JUDGE JEFFREYS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 22, 25 September 1885, Page 23

JUDGE JEFFREYS.

Jeffreys was a man who had risen at the bar by brute force exhibited through his mind. Was there any dirty, disgusting case to be taken in haud, any utter scoundrel to be defended, any honest man to be bunted down, Jeffreys was the counsel employed. His know» ledge of law was small, but the atuouut of his brazen hardihood waa enormous, and by dint of this questionable quality he acquired a large practice of the baser aort. When the Crown, during the life of Charles 11., wanted such talents for the purpose of prosecuting its enemies to death, Jeffreys came forthwith to the front. He waa rapidly promoted to tlie highest official dignity at the bar, and when Lord William Russell and Colonel Algernon Sydney were to be tried for complicity in the Rye Hou3e Plot— a plot ta waylay and assassinate the King and the Duke of York on their return from Newmarket — with which neither of the accused had any real connection, it waa recognised as a necessity that Jeffreys should be promoted to the office of their judge 1 The selection was thoroughly justified by the result. la defiance of the rules of evidence, even such as they were in those <lays— with brutal brow-beating and crossexamining of witnesses from the bench, the prisoners all the wuile boing undefended by counsel, Jeffreys, the Ju Ige, helped the Crown lawyers to procure a verdict of guilty ; and, having succeeded, ha had the indecency to mock the prisoners, after having sentenced them to death, foe public of that day, not over bqueamish, were cc mdalisefl at hia proceedings, and many about the Court made no secret of their disgust lor him ; but the man was necessary to such a Government as ihtn existed, and the King distinguished him with favour. When James If. succeeded his brother, the Chief Justice fjuud favour in the eight of the new King, to whom ha was as necessary as he had been to Charles. When Monmouth's rebellion bad fillei the West country jails with prisoners, theie was no fitter man than Jeffreys to clear them in the only way the Crown meant them to he cleared.— From "Historic Sketches " in CasselV* Popular Educator for July.