Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/171

 the late Rev. Thomas Corser of Stand in 1866.

[Manchester School Register (Chetham Soc.), i. 67; Gent. Mag. 1797, i. 351, 433; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, ix. 79; Gibbon's Autobiographies, ed. Murray, 1896, p. 322; Watson's Life of Porson, 1861, p. 57; Ormerod's Cheshire, 2nd edit. i. 292; Wirral Notes and Queries, 1892, i. (with engraving of monument at Chester); Kilvert's Memoirs of Bishop Hurd, 1860, pp. 153, 318.]  TREBY, GEORGE (1644?–1700), judge, son of Peter Treby of Plympton St. Maurice, Devonshire, by his wife Joan, daughter of John Snellinge of Chaddlewood in the same county, was born about 1644. He matriculated at Oxford from Exeter College on 13 July 1660, but, leaving without a degree, was admitted in 1663 a student at the Middle Temple, where he was called to the bar in 1671, and elected a bencher in January 1680–1. He was returned to parliament on 5 March 1676–7 for Plympton, which seat he retained, being then recorder of the borough, at the ensuing general election on 24 Feb. 1678–9 and throughout the reign of Charles II. Having proved his zeal for the protestant cause as chairman of the committee of secrecy for the investigation of the ‘popish plot,’ and as one of the managers of the impeachment of the five popish lords (April 1679–November 1680), he succeeded Jeffreys as recorder of London on 2 Dec., was knighted on 20 Jan. 1680–1, and placed on the commission of the peace for the city in February. He took the preliminary examination of Edward Fitzharris [q. v.], who afterwards, without apparent reason, accused him of subornation. He ably defended Sir Patience Ward [q. v.] on his prosecution for perjury by the Duke of York, and proved himself a stout champion of immemorial rights of the corporation of London during the proceedings on the quo warranto. He also pleaded for the defendant Sandys in the great case which established the monopoly of the East India Company (Trinity term 1683). Dismissed from the recordership in consequence on 12 June 1683, he appeared in the high commission court on 17 Feb. 1685–1686 to justify the rejection by Exeter College of the proposed new Petrean fellow, and was one of the counsel for the seven bishops (29–30 June 1688); otherwise he took hardly any part in public affairs, declining even the reinstatement in the recordership proffered on the restoration of the city charter, 11 Oct. 1688, until the landing of the Prince of Orange, when he accepted it (16 Dec.). On the approach of the prince to London the recorder headed the procession of city magnates who went out to meet him, and delivered a high-flown address of welcome (20 Dec. 1688). In the Convention parliament he sat for Plympton, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the bench. He supported the resolution declaring the throne vacant by abdication, but resisted the proposal to commute the hereditary revenues of the crown for an annual grant.

Appointed solicitor-general in March 1688–9, Treby took a prominent part in the discussions of the following month on the oaths bill. On 4 May he was made attorney-general, in which capacity he piloted the bill of rights through the House of Commons. Retaining the recordership, he was placed on the commissions appointed 1 and 9 March 1689–90 to exercise the office of deputy-lieutenant and lieutenant of the city of London. In the parliamentary session of 1691 he gave a qualified support to the treason procedure bill. On 16 Nov. the same year he conveyed to the king at Kensington the assurances of the support of the corporation of London in the struggle with Louis XIV. On 3 May 1692, having first qualified (27 April) by taking the degree of serjeant-at-law, he was appointed chief justice of the common pleas, upon which he resigned the recordership (7 June). He attended with his colleagues the trial of Lord Mohun in Westminster Hall (31 Jan.–4 Feb. 1692–1693), and concurred in advising the acquittal of the prisoner. His exchequer chamber judgment in the bankers' case, on 4 June 1695, anticipated the principal arguments upon which Somers afterwards reversed the decision of the court of exchequer. He was a member of the special commission before which Charnock, King, Keyes, and other members of the assassination plot were tried at the Old Bailey (11–24 March 1695–6), and presided (9–13 May) at the trial of Peter Cook, another of the conspirators, who was found guilty but was afterwards pardoned. By virtue of successive royal commissions Treby sat as speaker of the House of Lords during the frequent illnesses of Somers, 31 Jan.–9 March, 16 June, 28 July, 1 Sept., 23 Nov.–13 Dec. 1696, 3–18 and 25 Feb., 18–19 May, 23 June 1698, 16–18 Jan., 1–18 April, 20 April–2 May, 13 July, 28 Sept. 1699, and 15–17 Jan. 1700. He was also one of the commissioners of the great seal in the interval (17 April–31 May 1700) between its surrender by Somers and its delivery to Sir Nathan Wright [q. v.] He died early in the following December at his house in Kensington Gravel-pits. His remains were interred in the Temple church.