Walter’s father, a Staffordshire man, enjoyed a successful practice in the Court of the Marches at Ludlow. Promoted to the Council of the Marches in 1576, on the recommendation of Sir Henry Sidney†, he became a Welsh judge three years later, shortly after leasing Ludlow castle. Walter’s elder brother, James, sat for New Radnor Boroughs in 1589, but opted for the life of a country gentleman.
In 1613 Walter succeeded Thomas Stephens† as attorney-general to Prince Charles. The Inner Temple promptly acknowledged both this promotion and ‘his good deserts and experience in the government of this house’ by granting him seniority over the other benchers. In 1616 he was appointed a member of the prince’s newly constituted council, in which capacity he shortly afterwards became a trustee of Charles’s estates.
Despite these setbacks, Walter evidently retained the confidence of Prince Charles. When the third Jacobean Parliament was summoned, he secured a seat at East Looe as a nominee of the Prince’s Council, and took an active part in the Commons’ proceedings, receiving 36 appointments, and making 13 speeches. He certainly had some personal motives for entering the House, for when the 2nd Viscount Montagu’s estate bill was debated on 16 Mar. 1621, Walter acknowledged that he was a trustee of the lands in question. As counsel to Oxford University, he also had good reason to monitor the bill to confirm the foundation of Wadham College, which he was appointed to scrutinize on 9 March.
Walter’s close ties to the Crown were clearly recognized in the Commons. He was nominated on 5 Feb. to consider how best to petition the king about recusancy, and on 16 May to help prepare the list of general grievances for presentation to James. His speech of 27 Feb. on problems with the money supply was probably also intended to help the government, as he blamed a former lord treasurer, the 1st earl of Salisbury (Robert Cecil†), for restricting the circulation of foreign coin.
Although Walter’s views on monopolies did not always correspond with those of a majority of his colleagues in the House, his legal expertise was frequently called upon in the Commons. On 13 Feb. he was appointed to help draft the bill for continuance or repeal of expiring statutes, and he was included in the drafting committees for bills on such wide-ranging topics as parliamentary elections, the creation of new administrative posts, and the export of ordnance (10, 22 and 26 March).
Even so, Walter several times found himself out on a limb over his reluctance to accept criticism of the legal profession from any quarter. Far from being an unquestioning ally of Sir Edward Coke, who viewed Chancery with deep suspicion, Walter, on 14 Mar., staunchly defended that court’s practice of issuing bills of conformity, which his friend had just attacked. In fact, on this matter he was out of step with government policy and was soon obliged to backtrack. Included on 20 Mar. in a committee to draft a bill against these legal instruments, he also helped to revise a royal Proclamation about conformity bills three days later.
Walter also distanced himself from the prevailing mood of the House on 1 May, when Members vented their wrath on the scurrilous recusant, Edward Floyd. While Walter fully accepted that Floyd deserved punishment for libelling Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Elector Palatine, he counselled against excessive physical cruelty, which he equated with the violent treatment meted out to Protestants by continental Catholics. Instead, he argued for a penalty that fitted Floyd’s crime, suggesting a whipping, confiscation of his property, and a spell in the pillory. Surprisingly for a Crown lawyer, he failed to point out that the Commons was in exceeding its powers by proposing a punishment at all.
During the summer recess, Walter was tipped as a possible master of the Rolls but in the event Sir Julius Caesar*, who had been expected to resign, actually retained the office until his death 15 years later. When Parliament resumed in November, Walter neither spoke in debate nor attracted any appointments, despite the fact that some of Prince Charles’s legislation was still under consideration in the Commons, and it must be doubted whether he actually attended this sitting. Following the dissolution, he was one of the few people allowed to visit Coke, who had been imprisoned in the Tower for his role in drafting the 1621 Protestation.
In 1624 Walter was re-elected at East Looe, again as a nominee of Prince Charles’s Council. He was almost as prominent in the Commons as he had been before, receiving 34 committee appointments and making seven speeches.
Walter was once more preoccupied with securing the passage of legislation for Prince Charles. Entitled as a Cornish borough Member to attend the committee for the revived bill concerning duchy of Cornwall leases (9 Mar.), he drew on his personal experience as a trustee of the prince’s estates to explain on 11 Mar. how grants had been made before Charles came of age. Walter took a close interest in the bill to help the prince’s tenants at Goathland, Yorkshire; named to the committee on 15 Mar., he attended five of its eight meetings. He was also appointed to committees for the bills to confirm Charles’s acquisition of property from Lady Alice Dudley and Sir Lewis Watson* (23 Mar., 9 April).
Despite this activity on behalf of the prince, Walter ostensibly did little to support the calls by Charles and the duke of Buckingham for war with Spain. His only recorded intervention came on 19 Mar., during the debate on supply. Suggesting that a minimum of four subsidies was required to fund a serious campaign, he warned the House against inquiring too closely into how the money might be spent, ‘for that the war is changeable by occasion, and it is more proper for a private council than for one so public’. Instead, he appealed to Members’ patriotism, asserting that England needed to ‘resist the increasing pride of Spain, and to regain the Palatinate and defend religion’. While acknowledging concerns that the country could not afford heavy taxation, he suggested that England’s recent economic problems were a punishment from God, brought on by failure to help persecuted Protestants abroad. A firm commitment to war now would restore both the country’s lost pride, and its prosperity.
Monopolies caused less contention in this Parliament. Walter was appointed on 7 Apr. to both attend and manage a conference on the monopolies bill, while six days later he was named to the joint committee of both Houses for drafting amendments to this measure. However, he did not otherwise venture opinions on this topic.
Early in the new reign Walter was promoted to serjeant-at-law and king’s serjeant, and in May 1625 he succeeded Sir Lawrence Tanfield* as chief baron of the Exchequer. Even among his fellow judges, he was remarkable for his solemnity. One of them, Sir George Croke, characterized him as ‘a profoundly learned man, and of great integrity and courage’.
For the most part Walter did the king’s bidding as chief baron, and according to the 1st earl of Clare (Sir John Holles*), ‘never was any man in that place more partial to the Crown than he’.
Walter died in November 1630, formally still in post, and was buried at Wolvercote, Oxfordshire, where he had partially rebuilt at his own expense. Jesus College, to which he was a generous benefactor, erected a splendid memorial to him. At his death Walter owned six Oxfordshire manors, including Sarsen, Churchill and Wolvercote, as well as property in Ludlow and Radnorshire that had come to him when his brother James died in 1625. In his will, drawn up in December 1626, he left £3,000 portions to each of his unmarried daughters, and desired all his children to be brought up ‘in the fear of God and the knowledge of the true religion now established among us’. He enjoined his younger son David to ‘undertake the profession of the law or some other honest profession ... and not live idly or vainly’. His principal heir was his elder son William*.