Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 3.djvu/510

 490 CRAMOND Speaker for that Pari. (1620/1-1621/2) but never re-elected. Knighted at Whitehall, 25 Mar. 1621; King's Serjeant, 20 Feb. 1624/5; Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, 22 Nov. i626;(^) Chief Justice of the King's Bench, 24 Oct. 1631, till his death. He m., istly, 20 July 1595, at Barham, Suffolk, Ursula, 3rd da. of John Southwell, of Barham Hall, by Margaret, da. of Edmond Crofts, of West Stow, Suffolk. She, who was bap. 5 Oct. 1567, at Barham, was bur. 13 June 1624, at St. Andrew's, Holborn. He »z., 2ndly, Elizabeth Beaumont as afsd., for whom he obtained a Peerage within 1 5 months of his marriage as above. C") He d. at his house in Chancery Lane, Holborn, 4 Feb. 1634/5, in his 65th year, and was bur. in Westm. Abbey. M.l. Will dat. 16 Jan. 1634/5, pr. 15 Apr. 1635. Fun. cert, at Coll, of Arms.('=) His widow, suo jure Baroness Cramond [S.], by whom he had no issue, d. at Covent Garden, Midx., and was bur. (with her ist husband) 3 Apr. 1651, at St. Andrew's, Holborn. Will dat. 19 Feb. 1 650/1, pr. 7 Apr. 1651. [Thomas Richardson, who, as h. ap. to the Barony of Cramond [S.], was Master of Cramond, was only surv. s. and h. of Chief Justice Richardson, by Ursula, his ist wife abovenamed, and was under the spec, lim. in the creation next in rem. to the peerage conferred on his step- (*) Not without suspicion that its acquisition cost him j^i 7,000, besides having to appoint a royal nominee to the profitable office of " Clerk of Hell," i.e. to a Clerk- ship of the Treasury. (Foss's Judges of England). C") Lord Campbell considers that this was attained by another good round sum of money. It gave occasion to many gibes and pasquinades for the amusement of Westm. Hall. (■=) "This is that Judge Richardson, who, to please the faction of his time, issued out an order [when on the Somersetshire circuit] against the antient custom of wakes, and ordered every Minister to read it in his church." (Dart's Westm. Abbey, vol. ii, p. 78). For this insolent and illegal encroachment on the Ecclesiastical authority, he was, on the complaint of the Bishop (Laud) of Bath and Wells, "at the Council table, so severely reprimanded that he came out complaining that he had been almost choked with a pair of lawn sleeves. This was a specimen of the facetious- ness for which he had a reputation. He is called by Evelyn " that jeering "judge" and " although esteemed a good lawyer, he was not respected on the bench." (Foss's Judges of England). When some were questioning where one of his sons, who died before him, would be buried, the answer was " where should he be buried but at West- minster, where his father I'es." (See Anecdotes, bfc, pub. by the Camden Soc). He was probably by nature inclined to puritanism, taking great pains to mitigate the fine im- posed on (his friend) Mr. Sherfield, Recorder of Salisbury, for breaking the coloured glass in church windows, fife., yet in the same court (the Star Chamber) he was loud against the much more eminent Prynne, and concurred in his truly excessive punish- ment. He was Speaker of the Pari, in which the famous Lord Chancellor Bacon was impeached, and advised on the proceedings connected with it. His inconsistency to all things but his own interest was such that he was actually considered by the Pari, party "to be a favourer of the Jesuits." [Pari. Hist., vol. ii, p. 475).