Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/70

 clerk to the parliament during the Protectorate (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1653–4, p. 282), was assigned in 1680 to argue an exception taken by the Earl of Castlemaine, on his trial for complicity in the supposed popish plot, to the evidence of Dangerfield, on the ground that the witness had been convicted of felony. Scroggs inclined for a while in favour of the exception, but eventually overruled it. He also defended a certain John Giles, tried for the murder of a justice of the peace named Arnold in the same year. In 1690 he was assigned by special grace of the court to show cause why one Crone, who had been found guilty of raising money for the service of the late king and sentenced to death, should not be executed. He raised the somewhat technical point that the indictment was bad because the indorsement contained a clerical error, ‘vera’ being spelt ‘verra.’ He was called to the degree of serjeant in 1692, defended Peter Cooke charged with conspiring to assassinate the king in 1696, became king's serjeant in 1698, and was knighted on 1 June 1699. The same year he appeared with the attorney-general (Sir Thomas Trevor) for the crown on an information brought against Charles Duncombe, cashier of the excise office, for falsely endorsing exchequer bills and paying them into the excise office with intent to defraud the revenue. The case broke down, no fraud being proved. In 1702 he was employed on the prosecution of William Fuller, an imitator of Titus Oates. He was engaged in the prosecution of John Tutchin, the author of the ‘Observator,’ for seditious libel in 1704. He died at his house in Essex Street, Strand, on 14 Dec. 1706, and was buried in the chancel of St. Clement Danes.

[Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ii. 42; Cobbett's State Trials, vii. 1085, xiii. 311–98, 1062–1106, xiv. 903, 1099, 1110; Wynne's Serjeants-at-Law; Lord Raymond's Rep. p. 414; Le Neve's Pedigrees of Knights (Harleian Soc.), p. 467; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs, ii. 54, 427, vi. 117; Woolrych's Serjeants-at-Law.] 

DARNALL, JOHN, the younger (1672–1735), lawyer, son of Sir John Darnall the elder [q. v.], defended in 1710 Dammaree, Willis, and Purchase, the ringleaders in a riot in the neighbourhood of Lincoln's Inn Fields, when some meeting-houses were wrecked by way of showing sympathy with Sacheverell. The indictment was laid for high treason, and Dammaree was found guilty and sentenced, but ultimately pardoned. In 1714 Darnall was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law, and knighted in 1724. In 1717 his opinion was taken on the question whether the king was entitled to the custody of his grandchildren. Darnall advised ‘that by the law of England every subject hath a right to the custody of his own children,’ and that he knew of ‘no distinction in the case of the royal family.’ In 1719 he appeared for the crown in the case of the Rev. William Hendley, indicted at Rochester for obtaining money for the use of the Pretender under pretence of charity. In 1724 he was appointed steward of the palace court, commonly known as the Marshalsea. In the case of Major Oneby, indicted at the Old Bailey in 1726 for the murder of one Gower, whom he had killed in a rencounter in a tavern in Drury Lane, the jury returned a special verdict. The question was whether the facts amounted to murder or rested in manslaughter. Darnall argued the point before the court of king's bench. Oneby, being convicted of murder, committed suicide by opening a vein on the night before the day appointed for the execution. Darnall successfully defended in 1730 Thomas Bambridge [q. v.], late warden of the Fleet, on his trial for the murder of a prisoner. In 1733 he was placed on a commission appointed to inquire into the fees charged in the courts of justice. He died in September 1735, aged 63 (Hist. Reg. Chron. Diary, 1735, p. 43). Darnall married Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Jenner. He had a magnificent house at Petersham, Surrey.

[State Trials, xv. 563–89, 1412, 1413, xvii. 38, 430, 500; Add. MSS. 21498 f. 52, 22221 f. 275; Gent. Mag. (1733), p. 551; Woolrych's Serjeants-at-Law.] 

DARNELL, GEORGE (1798–1857), was an eminent schoolmaster, who established, and conducted for many years, a large day school at Islington. With a somewhat feeble body, but an active and shrewd mind and a kind heart, he occupied himself much with efforts to render the beginnings of school work less uninviting to the pupil by making them more easy for both pupil and teacher, as exhibited in his ‘Short and Certain Road to Reading,’ his ‘Grammar made Intelligible to Children,’ and his ‘Arithmetic made Intelligible to Children,’ which for many years had an enormous sale. The prefaces to these little works, abounding in good sense and in practical suggestions, have been helpful to teachers, and many of the principles he formulated, which were new at the time, are now almost universally recognised. His series of copybooks have been long and widely used, and for many years ‘Darnell's Copybooks’ was a phrase familiar as a household word. They were started about 1840, and Darnell was the first to introduce the