Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/441

 on 30 April 1606. Here on 10 May, four days after their arrival, they were committed to prison as spies, but found friends, Spanish as well as English, and were released after two months, and in August were sent to Havannah, in the island of Cuba, in a fleet of Spanish galleons. About 10 Oct. Nicholl sailed thence for Spain, reaching Cadiz on 15 Dec., and at length, meeting with a kindly English skipper, he was landed safely at the Downs in Kent on 2 Feb. 1606–7. Soon afterwards he published in London a spirited account of his adventures, entitled ‘An Houre Glasse of Indian Newes. Or a … Discourse, shewing the … Miseries … indured by 67 Englishmen, which were sent for a Supply to the Planting in Guiana in the Yeare 1605,’ &c., 4to, London, 1607, which he dedicated to Sir Thomas Smith, governor of the company of merchants of London trading to the East Indies.

[Nicholl's Houre Glasse of Indian Newes.] 

NICHOLL, JOHN (1759–1838), judge, second son of John Nicholl of Llanmaes, Glamorganshire, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of James Havard, was born on 16 March 1759. He was educated first at the neighbouring town of Cowbridge, and afterwards at Bristol, and on 27 June 1775 matriculated from St. John's College, Oxford, where he was elected to a founder's kin fellowship. He graduated B.C.L. on 15 June 1780, and D.C.L. on 6 April 1785. Giving up his original intention of taking orders, Nicholl was admitted an advocate at Doctors' Commons on 3 Nov. 1785, and in 1791 was appointed a commissioner to inquire into the state of the law of Jersey. He quickly gained an extensive practice, and on 6 Nov. 1798 succeeded Sir William Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell) as king's advocate, having been knighted on the previous 31 Oct. (London Gazette, 1798, p. 1039). At the general election in July 1802 he was returned to the House of Commons for the borough of Penryn, Cornwall. On 11 Feb. 1805 he defended the conduct of the government with reference to the Spanish war, and maintained that it was ‘authorised by the established usage or law of nations’ (Parl. Debates, 1st ser. iii. 405–8). He represented Hastings in the short parliament of 1806–7, and at the general election in May 1807 was returned both for Great Bedwin and for Rye. He elected to serve for Great Bedwin, and continued to sit for that borough until his retirement from parliamentary life at the dissolution in December 1832. He took part in the debate on the order of council respecting neutral vessels in February 1807 (ib. viii. 633–40), and in February of the following year warmly supported the Orders in Council Bill (ib. x. 666–76). In February, and again in June 1812, he spoke strongly against Roman catholic emancipation (ib. xxi. 500–14, 547, xxiii. 684–6). At the meeting of the new parliament he proposed the re-election of Charles Abbot [q. v.] as speaker (ib. xxiv. 2–6), and in May 1813 opposed Grattan's Roman Catholic Relief Bill (ib. xxvi. 328–37). In May 1817 he opposed Sir Francis Burdett's motion for a select committee on the state of the representation in a speech of considerable length, and declared that any attempt to change the constitution as it then existed ‘would be more than folly; it would be the height of political criminality’ (ib. xxxvi. 735–52). On 2 June 1817 he proposed the election of Charles Manners-Sutton [q. v.] as speaker in the place of Abbot (ib. xxxvi. 843–6). Nicholl unsuccessfully contested the university of Oxford against Richard Heber at a by-election in August 1821 (Gent. Mag. 1821, pt. ii. pp. 103–4, 273). In May 1829 he brought in his Ecclesiastical Courts Bill (Parl. Debates, 2nd ser. xxi. 1318), which passed through both houses and became law in the following month (10 Geo. IV. c. 53). He does not appear to have spoken in the house after this session, though he voted against all three Reform Bills. He took a leading part in Glamorganshire politics, and was a consistent supporter of Sir Christopher Cole, who represented the county in several parliaments in the conservative interest.

Nicholl succeeded Sir William Wynne as dean of arches and judge of the prerogative court of Canterbury in January 1809, and on 6 Feb. following was admitted to the privy council and made a member of the board of trade. On the death of Sir Christopher Robinson, Nicholl was appointed judge of the high court of admiralty, and took his seat in that court for the first time on 31 May 1833 (, Admiralty Reports, iii. 65). In 1834 he became vicar-general to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and resigned the offices of dean of arches and judge of the prerogative court.

As a judge Nicholl was distinguished ‘for inflexible impartiality and for great strength and soundness of judgment’ (Legal Observer, xvii. 3). His conduct during certain proceedings in the prerogative court formed the subject of a debate in the House of Commons in July 1828. There, however, appeared to be no foundation for the complaint, and the petition presented by Joseph Hume was not