Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/707

 19. ZANE: THE FIVE AGES 693 He ruled by law and listened not to art; These foes to truth — love, hate, and private gain . . . his conscience would not stain. John Popham offers a remarkable contrast to Dyer. Of high birth, educated at Oxford, he fell into evil ways while at the Middle Temple. He even resorted to the calling of a highwayman to replenish his purse. He reformed, however, and became a consummate lawyer ; he was made Solicitor General and Speaker of the House of Commons. In regular order he became Attorney General, and as such took the lead in many state trials. He prosecuted Tilney, and caused Chief Justice Anderson, one of the greatest lawyers of the reign, to charge the jury on wholly insufficient evidence that the defendant was guilty of an attempt upon the Queen's life. He attempted to prosecute Mary Queen of Scots ; but Hatton, the Chancellor, took the work out of Popham's hands. Both Elizabeth and Hatton were violently inflamed against the Stuart Queen, on account of the ridicule she had heaped on the love affair of the Virgin Queen and her Chan- cellor. Even the learned but apologetic Foss is compelled to say that the warmth of Elizabeth's letters to Hatton " would be fatal to the' character of a less exalted female." On the trial of Knightley, a Puritan, who in temperate language had published some observations on the due observ- ance of the Sabbath, Popham contended that the defendant, though guilty only of a technical violation of a royal proc- lamation and for that reason not guilty of an indictable offence, could yet be prosecuted in the Star Chamber. He sagely observed as to the defendant's excuse for publishing his pamphlet : " Methinks he is worthy of greater punish- ment for giving such a foolish answer as that he did it at his wife's desire." When Popham became Lord Chief Justice he showed his prejudice against his former calling by an unexampled severity against highwaymen. On the trial of Essex he curiously mingled the functions of witness and judge, and in his summing up out of his own knowledge furnished the jury with statements of fact that had not been testified to by any witness. By his exertions at the bar he accumulated an immense estate amounting to ten thousand