Judge Jeffreys

Judge Jeffreys (1648-1689), English judge under Charles II and James II, who was notorious for his severity in political cases.

Jeffreys was born in Denbighshire, Wales, on May 15, and educated at the University of Cambridge and the Inner Temple, London. He was called to the bar in 1668. Jeffreys's brilliant eloquence soon won him a large private practice. He secured the favour of influential courtiers and was employed in the confidential legal business of Charles II. In 1677 he was knighted and appointed Solicitor-General to the Duke of York and Albany, later King James II. In 1680 he became chief justice of Chester and, in 1683, lord chief justice of England and a member of the Privy Council.

Jeffreys was an able and upright judge in civil cases. His conduct of criminal trials, however, was so brutal that he earned the nickname of the Hanging Judge. In 1683 he presided at the trials of the conspirators in the Rye House Plot, who were accused of conspiring to assassinate Charles II and the Duke of York. His conduct towards the accused was regarded as so unjust that he became infamous among the king's Whig opponents.

In 1685 James II made Jeffreys a baron. Later in the same year, Jeffreys conducted a series of trials of men charged with complicity in a rebellion against the king led by James Scott, Duke of Monmouth. Because he conducted these trials with ruthless disregard for legal procedure, they became known as the Bloody Assizes. James II appointed him lord chancellor of England and keeper of the great seal. In the following years Jeffreys upheld the king in his most tyrannical assertions of authority, and, when James fled the country in December 1688 during the Glorious Revolution, Jeffreys also attempted to escape, disguised as a seaman. He was recognized, arrested, and imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he died on April 18, 1689.