David Jenkins (Royalist)

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David Jenkins (1582 - 1663) was a Welsh judge and Royalist during the English Civil War.

Jenkins was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and then called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1609. In March 1643 he was appointed judge of the Great Sessions for Carmarthen, Pembroke and Cardiganshire, during which he convicted several Welsh Parliamentarians for high treason. Jenkins was captured by the Parliamentarians in December 1645 in Hereford and imprisoned in Newgate Prison until the English Restoration. 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.

The obituary 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.[1] Part of it read:

...that Eminent, Loyall, and renowned Patriot, Judge Jenkins, Departed this Life at his House in Cowbridge, [at] 81..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...