Although Heath’s highly successful legal career took him twice to the highest reaches of the judiciary, he aroused considerable ambivalence among contemporaries and continues to do so among historians of the period.
I. Ancestry and Early Life
Heath’s family had lived on the border between Kent and Surrey since the fifteenth century.
Thanks to Buckingham James I nominated Heath for the recordership of London when this office fell vacant in 1618. He defeated Sir John Walter* by two votes, Chamberlain describing him as ‘generally approved and well spoken of’. He began to buy land in Sussex, leased some Norfolk marshlands from the Crown, and joined the Virginia Company board. In 1619 he successfully negotiated with the attorney-general, (Sir) Henry Yelverton*, to procure a new charter for the City. However, the following year Yelverton was found to have drafted the patent improperly and in the process granted more powers to the City than had been intended. Heath was also implicated in the scandal, but he successfully defended himself, although Sir Simonds D’Ewes† thought him ‘as deeply guilty’ as Yelverton.
II. The 1621 Parliament
In November 1620 Heath was elected to Parliament for the City, the first of his family to sit, taking the recorder’s traditional second place on the return. Before the Parliament met he succeeded Sir Thomas Coventry* as solicitor general after the latter became attorney-general in the wake of Yelverton’s fall. Coventry had been elected for Droitwich, but on 8 Feb. 1621 the Commons confirmed the 1614 resolution that the attorney-general was ineligible to sit in the House.
Heath soon began to play an important role in the proceedings of the House, being named to 50 committees, 15 of them for drafting of bills and addresses, and making about 100 speeches. On 5 Feb. he was named to the sub-committee appointed by the Committee of the Whole to draw up a petition to the king in defence of freedom of speech in Parliament. However, 11 days later he joined in the condemnation of Thomas Sheppard* for the latter’s attack on puritanism, stating that ‘it were an injustice we should not punish license and abuse of that freedom’. He argued that Sheppard ‘must have punishment if ever you will punish’ because the Crown granted the Commons freedom of speech ‘upon a condition’, which was that the House should regulate itself. Unless action was taken Members would risk losing their freedom as ‘the king [would have] no reason to trust us’.
Although a spokesman for the Crown, Heath was willing to defend the powers of the Commons. On 16 Mar. he objected to the request of the Lords to examine Members on oath about issues that had been adjudged a grievance by the Commons.
Heath initially seems to have taken little interest in the case of Edward Floyd, the prisoner in the Fleet accused of making derogatory remarks about the Elector Palatine and his wife, the Princess Elizabeth. Having discovered Floyd’s offence during its investigation of the Fleet, the Commons ordered his punishment on 1 May. By the following day Heath was aware that the king believed that the Commons had exceeded its authority. When the Speaker moved that the sheriffs of London, who had attended the House to implement Floyd’s punishment, should be discharged, he concurred, stating if the Commons dissented ‘the king will send a message’.
Two days later Heath reported that he and the attorney-general had examined Floyd, who had adamantly denied the charges against him, and had inspected a document initially thought to have been his confession, which had turned out to be a petition from his son. Heath announced that Floyd’s stubbornness had only served to make James more hostile to him, especially as Floyd was also refusing to acknowledge his guilt in another case despite incontrovertible evidence against him. Faced with such obstinacy, however, James would not condemn Floyd without sworn testimony. Consequently Heath reported that the king wished the Commons to transmit its charges to the Lords, where they could be dealt with in a proper judicial manner, although he added that ‘His Majesty said, that, if we can find a better way for this business ... he shall like well of it’. However, instead of attending to this matter the Commons proceeded to debate whether it should make an official record of its judgment, so causing Heath to rise to speak again. His attempt to speak a second time during the debate contravened the House’s rules and provoked opposition, prompting him to remark that ‘I wonder [there is] such contention for my speaking when so many [others] have’. Although he stated that he ‘will not go about to dissuade from this’, he argued it was wrong ‘to do fit things unseasonably’. He reminded his colleagues that the issue had arisen from a message from the House that the king’s request for precedents ‘whereby he might see our power to give such judgments’ had gone unanswered. He warned that in entering a judgment the House would only further antagonize the king, to no purpose.
Aside from his contribution to the debate on the Yorkshire constables, Heath made only one speech on an election dispute. On 18 May he agreed with Sir Edwin and Sir Samuel Sandys that there was no necessity to re-examine Lewis Powell* about the Pembrokeshire election. On the same day he successfully asked to be heard in his capacity as king’s counsel before the privileges committee judged the claims of the boroughs of Hertford, Wendover, Amersham and Marlow for enfranchisement.
Heath was concerned for the Commons to proceed efficiently. At the committee for grievances on 19 Feb. he urged his colleagues ‘not to dwell upon generals’ but to concentrate on specific issues.
Religion played an important part in Heath’s life: an inventory of his library drawn up in 1647 suggests that his reading, other than for professional purposes, consisted largely of sacred works. He was a devout Calvinist and, although there is no evidence that he was personally dissatisfied with the structure and worship of the established church, he may have had some sympathy with moderate puritanism as he supported episcopacy but could be critical of the bishops.
Heath’s major religious preoccupation in the first sitting of the 1621 Parliament was with measures to eliminate loopholes in the legislation against recusancy. On 5 Feb. he was appointed to the sub-committee named by the Committee of the Whole to suppress Catholicism and, ten days later, he was among those instructed to attend the conference with the Lords about the petition to the king on the subject.
In his official capacity as solicitor general, Heath’s main legislative preoccupation in 1621 was with bills of grace. In 1614 Yelverton, then solicitor general, had introduced 14 grace bills which, it was hoped, would smooth the way for a grant of supply. They were mostly highly technical measures dealing with complex points of law. None were enacted because Parliament was dissolved without any bills being passed. By November 1620 the Privy Council had agreed that a similar programme should be put forward in the forthcoming Parliament, but at that stage Heath was still recorder of London and there is no evidence that he was a party to those preparations.
At the committee for grievances on 28 Feb. Heath raised a number of issues which had been the subject of grace bills in 1614, including the fees for granting licences of alienation and passing sheriffs accounts.
After the first reading of the subsidy bill on 5 Mar. Sir Thomas Wentworth called for the grace bills ‘to go up with the subsidy’ bill, whereupon Heath announced that these were still ‘preparing’. Sir John Strangways’ motion later the same day for a day to be assigned ‘for bringing in some of the bills of grace, at least’ suggests a growing impatience with Heath’s progress. Four days later it was not Heath but his successor as recorder of London, Heneage Finch, who finally brought in two of the grace bills.
Heath was active in promoting the passage of the subsidy bill. After secretary of state Sir George Calvert reported James I’s response to Parliament’s petition against recusancy on 23 Feb., Heath called for rapid progress in passing the subsidy. He smoothed concerns at the first reading of the bill on 5 Mar. by not only assuring his colleagues that progress had been made with the bills of grace, but also by commending Crewe’s motion ‘to have the pardon go on with the subsidy [bill]’. At the second reading on 7 Mar. Heath called for Noye’s proposed proviso, to ensure that the session did not end when the king assented to the bill, to be read. Heath was appointed to the committee for the bill and may well have been responsible for drafting it as Pym stated that Heath placed his alma mater Cambridge before Oxford in the original text, a piece of drafting that was changed by the committee on 10 March.
Heath was active in promoting numerous other items of legislation. On 16 Feb. he reminded the House of the bill against informers that had been introduced by the Sir Henry Poole. This was subsequently debated at the committee for the whole House, whereupon Heath argued that although the measure was ‘good in intention’ it contained ‘some fault[s]’. He was appointed to a subcommittee to reconsider it, and when it was reported on 7 Mar. he opposed Sir Thomas Riddell’s motion to have its provisions extended to cover the attorney-general.
On 24 Feb. Heath offered to report the bill for the limitation of actions, but consideration of his motion was deferred. He had presumably reported the measure by 3 Mar., when it was ordered to be engrossed. However, at the third reading on 19 Mar. he raised objections on behalf of the Crown. Further consideration of the bill was delayed until 25 May, when he announced that he would speak for his constituents, whom he referred to as ‘merchants’. He successfully moved for a proviso to exempt disputes arising between factors and their principals.
On 16 Feb. Heath chaired a committee of the whole House to consider the bill for regulating the wool trade, and in this capacity he examined a witness from the Staplers’ Company about their monopoly, asking sarcastically whether they traded ‘for charity or gain’.
Heath unsuccessfully opposed the bill concerning purveyance of carts at its third reading on 25 May. Stating that he was not unsympathetic to the objectives of the bill, he objected to the fact that it encroached on the king’s prerogative. He declared that the bill would make justices of the peace ‘judges of what the king shall pay, which we would not yield unto in our own services’. He also objected that if the purveyors did not pay what they owed it would be the king, not the purveyors, who would be punished as those with unpaid bills would no longer be subject to purveyance. He advised the House to proceed by petition, stating that the king ‘would (as he hath promised in my hearing) have all these wrongs redressed’. This last remark suggests that he had recently consulted James on the subject, who may have instructed Heath to oppose the bill.
Three days later Heath successfully moved for the recommitment of the bill to confirm the provisions in Magna Carta against imprisonment without showing cause. He was critical of provisions for censuring the judges in Parliament for not granting writs of habeas corpus, arguing that it was ‘not fit to punish them for [an] error in judgment’. He also stated that it was prejudicial to justices of the peace who, he argued, necessarily had to use their discretion to commit malefactors. Moreover, he stated that the provision to suspend justices for a year was ‘such a disgrace that he will not be willing to come in again’.
On 17 Feb. Sir Edward Sackville reported from the committee on abuses in courts of justice against the issue of protections for creditors by the Court of Wards. At this Heath informed the Commons of James’s sympathetic response to the petition he had drafted on behalf of the City against similar letters of protection issued by Chancery, known as bills of conformity. He proposed that the projected bill to remedy these abuses should encompass all the equity courts.
Heath played an important role in the Commons’ proceedings against patentees in 1621. On 19 Feb. he set out ‘the nature’ of the patent for licensing inns for the committee for grievances. The following day he asked whether any of the new inns that had been licensed by the patentees had formerly been alehouses, presumably thereby seeking to substantiate the allegation that the patentees had licensed establishments previously suppressed by local magistrates.
In his report to the Commons about the patent for making gold and silver thread on 5 Mar., Sir Robert Phelips revealed that Heath had had a hand in drafting a Proclamation to enforce the monopoly when he had been recorder of London. Heath replied that he had only been consulted about the wording of the Proclamation and had been active in opposing the monopoly on behalf of the City. When the issue was debated again two days later, Heath reiterated the distinction he had earlier made between the king’s right to issue patents and the faults of the patentees, arguing that the grant was not grievance in itself ‘though it be so in the execution’. It was perfectly legitimate, he said, for the king to grant monopolies for a time to promote new industries. Drawing on the fact that the patent involved precious metals, he drew an analogy between the Crown’s power to grant patents and its undisputed power over the coinage, arguing that the king could lawfully order all coins to be melted down even ‘though it be inconvenient’. Nevertheless he evidently had no objection to the Commons condemning specific grants as grievances.
In 1618 Heath had been assigned by the Privy Council to represent the Newcastle hostmen in their suit with the patentees of Winterton lighthouse, but in 1621, when there were calls for all lighthouses to be handed over to Trinity House, he argued that ‘private men [are] fitter than a corporation for maintaining lights’ (9 April). He also maintained that the patentees’ grant in this particular case was lawful and implicitly defended the conduct of the patentees, who exacted a fee from passing ships for their services, pointing out that the king did not have the resources to maintain the lighthouses himself. On 2 June he complained that it was irresponsible to condemn the patent without first establishing an alternative method for maintaining the lighthouses.
Heath was one of three Members who spoke in the committee for grievances on 14 May in favour of the patent for glassmaking granted to Sir Robert Mansell*. He argued it was perfectly legitimate to restrain economic freedom ‘for the good of the common wealth’ and stated:
... if it be profitable not to have wood wasted, if good for a populous and numerous nation to be set awork about a manufacture which before foreigners only exercised, then if it stand not with the policy and law of all states, I leave it to your judgments.
The committee judged it a grievance, and the House concurred.
Heath was prominent in managing the final days of the sitting. On 29 May the House’s anger at the king’s refusal to delay the adjournment was, according to John Pym*, ‘expressed by a general cry "Rise, Rise", which Mr. Solicitor began to temper by a fair and mild speech’.
I know the ends we came for are good. He flatters that saieth the Commonwealth hath no diseases, but that they are incurable, God forbid we should say or think. We have divers good bills, grievances found. We all grieve one grief, that we cannot do so much good as we would; but shall we therefore refuse all that we may do?
Even though the continued sitting of Parliament remained outside of its control, there was still time for the Commons, with the co-operation of the Lords, to prepare a number of bills and petitions of grievance. Moreover, it was not necessarily the case that the passage of these measures would jeopardize the rest of the Commons’ legislation, for although the Royal Assent ordinarily ended a session the Commons might in this instance decide to pass a bill to enable Parliament at the beginning of the next session to take up the unfinished legislation where it had left off. Alternatively, Heath argued, the Commons could simply accept James’s offer of an adjournment.
On 2 June the king offered the Lords either an immediate adjournment or a further ten days in which to pass bills. The Lords referred the decision to the Commons, where Heath continued to favour an adjournment. He was among those ordered to attend the king with the answer in favour of adjournment, and was appointed to bring back the reply. When he reported the king’s response two days later he asked the House for ‘pardon if I use the help of my paper’, suggesting that Heath usually spoke without notes.
During the recess Heath was active in suppressing a number of patents condemned by the Commons.
On 3 Dec. Heath approved Goring’s motion for a war with Spain, which included the advice, unsolicited by the king, that Prince Charles should marry a Protestant. Ironically, given that the Commons was trespassing on matters that were the exclusive preserve of the king, he began by criticizing Noye for intruding on the royal prerogative when the latter questioned the case for war. Exclaiming ‘for God’s sake let us not dispute whether the league be broken or no’, he argued that only the king could determine that question. He then announced that he was ‘satisfied with the matter of the petition’ in general and declared that he thought the ‘particulars follow as consequents’, whereupon he moved ‘for the form of the petition, that, though the king only [was] to determine of peace, and war and marriage, yet we may with duty petition His Majesty, as we may do to God’. Nevertheless he stated he had ‘two scruples’. First he wanted the petition to state ‘in precise terms’ that ‘we take not upon us to determine’. Secondly, he was concerned that the end of the petition, which included requests concerning the ending of the session, the passing of bills, and the pardon, would become confused with those sections relating to foreign policy.
Five days later Heath endorsed the Protestation defending the House’s right to free speech, agreeing that ‘the privilege and liberty of Parliament [was] the subjects’ inheritance’, but he was still eager to secure the passage of at least ‘a short Act of six lines ... to preserve all statutes as they now stand’. On 17 Dec. he urged the House ‘to overpass the curious construction’ of the king’s letter on its privileges. ‘Shall we desire him favourably to interpret our words, and shall we tie him so strictly? It is dangerous to contest.’ The next day he supported the Speaker’s motion to proceed to business ‘at a certain hour’, whether or not the House was full, observing that lawyers must be wasting their time in Westminster Hall if ‘for their late coming they cannot afford to pay 6d.’. He now believed that there was no time to complete the continuance bill, but tendered ‘a short bill, to continue these laws for a time’, and, while thinking it best to defer the pardon bill, he assured the House that it was ready if required, as was the subsidy bill.
III. The 1624 Parliament
Heath needed to find a new constituency for the next election in 1624, and East Grinstead was the natural choice. His father had passed the last years of his long life in the neighbourhood, and he had himself purchased property in the town in 1618 from Matthias Caldicott*, a servant of the 3rd earl of Dorset, the dominant electoral patron of the borough.
Heath was appointed to the privileges committee on 23 Feb., to which body the question of enfranchising Wendover, Marlow and Amersham was referred two days later. When this issue was debated in committee on 4 Apr., Heath stated that the king, mindful that numerous other boroughs could make a similar case, did not want the Commons encumbered ‘with an excessive and an unnecessary number’. He successfully moved for a sub-committee to search the records to establish how many boroughs could make similar claims. However, there is no evidence that his suggestion that the privileges committee should review previous enfranchisements and ‘consider those towns which heretofore were ancient boroughs and are now heaps of stone’ was pursued, and he was unable to prevent the restoration of the boroughs’ representation in Parliament.
On 27 Feb. Heath successfully moved that consideration of Buckingham’s relation of events in Spain be postponed until after the weekend, thus giving the Lords the opportunity to set the pace.
In the supply debate of 11 Mar. Heath argued that it was not proper for the Commons to determine whether the king should go to war. However, since he did not think the king doubted the need for war he thought that he should instead be approached to make ‘a declaration of his meaning’. He also called on the Commons to issue a declaration of its own in favour of war which, he said, James would need to encourage his allies abroad, and to confer with the Lords ‘to consider of the particulars’. However, he warned the House not to expect to hear the details of the king’s plans ‘because we understand not the particular necessaries for the war; and since this place can better give counsel than keep it’.
Heath reported several conferences during the next four weeks as the two Houses strove to frame a common policy.
A motion from Heath on 9 Apr. to proceed with the subsidy bill led to the House to debate whether James had now dissolved the treaties with Spain. Heath hastened to assure the House that the prince of Wales and duke of Buckingham had both said that James had informed the Spanish ambassador that the treaty negotiations were now at an end. He also said that the duke had seen dispatches that were to be sent to the English embassy in Madrid to the same effect.
Heath took the chair when the subsidy bill was committed to the whole House. At a meeting of the committee on 4 May he read a letter from the king containing the names of the members of the Council of War and their proposed powers for inclusion in the bill, and also James’s intention to end the session on the 22nd of that month.
Heath finally reported the subsidy bill on 14 May. Towards the end of the subsequent debate he suddenly produced three amendments to the preamble, naming the recovery of the Palatinate as the purpose for which taxes were to be voted. He stated that he was acting ‘by direction’, but this merely prompted Edward Kirton to ask from whom the direction came. Heath at first prevaricated, saying ‘a good man’, but he subsequently admitted that his instructions came from the prince and the king. According to the diarist Sir Walter Earle, the amendments were ‘utterly disliked by the House’, because Heath had moved them ‘at the instant of passing to engross, in a thin House and late in the afternoon’. They were also ‘clean contrary to the intent of the House ... it being otherwise resolved ... that the Palatinate should not be named’ in the bill. The chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Sir Humphrey May, Sir Thomas Wentworth and others came to Heath’s defence. However, a motion to recommit the bill was lost and the House resolved to engross the measure without including the amendments provided by Heath.
As in 1621, Heath was active in promoting the enforcement of the recusancy laws. On 1 Apr. he moved for the recusancy petition to be drafted ‘in plain language’ and for it to include a clause requesting the king not to accept any treaty with a foreign state that would entail abrogating the laws against recusants.
On 28 Apr. Heath delivered a petition from several fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge against their master, Dr. John Richardson, accusing him of having committed various offences against the college’s rules. The details of the accusation are unknown and were not proved, but possibly they owed their origin to religious differences at Cambridge, as Richardson was a prominent anti-Calvinist theologian. Heath’s willingness to promote the petition may indicate that he was becoming concerned by the rise of anti-Calvinism.
On 6 Apr. Heath responded to Robert Berkeley’s report to the trade committee on Edmund Nicholson’s patent for the pretermitted customs, arguing that the legality of the levy should be first debated by the lawyers of the House before the economic consequences were considered.
On 13 Mar. Heath again objected to the bill against purveyance of carts. He argued that justices of the peace could not deal impartially with disputes arising from purveyance because it was their tenants who were charged with foodstuffs for the Court and they were therefore ‘in a sort parties’. He warned that the king was unlikely to assent to the bill.
On 8 Apr. Heath told the Commons that the king was willing to let a select committee examine the books of the Merchant Adventurers because they contained ‘divers things of great consequence not fit to be published’.
When, on 19 May, the Commons decided to petition for a weeks’ extension of the session Heath successfully moved to allow no new business to be introduced in order to allow the House to finish dealing with those matters already in hand. He reported the king’s agreement the following day.
IV. The 1625 Parliament
Re-elected for East Grinstead to the first Caroline Parliament, Heath was named to 22 committees and made about 15 recorded speeches. On 21 June, the first day of business, he effectively countered William Mallory, who called for an adjournment to escape the plague. An immediate adjournment of the first Parliament of the reign, he observed, would cast doubt on the good affections of the king’s subjects, and was inconsistent with the order already made for a day of fasting and prayer. ‘There is danger of all sides, but David in a strait chose rather to fall into God’s hands than into the hands of men. This is our case, if we advise not maturely at this time for the public defence.’
Heath took the chair on 23 June in the grand committee for religion and supply over the protest of Edward Alford that he was unfit ‘because he was sworn to the king and of his fee’.
On 7 July Heath agreed that the notorious anti-Calvinist Richard Montagu was guilty of contempt and should be committed to the custody of the serjeant. He justified the Commons’ authority in matters of religion by quoting the words ‘pro ecclesia Anglicana’ from the writ of summons.
On 5 July Heath introduced the Tunnage and Poundage bill, which, on his motion, was committed to the whole House that afternoon. However he was forced to protest against the proposal to limit the grant to one year:
because it had continued so many descents, and might be distasteful to the king, who would be as inclinable to do matters of grace to us as any of his ancestors. Yet he yielded it should be committed, and that some short proviso might be annexed to save our right in those questions.
The following day he was appointed to a committee to draw up a preamble to the bill and, on 7 July, he reported the bill, despite the fact that it would expire the following March.
On 6 July Heath reported the bill to vote the king two subsidies.
Heath twice spoke in favour of the return of Sir Thomas Wentworth in debates on the Yorkshire election dispute on 4 and 5 July.
When the session resumed at Oxford Heath was obliged to explain the pardon for various recusants produced by Sir Edward Giles on 1 Aug., arguing that it had been drawn up before the king’s acceptance of the address on religion. The French ambassador had procured the pardon and consequently Heath moved that ‘this House may take some course to prevent’ the like in the future.
On 5 Aug. Heath delivered a long speech in support of the renewed appeal for additional supply made by Coke. First he asserted that the Commons were committed to support the war, arguing that it had been pressure from Parliament that had led to the breach with Spain, and that James and Charles had originally supported the Spanish Match, an ‘inclination ... [which] fetched many sighs’. Nevertheless he conceded that the Commons could not give the king a blank cheque and for this reason he proposed that a petition be sent to the king calling upon him to declare Spain the enemy. Arguing that the need for money was genuine, he placed the blame for the Crown’s poor finances on James I’s shoulders, and remarked that it would be wrong to punish Charles for his father’s extravagance. Moreover, it was not the king’s pressing necessities that required additional money to be voted but those of the kingdom. He conceded that the Catholics at home were indeed a threat but argued that they should be dealt with separately. Turning to the scarcely veiled criticism of Buckingham he acknowledged ‘his obligation to the great man intended’ but agreed that if there were charges against the duke they should be investigated. He added that to refuse to vote supply because of the faults laid to the door of Buckingham would be to punish the commonwealth for the faults of an individual and that ‘it is the natural order that those things be first done which are most urgent’. He asserted that Spain presented a worse threat than either the plague or famine, particularly if Ireland were attacked, and he rebutted the argument that it was too late in the year for military action, stating that ‘we know not the design, and therefore cannot judge of the time’. He concluded by conceding that ‘the king’s estate, like a ship, has a great leak’, but stated that if the ship was under attack the first duty of the crew was to defend her, not mend the leak. He unsuccessfully proposed a further grant of two subsidies and two fifteenths.
On 8 Aug. Heath reported a private bill to enable trustees of the 3rd earl of Dorset’s estate to sell land.
V. Later Life
In October 1625 Heath was promoted attorney-general. Though now prohibited from serving in the Commons, but he was nonetheless returned again for East Grinstead to the second Caroline Parliament. (In addition he unsuccessfully nominated Sir John Evelyn* at Salisbury). On 9 Feb. 1626 the Speaker raised the question of his eligibility and, on the following day, the House ordered the issue of a new writ. Consequently he played no part in the Commons’ proceedings, although he did appear at the bar of the House on 6 Mar. to explain the second stay of the St. Peter of Le Havre by Buckingham.
In November 1627 Heath defended the Crown’s power to imprison prominent Forced Loan refusers without showing cause in the Five Knights Case.
In October 1629 Heath was granted the American province of Carolina, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, over which he was to exercise palatine power. Nothing came, however, of his plan to colonize the province with Huguenot refugees, and he disposed of his patent in the 1630s.
Heath was allowed to continue to practise at the bar as a serjeant-at-law, so long as he did not appear against the Crown, and three years later he was advanced to the rank of king’s serjeant. He was nonetheless forced to realize some of his investments as his debts amounted to some £8,500 in 1639. After contesting Reading in an election to the Short Parliament, he rejoined the judiciary, this time in King’s Bench, and in 1642 he became lord chief justice when Sir John Bramston failed to join the king. He adhered to the king until the fall of Oxford in June 1646, after which he chose to go into exile. He drew up his will at Calais on 18 Aug. 1649 and died two days later. As he had wished, his body was brought back to Brasted, which had been his principal residence between 1633 and the outbreak of the Civil War, and buried next to his wife. The will was not proved and consequently there was a grant of the administration of his estate in 1660. His son, John, sat for Clitheroe in the Cavalier Parliament.