CAMDEN, CHARLES PRATT, 1st Earl (1714-1794), lord chancellor of England, was born in Kensington in 1714. He was a descendant of an old Devonshire family of high standing, the third son of Sir John Pratt, chief-justice of the king’s bench in the reign of George I. He received his early education at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. In 1734 he became a fellow of his college, and in the following year obtained his degree of B.A. Having adopted his father’s profession, he had entered the Middle Temple in 1728, and ten years later he was called to the bar. He practised at first in the courts of common law, travelling also the western circuit. For some years his practice was so limited, and he became so much discouraged, that he seriously thought of turning his back on the law and entering the church. He listened, however, to the advice of his friend Sir Robert Henley, a brother barrister, afterwards known as Lord Chancellor Northington, and persevered, working on and waiting for success. The first case which brought him prominently into notice and gave him assurance of ultimate success was the government prosecution, in 1752, of a bookseller, William Owen, for a libel on the House of Commons.
His speech for the defence contributed much to the verdict for the defendant. In 1757, through the influence of William Pitt (afterwards earl of Chatham), with whom he had formed an intimate friendship while at Eton, he received the appointment of attorney-general. The same year he entered the House of Commons as member for the borough of Downton in Wiltshire. He sat in parliament four years, but did not distinguish himself as a debater. His professional practice now largely increased. One of the most noticeable incidents of his tenure of office as attorney-general was the prosecution of Dr. J. Shebbeare (1709-1788), a violent party writer of the day, for a libel against the government contained in his notorious Letters to the People of England, which were published in the years 1756-1758. As a proof of Pratt’s moderation in a period of passionate party warfare and frequent state trials, it is noted that this was the only official prosecution for libel which he set on foot. In January 1762 Pratt was raised to the bench as chief-justice of the common pleas. He was at the same time knighted. Soon after his elevation the nation was thrown into great excitement about the prosecution of John Wilkes, and the question involved in it of the legality of “general warrants.” Chief-Justice Pratt pronounced, with decisive and almost passionate energy, against their legality, thus giving voice to the strong feeling of the nation and winning for himself an extraordinary degree of popularity as one of the “maintainers of English constitutional liberty.” Honours fell thick upon him in the form of addresses from the city of London and many large towns, and of presentations of freedom from various corporate bodies. In July 1765 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Camden, of Camden Place, in the county of Kent; and in the following year he was removed from the court of common pleas to take his seat as lord chancellor (July 30, 1766). This seat he retained less than four years; for although he discharged its duties in so efficient a manner that, with one exception, his decisions were never reversed on appeal, he took up a position of such uncompromising hostility to the governments of the day, the Grafton and North administrations, on the greatest and most exciting matters, the treatment of the American colonies and the proceedings against John Wilkes, that the government had no choice but to require of him the surrender of the great seal. He retired from the court of chancery in January 1770, but he continued to take a warm interest in the political affairs and discussions of the time. He continued steadfastly to oppose the taxation of the American colonists, and signed, in 1778, the protest of the Lords in favour of an address to the king on the subject of the manifesto of the commissioners to America. In 1782 he was appointed president of the council under the Rockingham administration, but retired in the following year. Within a few months he was reinstated in this office under the Pitt administration, and held it till his death. Lord Camden was a strenuous opponent of Fox’s India Bill, took an animated part in the debates on important public matters till within two years of his death, introduced in 1786 the scheme of a regency on occasion of the king’s insanity, and to the last zealously defended his early views on the functions of juries, especially of their right to decide on all questions of libel. He was raised to the dignity of an earl in May 1786, and was at the same time created Viscount Bayham. Earl Camden died in London on the 18th of April 1794. His remains were interred in Seale church in Kent.
CAMDEN, JOHN JEFFREYS PRATT, 2nd Earl and 1st Marquess (1759-1840), only son of the 1st earl, was born on the 11th of February 1750, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1780 he was chosen member of parliament for Bath, and he obtained the lucrative position of teller of the exchequer, an office which he kept until his death, although after 1812 he refused to receive the large income arising from it. In the ministry of William Pitt, Pratt was successively a lord of the admiralty and a lord of the treasury; then, having succeeded his father in the earldom in 1794, he was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland in 1795. Disliked in Ireland as an opponent of Roman Catholic emancipation and as the exponent of an unpopular policy, Camden’s term of office was one of commotion and alarm, culminating in the rebellion of 1798. Immediately after the suppression of the rising he resigned, and in 1804 became secretary for war and the colonies under Pitt, and in 1805 lord president of the council. He was again lord president from 1807 to 1812, after which date he remained for some time in the cabinet without office. In 1812 he was created earl of Brecknock and Marquess Camden. He died on the 8th of October 1840, and was succeeded by his only son, George Charles, 2nd marquess (1799-1866). The present marquess is his descendant. Camden was chancellor of the university of Cambridge and a knight of the Garter.
CAMDEN, WILLIAM (1551-1623), English antiquary and historian, was born in London on the 2nd of May 1551. His father, Sampson Camden, a native of Lichfield, had settled in London, and, as a painter, had become a member of the company of painter-stainers. His mother, Elizabeth, belonged to the old Cumberland family of Curwen. Young Camden received his early education at Christ’s Hospital and St Paul’s school, and in 1566 went to Magdalen College, Oxford, probably as a servitor or chorister. Failing to obtain a demyship at Magdalen he removed to Broadgates Hall, afterwards Pembroke College, and later to Christ Church, where he was supported by his friend, Dr Thomas Thornton, canon of Christ Church. As a defender of the established religion he was soon engaged in controversy, and his failure to secure a fellowship at All Souls’ College is attributed to the hostility of the Roman Catholics. In 1570 he supplicated in vain for the degree of B.A., and although a renewed application was granted in 1573 it is doubtful if he ever took a degree; and in 1571 he went to London and devoted himself to antiquarian studies, for which he had already acquired a taste.
Camden spent some time in travelling in various parts of England collecting materials for his Britannia, a work which was first published in 1586. Owing to his friendship with Dr Gabriel Goodman, dean of Westminster, Camden was made second master of Westminster school in 1575; and when Dr Edward Grant resigned the headmastership in 1593 he was appointed as his successor. The vacations which he enjoyed as a schoolmaster left him time for study and travel, and during these years he supervised the publication of three further editions of the Britannia. Although a layman he was granted the prebend of Ilfracombe in 1589, and in 1597 he resigned his position at Westminster on being made Clarencieux king-at-arms, an appointment which caused some ill-feeling, and the York herald, Ralph Brooke, led an attack on the genealogical accuracy of the Britannia, and accused its author of plagiarism. Camden replied to Brooke in an appendix to the fifth edition of the Britannia, published in 1600, and his reputation came through the ordeal untarnished. Having brought out an enlarged and improved edition of the Britannia in 1607, he began to work on a history of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to which he had been urged by Lord Burghley in 1597. The first part of this history dealing with the reign down to 1588 was published in 1615 under the title Annales rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha. With regard to this work some controversy at once arose over the author’s treatment of Mary, queen of Scots. It was asserted that Camden altered his original narrative in order to please James I., and, moreover, that the account which he is said to have given to his friend, the French historian, Jacques de Thou, differed substantially from his own. It seems doubtful if there is any truth in either of these charges. The second part of this work, finished in 1617, was published, after the author’s death, at Leiden in 1625 and in London in 1627. In 1622 Camden carried out a plan to found a history lectureship at Oxford. He provided an endowment from some lands at Bexley, and appointed as the first lecturer, his friend, Degory Wheare. The present occupant of the position is known as the Camden professor of ancient history. His concluding years were mainly spent at Chislehurst, where he had taken up his residence in 1609, and in spite of recurring illnesses he continued to work at material for the improvement of the Britannia and kindred subjects. He died at Chislehurst on the 9th of November 1623, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument now stands to his memory.
The Britannia, the first edition of which is dedicated to Burghley, is a survey of the British islands written in elegant Latin. It was first translated into English in 1610, probably under the author’s direction, and other translations have subsequently appeared, the best of which is an edition edited by Richard Gough and published in three volumes in 1789, and in four volumes in 1806. The Annales has been translated into French, and English translations appeared in 1635, 1675 and 1688. The Latin version was published at Leiden in 1639 and 1677, and under the editorship of T. Hearne at Oxford in 1717. In addition to these works Camden compiled a Greek grammar, Institutio Graecae Grammatices Compendiaria, which became very popular, and he published an edition of the writings of Asser, Giraldus Cambrensis, Thomas Walsingham and others, under the title, Anglica, Hibernica, Normannica, Cambrica, a veteribus scripta, published at Frankfort in 1602, and again in 1603. He also drew up a list of the epitaphs in Westminster Abbey, which was issued as Reges, Reginae, Nobiles et alii in ecclesia collegiata Beati Petri Westmonasterii sepulti. This was enlarged and published again in 1603 and 1606. In 1605 he published his Remains concerning Britain, a book of collections from the Britannia, which quickly passed through seven editions; and he wrote an official account of the trial of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators as Actio in Henricum Garnetum, Societatis Jesuiticae in Anglia superiorem et caeteros.
Camden, who refused a knighthood, was a man of enormous industry, and possessed a modest and friendly disposition. He had a large number of influential friends, among whom were Archbishop Ussher, Sir Robert Cotton, John Selden, the French jurist Brisson, and Isaac Casaubon. His correspondence was published in London in 1691 by Dr Thomas Smith under the title, Vita Gulielmi Camdeni et Illustrium virorum ad G. Camdenum Epistolae. This-volume also contains his Memorabilia de seipso; his notes of the reign of James I.; and other interesting matter. In 1838 the Camden Society was founded in his honour, and much valuable work has been done under its auspices.