Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/353

 appointed solicitor-general on 22 Jan. 1620–1, when he resigned the recordership. He was knighted at Whitehall on 28 Jan., and soon afterwards obtained a grant of the reversion of the mastership of the rolls, expectant on the death of Sir Julius Cæsar. He sat in parliament for East Grinstead, Sussex, in 1623–4 and 1625, taking a prominent position in the house as one of the staunchest supporters of the royal prerogative. He was elected treasurer of the Inner Temple in 1625, and on 31 Oct. of that year was appointed attorney-general. His accession to office was marked by a more stringent enforcement of the laws against recusants. In May 1626 he opened the case against John Digby, earl of Bristol [q. v.], on his impeachment. The proceedings terminated on the dissolution of parliament on 15 June. In November 1627 he argued the case for the crown on the habeas corpus sued out by Sir Thomas Darnell [q. v.] and the other knights imprisoned with him for refusing to contribute to the forced loan, and obtained a remand. In April and May following he argued, with much ingenuity and learning, in support of the royal prerogative before the committees of both houses appointed to consider its limits in regard to the liberty of the subject, and on 1 June laid before the council an elaborate answer to the Petition of Right. On 15 March 1627–8 he ordered, under a privy council warrant, the arrest of the jesuits discovered at Clerkenwell. In the autumn he was busy with the case of Felton, the murderer of the Duke of Buckingham. In December Heath consented to the release on bail of some of the jesuits arrested in March, for which he was severely censured in the ensuing parliament, but pleaded the command of the king. An account of this affair, written by Sir John Coke [q. v.], is printed in ‘Camden Miscellany,’ vol. ii. (see also Parl. Hist. ii. 473; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1628–9, pp. 53, 472). After the dissolution of 10 March 1628–9, and the subsequent committal of Holles, Eliot, Selden, and other members, Heath obtained the opinion of the judges that privilege of parliament did not protect a member from prosecution after the close of the session for offences committed during it. He then instituted proceedings against the imprisoned members, and obtained judgment against them of imprisonment during the king's pleasure, Eliot being also fined 2,000l. and the others in lesser amounts (, Kent, i. 379;, London Marriage Licenses, p. 662; , Autobiography in Philobiblon Soc. Misc. vol. i.; Add. MS. 6118, p. 712; , Fasti, ed. Bliss, ii. 45; Inner Temple Books; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10 p. 362, 1611–18 pp. 410, 433, 595, 1619–23 pp. 215, 298, 1628–9; , Orig. 167, 171; Chron. Ser. 103, 105; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. i. 168; , Lib. Fam., Camd. Soc., pp. 46, 57, 75, 101; , Letters and Life of Bacon, v. 227; Commons' Debates in 1625, Camd. Soc.; , Hist. of England, 1603–42, vols. iv–vii.; Remembrancia, p. 50 n.; Parl. Hist. ii. 79–194, 292 et seq.; , State Trials, iii. 3–59, 135 et seq., 235–335; , Autobiography, Camd. Soc., 49).

Heath also conducted the principal Star-chamber prosecutions of the period, viz. of Richard Chambers [q. v.], a London merchant, in May 1629, of Dr. Alexander Leighton [q. v.] in 1630, and of the Earls of Bedford, Clare, and Somerset, Sir Robert Cotton, Selden, and Oliver St. John, charged in 1630 with writing and circulating Sir Robert Dudley's pamphlet on the ‘Impertinence of Parliament’ [see, and ] (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1629–1631, pp. 55–6, 95; , Speech on the Case of Alexander Leighton, in Camd. Misc. vol. vii.; , State Trials, iii. 374–99; Add. MS. 23967, ff. 24–33). In Easter term 1631 Heath appeared for the plaintiff in the case of Lord Falkland, the late lord deputy of Ireland, against Francis Annesley, Lord Mountnorris [q. v.], and others, who had charged Falkland with perverting justice as lord deputy. The case broke down against Lord Mountnorris, but was sustained against the other defendants (Cases in the Star-chamber and High Commission, Camd. Soc., 1 et seq.)

On 24 Oct. 1631 Heath was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law; on the 26th he was raised to the bench as lord chief justice of the common pleas (, Rep. Car. I, p. 225; Diary of John Rous, Camd. Soc., 63; Court and Times of Charles I, ii. 137;, Fœdera, ed. Sanderson, xix. 346). One of the first cases that came before him was the Star-chamber prosecution of Henry Sherfield, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn and recorder of Salisbury, against whom Heath had himself, while attorney-general, issued an information for defacing a stained-glass window in St. Edmund's Church, Salisbury. Heath took a lenient view of the case, and thought a fine of five hundred marks sufficient; but the judgment of the majority of the court was for a fine of 500l. and a public confession of error in the presence of the Bishop of Salisbury. Heath concurred in the savage sentence passed on Prynne for the publication of ‘Histrio-Mastix’ on 17 Feb. 1633–4 (, State Trials, iii. 519–62; Documents relating to the Proceedings against William Prynne, Camd. Soc., p. 17). Never-