king but in Parliament? If that be law, the subject is in a miserable case.” Wright, C. J.– “Brother, let him go on; we will hear him out, though I approve not of his position.” The unabashed Williams continued, “The lords may address the king in Parliament, and the commons may do it; but therefore that the bishops may do it out of Parliament, does not follow. I’ll tell you what they should have done: if they were commanded to do anything against their consciences, they should have acquiesced till the meeting of the Parliament.”¹⁵³ (Here, says the reporter, the people in court hissed.) Attorney General.– “This is very fine indeed: I hope the court and the jury will take notice of this carriage.” Wright, C. J.– “Mr. Solicitor, I am of opinion that the bishops might petition the king; but this is not the right way. If they may petition, yet they ought to have done it after another manner; for if they may, in this reflective way, petition the king, I am sure it will make the government very precarious.” Powell, J.– “Mr. Solicitor, it would have been too late to stay for a Parliament, for the act they conceived to be illegal was to be done forthwith; and if they had petitioned and not shown the reason why they could not obey, it would have have been looked upon as a piece of sullenness, and for that they would have been as much blamed on the other side.”

The chief justice, to put on a semblance of impartiality, attempted to stop Sir Bartholomew Shower, who wished to follow in support of the prosecution, and, being a very absurd man, was likely to do more harm than good. Wright, C. J.– “I hope we shall have done by and by.” Sir B. S.– “If your lordship don’t think fit, I can sit down.” Wright, C. J.– “No! no! Go on, Sir Bartholomew – you’ll say I have spoiled a good speech.” Sir B. S.– “I have no good speech to make, my lord; I have but a very few words to say.” Wright, C. J.– “Well, go on, sir; go on.”

In summing up to the jury, the chief justice said: —

“This is a case of very great concern to the king and the government on the one side, and to my lords the bishops on the other. It is an information against his grace my lord of Canterbury and the other six noble lords, for composing and publishing a seditious libel. At first we were all of opinion that there was no sufficient evidence of publication in the county of Middlesex, and I was going to have directed you to find my lords the bishops not guilty; but it happened that, being interrupted in my direction by an honest, worthy, learned gentleman, the king’s counsel took the advantage, and, informing the court that they had further evidence, we waited till the lord president came, who told us how the petition was presented by the right reverend defendants to the king at Whitehall. Then came their learned counsel and told us that my lords the bishops are guardians of the church, and great peers of the realm, and were bound in conscience to act as they did. Various precedents have been vouched to show that the kings of England have not the power assumed by his present majesty in issuing the declaration and ordering it to be read; but concessions which kings sometimes make, for the good of the people, must not be made law; for this is reserved in the king’s breast to do what he pleases in it at any time. The truth of it is, the dispensing power is out of the case, and I will not take upon me to give any opinion upon it now; for it is not before me. The only question for you is a question of fact, whether you are satisfied that this petition was presented to the king at Whitehall. If you disbelieve the lord president, you will at once acquit the defendants. If you give credit to his testimony, the next consideration is, whether the petition be a seditious libel, and this is a question of law on which I must direct you. Now, gentlemen, anything that shall disturb the government, or make mischief and a stir among the people, is certainly within the case ‘de libellis famosis;’ and I must, in short, give you my opinion – I do take it to be a libel. But this being a point of law, if my brothers have anything to say to it, I suppose they will deliver their opinions.”

Mr. Justice Holloway, though a devoted friend of the government, had in his breast some feeling of shame, and observed, —

“If you are satisfied there was an ill intention of sedition or the like, you should find my lords the bishops guilty; but if they only delivered a petition to save themselves harmless, and to free themselves from blame, by showing the reason of their disobedience to the king’s command, which they apprehend to be a grievance to them, I cannot think it a libel.” Wright, C. J.– “Look you, by the way, brother, I did not ask you to sum up the evidence, (for that is not usual,) but only to deliver your opinion whether it be a libel or no.” Powell, J.– “Truly, I cannot see, for my part, anything of sedition or any other crime fixed upon these reverend fathers. For, gentlemen, to make it a libel, it must be false, it must be malicious, and it must tend to sedition. As to the falsehood, I see nothing that is offered by the king’s counsel, nor anything as to the malice; it was presented with all the humility and decency becoming subjects when they approach their prince. In the petition, they say, because they conceive the thing that was commanded them to be against the law of the land, therefore they do desire his majesty that he would be pleased to forbear to insist upon it. If there be no such dispensing power, there can be no libel in the petition which represented the declaration founded on such a pretended power to be illegal. Now, gentlemen, this is a dispensation with a witness; it amounts to an abrogation and utter repeal of all the laws; for I can see no difference, nor know of any in law, between the king’s power to dispense with laws ecclesiastical, and his power to dispense with any other laws whatsoever. If this be once allowed of, there will need no Parliament: all the legislature will be in the king – which is a thing worth considering – and I leave the issue to God and your own consciences.”