Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/124

 [q. v.] and others to represent the commons in the projected conference with the lords. By reason of the sudden dissolution (7 June) the conference never met; and on the day following Whitelocke and his colleagues were summoned to the council chamber, and compelled to make a holocaust of the notes of their intended speeches. Thus was lost a rich collection of material illustrative of the constitutional history of England during the reigns of the first three Edwards. In consequence of the disfavour in which he stood at court Whitelocke was compelled to surrender (18 Nov. 1616) the reversion of the king's bench enrolments' office which he held jointly with [q. v.], by whom he was also defeated in the contest for the recordership of London in November 1618. Meanwhile, however, his professional reputation and gains increased. In 1616 he purchased the fine estate of Fawley Court, Buckinghamshire, which gave him the rank of a county magnate. He was placed on the commission of the peace for Buckinghamshire on 27 Nov. 1617, and for Oxfordshire on 7 May 1618. On 12 Jan. 1618-19 he was appointed deputy custos rotulorum for the liberties of Westminster and St. Martin's-le-Grand.

Notwithstanding political jars, Whitelocke stood, on the whole, well with Bacon, to whom he owed his investiture with the coif (29 June 1620) and subsequent advancement (29 Oct.) to the then important position of chief justice of the court of session of the county palatine of Chester, and the great sessions of the counties of Montgomery, Denbigh, and Flint; upon which he was knighted. Shortly afterwards he was elected recorder by each of the four boroughs of Bewdley in Worcestershire, Ludlow and Bishop's Castle in Shropshire, and Poole in Cheshire. Differences with the president of the council in the Welsh marches (Lord Northampton) led to Whitelocke's transference from the Chester court to the king's bench, where he was sworn in as justice on 18 Oct. 1624. He had also a commission to hear causes in chancery, and sat once in the Star-chamber. He was continued in office by Charles I, by whom he was much respected. In the following autumn it fell to him, as junior judge in his court, to discharge the hazardous duty of adjourning term during the plague. To escape from the contagion he drove, halting only at Hyde Park Corner to dine, in his coach from Horton, near Colnbrook, Buckinghamshire, to Westminster Hall, and, after hurrying through the necessary forms, re-entered his coach and drove back to Horton.

In November 1626 Whitelocke concurred with [q. v.] in declining to certify the legality of forced loans. He did not, however, scruple to give the king the benefit of the doubt in the case of the five knights [see ]. The bench at that date enjoyed as little independence of parliament as of the crown; and the remand was not allowed to pass without the citation of the judges to the House of Lords to answer for their conduct. They obeyed, and through Whitelocke's mouth condescended to put a false gloss on their order by representing it as only intended to allow time for further consideration (see, State Trials, iii. 161, and Parl. Hist. ii. 289). In February 1628-9 the House of Commons saw fit to inquire into the release of the supposed Jesuits recently discovered in Clerkenwell. Whitelocke, as one of the judges who had examined them, was cited to justify the release, which he did on the ground that there was no evidence that the prisoners were in priest's orders. The stormy scenes which preceded the dissolution of this parliament (10 March) and the subsequent committal of [q. v.] and his friends to the Tower brought the judges once more into close and delicate relations both with the crown and with parliament. The evasion by the three common-law chiefs of the issues submitted to them by the king [see, and ] was followed by the reference of substantially the same questions to the entire common-law bench (25 April). The points of law were again evaded, but eleven out of the twelve judges sanctioned proceedings in the Star-chamber. Of the eleven Whitelocke was one. He also concurred in the pusillanimous course taken after the argument upon the writs of habeas corpus, the application by letter to the king for directions, and the remand of the prisoners pending his answer (June). This was much against Whitelocke's grain, and at a private audience of the king at Hampton Court on Michaelmas day he obtained his consent to the enlargement of the prisoners upon security given for their good behaviour, a concession which they unanimously rejected. On the trial Whitelocke concurred in the judgment. He died at Fawley Court on 22 June 1632. His remains were interred in Fawley churchyard, and honoured by filial piety with a splendid marble monument. His estates were exempted by the Long parliament from liability to contribute to the fund for making reparation to Eliot and his fellow-sufferers.

By his wife (married 9 Sept. 1602) Eliza