Samuel Browne (judge)
Encyclopedia
Samuel Browne of Arlesey, Bedfordshire, was the Member of Parliament during the English Civil War
and the First Commonwealth who supported the Parliamentary cause. However he refused to support the trial and execution of Charles I and along with five of his colleagues, resigned his seat on the bench. At the restoration this was noted and he was made a judge of the Common Pleas. He was called to bar at Lincoln's Inn, 1623; M.P. for Clifton-Dartmouth-Hardness, 1640; an active member of the Commons committee for the impeachment of Archbishop Laud, 1644; one of the commissioners to treat with Charles I
in the Isle of Wight
, 1648; serjeant-at-law
, 1648. M.P. for Bedford
in 1659 and in 1660 M.P. for Bedfordshire
. He was justice of the common pleas and knighted, 1660.
in Northamptonshire, and Frances, daughter of Thomas St. John, of Cayshoe, Bedfordshire (who was the grandfather of Oliver St John
, the chief justice of the Common Pleas during the Protectorate).
Browne was admitted pensioner of Queens' College, Cambridge
on 24 February 1614, and was entered at Lincoln's Inn
on 28 October 1616, where he was called to the Bar in October 1623, and elected reader in Autumn 1642.
Browne along with a number of other men who would support Parliamentary cause in the Civil War had connections to the Feoffee for Impropriations a body set up in 1625 to purchase livings for Puritan preaches, or the Massachusetts Bay Company. Brown was both a feoffee and a lawyer for the Company. Browne along with John Browne, member for Dorset, and Richard Browne member for New Romney, were all zealous about matters of religion in the Long Parliament, and it is not all ways possible to identify which of the Brownes made a statement on the subject. Although he is often associated with parliamentary radicals, his position like other "Royal Independents" was that they wanted more tolerance of other Protestant creeds than King Charles was willing to allow, and so Browne took up arms to force the King into toleration (see also Cromwellian State Church, 1654–1660).
He was returned as a member for the boroughs of Clifton-Dartmouth-Hardness, in the Long Parliament of November 1640. He appears to have had no connection with the constituency before he was elected and he may have gained it through the patronage of his cousin Oliver St John who was MP for Totness and had been in Lincoln's Inn at the same time as Browne.
In February 1643—possibly through the influence of his cousin St. John (who was then solicitor-general)—Browne, Serjeant Richard Creswell and John Puleston, were recommended by the parliament to be Barons of the Exchequers, in the peace proposals
laid before the king at Oxford, which came to nothing. Around the same time he joined the newly formed Committee of Both Kingdoms
on which he would continue to sit until 1648, and he also the Committee for the preservation of the records. In November of that year Browne and St. John were two of the four members of the House of Commons to whom, with two lords, the new Great Seal was entrusted.
The commoners appointed as commissioner of the Great Seal still continued to perform their other parliamentary functions. Lord Commissioner Browne was most active in the proceedings against Archbishop Laud, summing up the case in the House of Lords and carrying up the ordinance for his attainder passed by the Commons in November 1644. His speech has not been preserved, but from the constant references which Laud makes to it he appears to have put the case against the archbishop in a very effective way.
After the trial was ended (2 January 1645) he was deputed, with Serjeants John Wilde
and Robert Nicolas
, to lay before the House of Lords the reasons which, in the opinion of the House of Commons, justified an ordinance of attainder against the archbishop. This had already been passed by the commons, and the Lords immediately followed suit.
In July 1645 a paper was introduced to the House of Commons, emanating from Lord Savile, and containing what was in substance an impeachment of Denzil Holles and Bulstrode Whitelocke
, of high treason in betraying the trust reposed in them in connection with the recent negotiations at Oxford, of which they had had the conduct. After some discussion the matter was referred to a committee, of which Browne was nominated chairman. The affair is frankly described by Whitelocke as a machination of the independents, designed to discredit the Presbyterian party, of which both Hollis and himself were members; and as he accuses Browne of displaying a strong bias in favour of the impeachment, it may be inferred that at this time he had the reputation of belonging to the advanced faction. The charge was ultimately dismissed.
In 1646 Browne sat on the Committee for exclusion from sacrament and the Committee for the abuse of hereditary, and after remaining a commissioner of the Great Seal for nearly three years, the lords commissioners were removed in October 1646, and the Great Seal transferred to the speakers of the two houses. With his workload in Parliament reduced he resumed his practice at the bar.
In 1648 Browne sat on the Committee for scandalous offences and his time of sitting on the Committee of Both Kingdoms came to an end.. He was also sent as one of the commissioners to treat with the king in the Isle of Wight
. On the receipt of letters from the commissioners containing the king's ultimatum (the Treaty of Newport
), the House of Commons, after voting the king's terms unsatisfactory, resolved "that notice be taken of the extraordinary wise management of this treaty by the commissioners".
The next day, 12 October 1648 day, he was included in the batch of twenty-two who were made Serjeants by the parliament, when both he and his cousin St. John were also elevated to the bench, he as judge of the King's Bench, and St. John as chief justice of the Common Pleas. With the failure of the Newport negotiations (and the reconstitution of the House of Commons by Pride's Purge
), the House of Commons resolved to try King Charles for treason, Browne with five of his colleagues, resigned their seats on the bench rather than participate in the Regicide
.
Browne took no further part in public life until the last year of the Interregnum. After the fall of the Protectorate
Browne was elected to Parliament for the constituency of Bedford
in 1659 and to Bedfordshire
in the Convention Parliament of 1660.
After the restoration of the monarchy, he was not only immediately reinstated as a serjeant, and within six months was reinstated to a place on the bench, being constituted on November 3, 1600, a judge of the Common Pleas. On 4 December of that year he was knighted. He retained his seat as a judge of the Common Pleas until his death on 11 April 1668. He was buried under a monument still existing in the church of Arlesey
in Bedfordshire, where he had a house.
, Essex.
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
and the First Commonwealth who supported the Parliamentary cause. However he refused to support the trial and execution of Charles I and along with five of his colleagues, resigned his seat on the bench. At the restoration this was noted and he was made a judge of the Common Pleas. He was called to bar at Lincoln's Inn, 1623; M.P. for Clifton-Dartmouth-Hardness, 1640; an active member of the Commons committee for the impeachment of Archbishop Laud, 1644; one of the commissioners to treat with Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
in the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
, 1648; serjeant-at-law
Serjeant-at-law
The Serjeants-at-Law was an order of barristers at the English bar. The position of Serjeant-at-Law , or Sergeant-Counter, was centuries old; there are writs dating to 1300 which identify them as descended from figures in France prior to the Norman Conquest...
, 1648. M.P. for Bedford
Bedford (UK Parliament constituency)
Bedford is a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The seat was established in its current form in 1997, restoring a centuries old name. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first-past-the-post system of election...
in 1659 and in 1660 M.P. for Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire (UK Parliament constituency)
Bedfordshire was a United Kingdom Parliamentary constituency, which elected two Members of Parliament from 1295 until 1885, when it was divided into two constituencies under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.-History:...
. He was justice of the common pleas and knighted, 1660.
Early life
Samuel Browne, was born about the year 1598 and was the eldest son of a vicar, Nicholas Browne of PolebrookPolebrook
-History:There is evidence that Polebrook as a settlement dates back to 4000 BC,. The farms were mainly centred around the modern day village of Ashton...
in Northamptonshire, and Frances, daughter of Thomas St. John, of Cayshoe, Bedfordshire (who was the grandfather of Oliver St John
Oliver St John
Sir Oliver St John , was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1653. He supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War.- Early life :...
, the chief justice of the Common Pleas during the Protectorate).
Browne was admitted pensioner of Queens' College, Cambridge
Queens' College, Cambridge
Queens' College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou , and refounded in 1465 by Elizabeth Woodville...
on 24 February 1614, and was entered at Lincoln's Inn
Lincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...
on 28 October 1616, where he was called to the Bar in October 1623, and elected reader in Autumn 1642.
Browne along with a number of other men who would support Parliamentary cause in the Civil War had connections to the Feoffee for Impropriations a body set up in 1625 to purchase livings for Puritan preaches, or the Massachusetts Bay Company. Brown was both a feoffee and a lawyer for the Company. Browne along with John Browne, member for Dorset, and Richard Browne member for New Romney, were all zealous about matters of religion in the Long Parliament, and it is not all ways possible to identify which of the Brownes made a statement on the subject. Although he is often associated with parliamentary radicals, his position like other "Royal Independents" was that they wanted more tolerance of other Protestant creeds than King Charles was willing to allow, and so Browne took up arms to force the King into toleration (see also Cromwellian State Church, 1654–1660).
Property
Browne inherited from his father various small properties lying in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey and London. He also purchased the manor of Arlesey in Bedfordshire from Florence, daughter of Thomas Emery of Arlesey (died 1636), widow of Henry Goodwin in 1646 or 1649, but he must have been living in it before that date as in 1644 complained that Arlesley was used for quartering troops, and he procured an order for their removal.Public office
Browne probably served as a Justice of the Peace in Essex, his wife's county, however, and had been named in 1630 for the sewers commission in Bedfordshire.He was returned as a member for the boroughs of Clifton-Dartmouth-Hardness, in the Long Parliament of November 1640. He appears to have had no connection with the constituency before he was elected and he may have gained it through the patronage of his cousin Oliver St John who was MP for Totness and had been in Lincoln's Inn at the same time as Browne.
In February 1643—possibly through the influence of his cousin St. John (who was then solicitor-general)—Browne, Serjeant Richard Creswell and John Puleston, were recommended by the parliament to be Barons of the Exchequers, in the peace proposals
Treaty of Oxford
The Treaty of Oxford of 1643 was an unsuccessful attempt by the Long Parliament and King Charles I to negotiate a peace treaty.On 28 January 1643, Charles, at the request of both houses, granted a safe-conduct for the earls of Northumberland, Pembroke, Salisbury and Holland, and five commoners The...
laid before the king at Oxford, which came to nothing. Around the same time he joined the newly formed Committee of Both Kingdoms
Committee of Both Kingdoms
The Committee of Both Kingdoms, , was a committee set up during the English Civil War by the Parliamentarian faction in association with representatives from the Scottish Covenanters, to oversee the conduct of the War and Foreign Policy...
on which he would continue to sit until 1648, and he also the Committee for the preservation of the records. In November of that year Browne and St. John were two of the four members of the House of Commons to whom, with two lords, the new Great Seal was entrusted.
The commoners appointed as commissioner of the Great Seal still continued to perform their other parliamentary functions. Lord Commissioner Browne was most active in the proceedings against Archbishop Laud, summing up the case in the House of Lords and carrying up the ordinance for his attainder passed by the Commons in November 1644. His speech has not been preserved, but from the constant references which Laud makes to it he appears to have put the case against the archbishop in a very effective way.
After the trial was ended (2 January 1645) he was deputed, with Serjeants John Wilde
John Wilde (jurist)
John Wilde was an English lawyer and politician. As a serjeant-at-law he was referred to as Serjeant Wilde before he was appointed judge...
and Robert Nicolas
Robert Nicolas
Robert Nicholas was a judge and an English Member of Parliament who supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War.Nicholas was elected Member of Parliament for Devizes for the Long Parliament in November 1640. He assisted in prosecuting Archbishop Laud in 1643. In 1648 he became...
, to lay before the House of Lords the reasons which, in the opinion of the House of Commons, justified an ordinance of attainder against the archbishop. This had already been passed by the commons, and the Lords immediately followed suit.
In July 1645 a paper was introduced to the House of Commons, emanating from Lord Savile, and containing what was in substance an impeachment of Denzil Holles and Bulstrode Whitelocke
Bulstrode Whitelocke
Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke was an English lawyer, writer, parliamentarian and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England.- Biography :...
, of high treason in betraying the trust reposed in them in connection with the recent negotiations at Oxford, of which they had had the conduct. After some discussion the matter was referred to a committee, of which Browne was nominated chairman. The affair is frankly described by Whitelocke as a machination of the independents, designed to discredit the Presbyterian party, of which both Hollis and himself were members; and as he accuses Browne of displaying a strong bias in favour of the impeachment, it may be inferred that at this time he had the reputation of belonging to the advanced faction. The charge was ultimately dismissed.
In 1646 Browne sat on the Committee for exclusion from sacrament and the Committee for the abuse of hereditary, and after remaining a commissioner of the Great Seal for nearly three years, the lords commissioners were removed in October 1646, and the Great Seal transferred to the speakers of the two houses. With his workload in Parliament reduced he resumed his practice at the bar.
In 1648 Browne sat on the Committee for scandalous offences and his time of sitting on the Committee of Both Kingdoms came to an end.. He was also sent as one of the commissioners to treat with the king in the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
. On the receipt of letters from the commissioners containing the king's ultimatum (the Treaty of Newport
Treaty of Newport
The Treaty of Newport was a failed treaty between Parliament and King Charles I of England, intended to bring an end to the hostilities of the English Civil War...
), the House of Commons, after voting the king's terms unsatisfactory, resolved "that notice be taken of the extraordinary wise management of this treaty by the commissioners".
The next day, 12 October 1648 day, he was included in the batch of twenty-two who were made Serjeants by the parliament, when both he and his cousin St. John were also elevated to the bench, he as judge of the King's Bench, and St. John as chief justice of the Common Pleas. With the failure of the Newport negotiations (and the reconstitution of the House of Commons by Pride's Purge
Pride's Purge
Pride’s Purge is an event in December 1648, during the Second English Civil War, when troops under the command of Colonel Thomas Pride forcibly removed from the Long Parliament all those who were not supporters of the Grandees in the New Model Army and the Independents...
), the House of Commons resolved to try King Charles for treason, Browne with five of his colleagues, resigned their seats on the bench rather than participate in the Regicide
Regicide
The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a monarch. In a narrower sense, in the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after a trial...
.
Browne took no further part in public life until the last year of the Interregnum. After the fall of the Protectorate
The Protectorate
In British history, the Protectorate was the period 1653–1659 during which the Commonwealth of England was governed by a Lord Protector.-Background:...
Browne was elected to Parliament for the constituency of Bedford
Bedford (UK Parliament constituency)
Bedford is a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The seat was established in its current form in 1997, restoring a centuries old name. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first-past-the-post system of election...
in 1659 and to Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire (UK Parliament constituency)
Bedfordshire was a United Kingdom Parliamentary constituency, which elected two Members of Parliament from 1295 until 1885, when it was divided into two constituencies under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.-History:...
in the Convention Parliament of 1660.
After the restoration of the monarchy, he was not only immediately reinstated as a serjeant, and within six months was reinstated to a place on the bench, being constituted on November 3, 1600, a judge of the Common Pleas. On 4 December of that year he was knighted. He retained his seat as a judge of the Common Pleas until his death on 11 April 1668. He was buried under a monument still existing in the church of Arlesey
Arlesey
Arlesey is a small industrial town and civil parish in the district of Central Bedfordshire in Bedfordshire. It is located on the border with Hertfordshire, about three miles north-west of Letchworth Garden City, four miles north of Hitchin and six miles south of Biggleswade. Arlesey railway...
in Bedfordshire, where he had a house.
Renown
Family
Browne married Elizabeth, daughter of John Meade, of Nortofts, FinchingfieldFinchingfield
Finchingfield is a village situated in the Braintree district of Essex. It is in the north-west of the county, which is a primarily rural area...
, Essex.