Warren, whose father and maternal grandfather were noted royal physicians, was initially an advanced Whig and enjoyed a successful practice, at 4 Stone Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, as a counsel in election cases; he acted, for instance, on behalf of the opponents of the Grosvenor interest at Chester in 1818.
Warren was the best and most leading counsel in parliamentary committees of that day. The same preference was given to him as is now given to [Charles] Austin. His political opinions were democratical to an extreme. They went far beyond those of most Ultra Whigs. Lord Castlereagh* having conceived a high notion of his talents, thought him worth bribing, and he was ready enough to be bribed. The report of what was going on between them was soon circulated. One of the leading members of the Whig party (Creevey*) saw him early one morning at Lord Castlereagh’s door, and going up to him, said ‘I have caught you in the fact’. Castlereagh made him chief justice of Chester, meaning to advance him, as he might have opportunities of doing. He seemed however to have lost his talents with his principles, for no man ever proved himself in my time so incompetent a judge. He could not even state the evidence correctly in his charges to the jury, and the counsel on both sides were obliged to point out to him his unintentional omissions and misrepresentations. Lord Castlereagh afterwards called him ‘my bad bargain’.
Warws. RO MI 247, Philips mems. i. 396-7.
Having been provided with a seat for Dorchester by the ministerialist Lord Shaftesbury in June 1819, when he became a freeman of the borough, Warren defended the government’s repressive policies and was taunted for his desertion of opposition.
Following an (ultimately unsuccessful) application in king’s bench, 22 Apr. 1820, for a retrial in the case of the king v. Sir Charles Wolseley and Joseph Harrison, whom Warren had found guilty of seditious activity at a meeting in Stockport the previous summer, the Whig James Macdonald* wrote to Edward Davies Davenport* on the 24th that
the rat Warren is likely to receive such a set down as no man in a judicial character ever yet has. A new trial is likely to be granted on account of his most flagrant and iniquitous summing up at Chester. This will be followed by a motion in Parliament to exclude the Welsh judges from the House of Commons.
The Times, 12, 13, 24 Apr., 13, 16 May 1820; JRL, Bromley Davenport mss.
Warren vindicated the Welsh judicature on a motion for inquiry, 1 June, when he attacked Lord John Russell for apparently having stated (in the debate on the civil list, 8 May) that being dependent on government for promotion he would support their measures, however unconstitutional; he concluded by boasting that ‘he could, even from his practice before committees above stairs, soon contrive to earn enough to purchase a moiety of the fee simple of the salary which that office afforded’. The anomalous position of his judicial appointment being compatible with a seat in Parliament was criticized by Creevey, who said that for 20 years Sir Francis Burdett* had been ‘uniformly the subject of his most fervent panegyric’, and Russell, who declared that if Warren ‘actually thought his character stood higher in the country in consequence of his recent change, he should only say, that he wished the learned gentleman joy of his taste and judgement’. Condemnation was swift and universal, because, as Philips put it, he showed ‘such a low and sordid character of mind in his mode of venerating himself, that even his new friends could not fail to be disgusted with him’. Charles Williams Wynn* reported to his wife that ‘Warren was certainly well roasted and made as angry, as vain and as bad a speech as ever I heard’; and, according to Sir James Mackintosh*, Warren ‘made a wretched figure ... He struggled ineffectually to conceal his agitation under the appearance of a gross and vulgar buffoonery which much resembled a total indifference to character’.
He spoke in favour of the king’s bench proceedings bill, 20 June 1820. He seconded the treasury secretary Stephen Rumbold Lushington’s motion to recommit the marriage bill and was a teller for the minority, 30 June. He was added to the select committee on election polls, 3 July. He called Phillimore’s resolution declaring illegal the paying of out-voters at Grantham ‘crude and ill-digested’, 12 July 1820, when he was a teller for the hostile minority, and the following day he commented on the offences at sea bill.
Liverpool had envisaged the possibility of Warren leaving the House in January 1824, but he did not retire until the dissolution in 1826.
proved as worthless in private as he had done in public life. He robbed his nephews and nieces, of whom he was the guardian, of a great part, if not the whole, of their fortunes. I have been told that he also defrauded his widow.
Philips mems. i. 395-6, 400-2.
By his will, dated 17 Dec. 1825, Warren left his wife his entire estate, which included personalty sworn under £14,000 (resworn under £16,000 in 1831), ‘knowing she will be kind to such of my relations as may require her assistance and to those persons who have been dependent on me’. He bequeathed a Gainsborough portrait of his father to his brother, the society doctor Pelham Warren (1778-1835).