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David Jenkins (1582 – 6 December 1663) was a Welsh judge and
Royalist A royalist supports a particular monarch as head of state for a particular kingdom, or of a particular dynastic claim. In the abstract, this position is royalism. It is distinct from monarchism, which advocates a monarchical system of gove ...
during the
English Civil War The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...
.


Life

Jenkins was born at Pendeulwyn (English:
Pendoylan Pendoylan (, , ) is a rural village and Community (Wales), community (parish) in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. The village has won many awards in Best Kept Village competitions and contains 27 entries in the Council's County Treasures database, 1 ...
),
Glamorgan Glamorgan (), or sometimes Glamorganshire ( or ), was Historic counties of Wales, one of the thirteen counties of Wales that existed from 1536 until their abolishment in 1974. It is located in the South Wales, south of Wales. Originally an ea ...
, . He was educated at
St Edmund Hall, Oxford St Edmund Hall (also known as The Hall and Teddy Hall) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. The college claims to be "the oldest surviving academic society to house and educate undergraduates in any university" and was the las ...
, admitted to
Gray's Inn The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and Wale ...
on 5 November 1602 and
called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...
in 1609. In March 1643 he was appointed, against his will, as puisne judge of the
Carmarthen Carmarthen (, ; , 'Merlin's fort' or possibly 'Sea-town fort') is the county town of Carmarthenshire and a community (Wales), community in Wales, lying on the River Towy north of its estuary in Carmarthen Bay. At the 2021 United Kingdom cen ...
circuit of the court of great sessions. He was a strong supporter of the Royalist cause in the civil war and, later that year, was involved in raising money for the siege of
Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city, non-metropolitan district and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West England, South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean ...
. He indicted several prominent parliamentarians for
high treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its d ...
. Jenkins was captured by the parliamentarians in December 1645 in
Hereford Hereford ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of the ceremonial county of Herefordshire, England. It is on the banks of the River Wye and lies east of the border with Wales, north-west of Gloucester and south-west of Worcester. With ...
after the surprise attack on the city and imprisoned in the
Tower of London The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic citadel and castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamle ...
,
Newgate Prison Newgate Prison was a prison at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey, just inside the City of London, England, originally at the site of Newgate, a gate in the Roman London Wall. Built in the 12th century and demolished in 1904, the pr ...
and latterly in Wallingford and Windsor Castles. Whilst in prison in the 1640s, Jenkins wrote a number of political tracts which were collectively published in 1648 as: ''The Works of the Eminent and Learned Judge Jenkins upon divers Statutes concerning the King's Prerogative and the Liberty of the Subject''. Jenkins was brought before
parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
in April 1647, but argued that it had no power to try him in the absence of the king. His arguments were expounded in his scholarly work, ''Lex Terrae'' which cited important authorities. The nub of his case, against the legitimacy of parliament in appointing justices and passing laws, was that such acts could only be performed with the explicit authority of the king and that the claim that the king was 'virtually' present in proceedings of the two
Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is located in London, England. It is commonly called the Houses of Parliament after the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two legislative ch ...
was false. On 22 February 1648, Jenkins was brought to the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...
to face charges including the writing of treasonous pamphlets. He refused to kneel at the bar of the house and was fined £1000 for contempt. In 1650 Jenkins was amongst other prisoners that the
Rump Parliament The Rump Parliament describes the members of the Long Parliament who remained in session after Colonel Thomas Pride, on 6 December 1648, commanded his soldiers to Pride's Purge, purge the House of Commons of those Members of Parliament, members ...
considered executing. He said that if he was to go to the scaffold he would be "hanged with the
Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
under one arm and
Magna Carta (Medieval Latin for "Great Charter"), sometimes spelled Magna Charta, is a royal charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardin ...
under the other". The
obituary An obituary (wikt:obit#Etymology 2, obit for short) is an Article (publishing), article about a recently death, deceased person. Newspapers often publish obituaries as Article (publishing), news articles. Although obituaries tend to focus on p ...
for Jenkins is apparently the first of its kind in the English-speaking world, published in '' The Newes'' on 17 December 1663 by Charles II's Surveyor of the Press,
Roger L'Estrange Sir Roger L'Estrange (17 December 1616 – 11 December 1704) was an English pamphleteer, author, courtier and press censor. Throughout his life L'Estrange was frequently mired in controversy and acted as a staunch ideological defender of King ...
. Part of it read:
"... that Eminent, Loyall, and renowned Patriot, Judge Jenkins, Departed this Life at his House in Cowbridge, t81..in perfect Sence and Memory. He dyed, as he lived, preaching with his last Breath to his Relations, and those who were about him, Loyalty to his Majesty, and Obedience to the Lawes of the Land. In fine, he has carried with him all the comforts of a Quiet Conscience, and left behind him an unspotted Fame..."
Mary Jenkins, daughter of Judge David Jenkins, was wife of Sir Robert Thomas, 2nd Baronet, married c. 1654. Robert Thomas and his father, Sir Edward Thomas, were also Royalists during the Civil War.


Works


''Centuries''

Whilst in prison, Jenkins wrote ''Rerurm Judicatarum Centuriæ Octo'', a set of reports on 800 cases at the court of the
Exchequer In the Civil Service (United Kingdom), civil service of the United Kingdom, His Majesty's Exchequer, or just the Exchequer, is the accounting process of central government and the government's ''Transaction account, current account'' (i.e., mon ...
and
writs of Error A writ of ''coram nobis'' (also writ of error ''coram nobis'', writ of ''coram vobis'', or writ of error ''coram vobis'') is a legal order allowing a court to correct its original judgment upon discovery of a fundamental error that did not appear i ...
at the Kings Bench, over the period 1220 to 1623. The in the title refers not to the period but to the number of cases reported, which are grouped into 8 sets of 100 cases (i.e. 8 "centuries") in the work. It is known informally as ''Jenkins' Centuries'' and was first published in 1661, in French and Latin. An English translation was published in 1734 and the English title is ''Eight Centuries of Reports, or Eight Hundred Cases''. Thomas Barlow published a third, also English, edition in 1777, that included additional references. Charles Francis Morrell published the fourth edition in 1885, a verbatim reprint of the Barlow edition, including the original page numbering so that citations (which conventionally employ page numbers) to the original still worked whilst reducing the
paper size Paper size refers to Technical standard, standardized dimensions for sheets of paper used globally in stationery, printing, and technical drawing. Most countries adhere to the ISO 216 standard, which includes the widely recognized A series ( ...
of the book from
folio The term "folio" () has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging Paper size, sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for ...
(less common by the 19th century), that included additional notes of his own. It employed a format that was unique in the 17th century, and only became commonplace with the likes of John William Smith's ''Leading Cases'' in the 19th century, of giving a short statement of the case and how it was decided, a marginal citation to the authority, and a note by Jenkins, for some cases, providing commentary and illustration of the principle(s) involved. It is not strictly speaking a report as the English title suggests, but more an
abridgement An abridgement (or abridgment) is a condensing or reduction of a book or other creative work into a shorter form while maintaining the unity of the source. The abridgement can be true to the original work in terms of mood and tone (literature), ...
of other
reporter A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...
s, including Keilwey, Below, Dyer, Plowden, and Coke, and cases from abridgements by Fitzherbert, Statham, and Brooke. However, it omitted any obsolete cases that, by contrast, yearly abridgements included; and also included abstracts of some manuscript cases that are not found in other reports. It includes very few Exchequer cases, most being at the King's Bench. In his "Life of Judge Jenkins" prefaced to the 1885 edition Morrel observed that the ''Centuries'' are how Jenkins was primarily known to the legal profession by that time. Morrel characterized it as having "very considerable authority". Jenkins's own preface to the work describes how he wrote it: "Amidst the sound of drums and trumpets, surrounded by an odious multitude of barbarians, broken with old age and confinement in prisons, where my fellow subjects, grown wild with rage, detained me for fifteen years together, I bestowed many watchful hours upon this performance."


Other

Other of Jenkins's works include the aforementioned ''Lex Terræ'', and ''Pacis Consultum: Or, a Directory to the Public Peace'' which was a 1657 history of various County Corporation Courts including the
Court Leet The court leet was a historical court baron (a type of manorial court) of England and Wales and Ireland that exercised the "view of frankpledge" and its attendant police jurisdiction, which was normally restricted to the hundred courts. Etymo ...
, the latter of which's provenance is (see later) in dispute. When brought before the Parliamentary committee of Examinations on 1647-04-10 instead of answering he presented to the presiding officer
Miles Corbet Miles Corbet (1595–1662) was an English politician, recorder of Yarmouth and a List of regicides of Charles I, regicide of King Charles I of England, Charles I. Life Born a member of the Corbet family he was the son of Sir Thomas Corbet ...
a pamphlet explaining that he was not a traitor and that the Parliament had no legal authority. This was immediately published by Parliament under the misleading title ''A Recantation of Judge Jenkins''. Jenkins in his turn immediately published on 1647-05-06, datelined from The Tower on 1647-04-29, his ''The Vindication of Judge Jenkins'' denying that he had submitted to Parliament. His response to the Speaker in February 1647/1648 was published as ''Judge Jenkin's Plea'', and after Henry Marten had argued for sparing his life Jenkins published two further pamphlets: ''The Answer of Judge Jenkins to the Imputation put upon his Plea in Chancery'' and ''Remonstrance to the Lords and Commons of the Two Houses of Parliament at Westminster, the 21 of February, 1647''. His pamphlets collected in 1648 include ''Lex Terræ, or a Breife Discourse Collected out of the Fundamentall Lawes of the Land'', ''Some Seeming Objections to Master Prinn's ... answered'' (1647-04-28), ''A Declaration of Mr. David Jenkins'' (1647-05-17), ''The Cordiall of Judge Jenkins for the Good People of London, in reply to a Thing called An Answer to the poysonous seditions Paper of Mr. D.J. by H. P. of Lincolns Inne'' (1647), ''The Inconveniences of a Long-continued Parliament'', ''An Apology for the Army'', and ''A Scourge for the Directory and Revolting Synod, which hath sitten these five hears, more for 4s. a day than for Conscience Sake''. The collection has an engraving of Jenkins by William Marshall and a poem to Jenkins written by John Birkenhead. A second edition of the collection was published in 1681. Other pamphlets were ''A Prepartive to the treaty: or a Short Expedient for Agreement and Peace tendered to the two Houses of Parliament'' (1648), ''God and the King; or the Divine Constitution of the Supreme Magistrate, especially in the Kingdom of England'' (1649), and ''A Proposition for the Safety and Happiness of the King and Kingdom, by a Lover of Sincerity and Peace'' (1667).


Disclaimed

Anthony Wood's ''Athenae Oxoniensis'' records several works that have been attributed to Jenkins but that were "disowned and disclaimed by him". These include the aforementioned ''Pacis Consultum'', the ''Exact Method for Keeping a Courth of Survey for setting for and bounding of Manors'', and ''Some Difficult Questions in Law, proposed unto and resolved by Judge Jenkings'' (1657).


Footnotes


Cross-reference


Sources

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Further reading

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jenkins, David 1582 births 1663 deaths 17th-century Welsh judges