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

by Baron John Campbell Campbell

He was one of the small junto to whom was intrusted the secret of immediate dissolution. The moment the deed was done, he set off for London, pretending to be afraid of what he called “the positive armament against the king, which manifestly showed itself at Oxford.”

As soon as the Cabinet met at Whitehall, North advised the issuing of a Declaration to justify the dissolution of the three last Parliaments which had met respectively at Westminster and Oxford, and himself drew an elaborate one, which was adopted. This state paper certainly puts the popular party in the wrong upon the “exclusion question” and other matters with considerable dexterity, and it was supposed to have contributed materially to the reaction going on in favor of the government.

So far his conduct was legitimate, and in the fair exercise of his functions as a privy councillor; but I am sorry to say that he now sullied his ermine by a flagrant disregard of his duties as a judge. The grand jury for the city of London having very properly thrown out the bill of indictment against Stephen College, “the Protestant joiner,” it was resolved to try him at Oxford; and for this purpose a special commission was issued, at the head of which was placed Lord Chief Justice North. Burnet says mildly, “North’s behavior in that whole matter was such that, probably, if he had lived to see an impeaching Parliament, he might have felt the ill effects of it.” After perusing the trial, I must say that his misconduct upon it was most atrocious. The prisoner, being a violent enemy to Popery, had attended the city members to Oxford as one of their guard, with “No Popery” flags and cockades, using strong language against the Papists and their supporters, but without any thought of using force. Yet the chief justice was determined that he should be found guilty of compassing and imagining the king’s death, and levying war against him in his realm.[93] College’s papers, which he was to use in his defence, were forcibly taken from him, on the ground that they had been written by some other persons, who gave him hints what he was to say. They were in reality prepared by his legal advisers, Mr. Aaron Smith and Mr. West. The prisoner was checked and browbeaten as often as he put a question or made an observation. His defence was much more able than could have been expected from a person in his station of life, but of course he was convicted. The chief justice, in passing sentence, observed, “Look you, Mr. College; because you say you are innocent, it is necessary for me to say something in vindication of the verdict, which I think the court were all well satisfied with. I thought it was a case that, as you made your own defence, small proof would serve the turn to make any one believe you guilty. For, as you defend yourself by pretending to be a Protestant, I did wonder, I must confess, when you called so many witnesses to your religion and reputation, that none of them gave an account that they saw you receive the sacrament within these many years, or any of them particularly had seen you at church in many years, or what kind of Protestant you were. But crying aloud against the Papists, it was proved here who you called Papists. You had the boldness to say the king was a Papist, the bishops were Papists, and the church of England were Papists. If these be the Papists you cry out against, what kind of Protestant you are I know not—I am sure you can be no good one. How it came into your head, that were but a private man, to go to guard the Parliament, I much wonder. Suppose all men of your condition should have gone to have guarded the Parliament, what an assembly had there been! And though you say you are no man of quality, nor likely to do any thing upon the king’s guards or the king’s person, yet if all your quality had gone upon the same design, what ill consequences might have followed! We see what has been done by Massaniello, a mean man, in another country—what by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw in this kingdom.” College asked him to fix the day of his death, but he answered that that depended on the king; adding, in a tone of great humanity, “that he should have due notice of it to prepare, by repenting of his crimes.” College’s innocence was so manifest, that even Hume, eager to palliate all the atrocities of this reign, says, “that his whole conduct and demeanor prove him to have been governed by an honest but indiscreet zeal for his country and his religion.” On the 31st of August, 1681, the sentence, with all its savage barbarities, was carried into execution. “Sir Francis North,” observes Roger Coke, “was a man cut out, to all intents and purposes, for such a work.”

He was next called upon to assist at the immolation of a nobler victim, who escaped from the horns of the altar. Shaftesbury had been for some time very careful never to open his mouth on politics out of the city of London and county of Middlesex, and during the Oxford Parliament had touched on no public topic except in the House of Lords. It was resolved at all hazards to bring him to trial; but this could only be done by an indictment to be found at the Old Bailey. There did North attend when the indictment was to be preferred, and, resolutely assist Lord Chief Justice Pemberton in perverting the law,[94] by examining the witnesses in open court, and by trying to intimidate and mislead the grand jury; but he was punished by being present at the shout, which lasted an hour, when “Ignoramus” was returned.

He next zealously lent himself to the scheme of the court for upsetting the municipal privileges of the city of London, and of obtaining sheriffs for London and Middlesex who would return juries at the will of the government. The lord mayor having been gained over, and the stratagem devised of creating a sheriff by the lord mayor drinking to him, instead of by the election of his fellow-citizens, the difficulty was to find any freeman of fair character who would incur all the odium and risk of being so introduced to the shrievalty. It so happened that at that time there returned to England a brother of the chief justice, Mr. Dudley, afterwards Sir Dudley North, who was free of the city from having been apprenticed there to a merchant, and who had amassed considerable wealth by a long residence in Turkey. It being suggested at court that this was the very man for their sheriff; “the king very much approved of the person, but was very dubious whether the chief justice, with his much caution and wisdom, would advise his brother to stand in a litigious post. But yet he resolved to try; and one day he spoke to Sir Francis with a world of tenderness, and desired to know if it would be too much to ask his brother Dudley to hold sheriff on my lord mayor’s drinking.” The wily chief justice immediately saw the advantage this proposal might bring to the whole family, and returned a favorable answer. “For matter of title,” says Roger, “he thought there was more squeak than wool; for whatever people thought was at the bottom, if a citizen be called upon an office by the government of the city, and obeys, where is the crime? But then such a terrible fear was artificially raised up in the city as if this service was the greatest hazard in the world.” Sir Francis gently broke the matter to his brother, saying “that there was an opportunity which preferred itself whereby he might make a fortune if he wanted it, and much enlarge what he had, besides great reputation to be gained, which would make him all the days of his life very considerable, laying open the case of the lord mayor’s right very clear and plain, against which in common sense there was no reply.” Dudley, however, made many objections, and talked of the terrible expense to which he should be exposed. The chief justice urged that if he served, the obligation was so transcendent, that there could be no employment by commission from the crown which would not fall to his share, “and as for the charge,” said he, “here, brother, take a thousand pounds to help make good your account, and if you never have an opportunity by pensions or employments to reimburse you and me, I will lose my share; else I shall be content to receive this thousand pounds out of one half of your pensions when they come in, and otherwise not at all.” The merchant yielded; and under this pure bargain, proposed by the judge before whom the validity of the appointment might come to be decided, when his health was given by the lord mayor as sheriff of London and Middlesex, he agreed to accept the office.

But the old sheriffs insisted on holding a common hall for the election of their successors, according to ancient usage, on Midsummer day; when Lord Chief Justice North had the extreme meanness, at the king’s request, to go into the city and take post in a house near Guildhall, belonging to Sir George Jeffreys, “who had no small share in the conduct of this affair, to the end that if any incident required immediate advice, or if the spirits of the lord mayor should droop, which in outward appearance were but faint, there might be a ready recourse.” It is true the opposite faction had the Lord Grey de Werke and other leaders from the west end of the town, to advise and countenance them; but this could be no excuse for a judge so degrading himself. The poll going for the popular candidates, the lord mayor, by Chief Justice North’s advice, under pretence of a riot, attempted to adjourn the election; but the sheriffs required that the polling should continue, and declared Papillon and Dubois duly elected.

This causing great consternation at Whitehall, a council was called, to which the lord mayor and aldermen were summoned. Lord Chief Justice North, by the king’s command, addressed them, saying, “that the proceedings of the sheriffs at the common hall after the adjournment were not only utterly null and void, but the persons were guilty of an audacious riot and contempt of lawful authority, for which by due course of law they would be severely punished; but in the mean time it was the lord mayor’s duty and his majesty’s pleasure that they should go back to the city and summon the common hall, and make election of sheriffs for the year ensuing.” The lord mayor, having been told that the courtiers would bamboozle him and leave him in the lurch, when North had concluded, said, “My lord, will your lordship be pleased to give me this under your hand?” The king and all the councillors were much tickled to see the wily chief justice thus nailed, “expecting some turn of wit to fetch himself off, and thinking to have sport in seeing how woodenly he would excuse himself.” But to their utter astonishment, for once in his life Francis North was bold and straightforward, and cheating them all, he answered, without any hesitation, “Yes, and you shall have it presently.” Then seizing a pen, he wrote, “I am of opinion that it is in the lord mayor’s power to call, adjourn, and dissolve the common hall at his pleasure, and that all acts done there, as of the common hall, during such adjournment, are mere nullities, and have no legal effect.” This he signed and handed to the lord mayor, who then promised obedience.

Accordingly, another common hall was called, at which it was pretended that Sir Dudley North and Rich were elected, and they were actually installed in the office of sheriff. By the contrivance of Lord Chief Justice North, the office of lord mayor for the ensuing year was likewise filled by a thorough passive-obedience tool of the court. Gould, the liberal candidate, had a majority of legal votes on the poll, but under a pretended scrutiny, Pritchard was declared duly elected, and Sir John More, the renegade mayor, willingly transferred to him the insignia of chief magistrate, so that the king had now the city authorities completely at his devotion. Shaftesbury fled to Holland; and it was for the court to determine when the blow should be struck against the popular leaders who remained.

Such were the services of Lord Chief Justice North, which all plainly saw would ere long be rewarded by higher promotion. The health of Lord Nottingham, the chancellor, was rapidly declining, and the court had already designated his successor. Lord Craven, famous for wishing to appear intimate with rising men, in the circle at Whitehall, now seized Lord Chief Justice North by the arm and whispered in his ear; and the foreign ambassadors so distinctly saw the shadow of the coming event that they treated him with as great respect as if he had been prime minister, “and when any of them looked towards him and thought he perceived it, they very formally bowed.”

We are told that in many things North acted as “co-chancellor” with Nottingham; and for the first time the office of chancellor seems to have been like that of sheriff of Middlesex, one in its nature, but filled by two officers of equal authority. It is said that “the aspirant dealt with all imaginable kindness and candor to the declinant, and that never were predecessor and successor such cordial friends to each other, and in every respect mutually assistant, as those two were.”