Edmund Anderson

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Sir Edmund Anderson.

Sir Edmund Anderson (1530 – August 1, 1605), Lord Chief-Justice of Common Pleas under Elizabeth I, sat as judge at the trial of Mary I of Scotland.

He was born in Flixborough in Lincolnshire c. 1530 and is said to have spent a brief period at Lincoln College, Oxford, before entering the Inner Temple in June 1550.

In 1577, Anderson was created Serjeant-at-Law and in 1578 he was appointed Queen's Sergeant. In 1581 he was appointed Justice of Assize on the Norfolk circuit and tried Edmund Campion and others in November 1581, securing an unexpected conviction.

On the back of that success, Anderson was made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1582 and was knighted. He was reappointed by James VI and I and held office until his death.

Anderson became lord of the parish of Eyeworth in Bedfordshire and his family remained the local gentry for many generations. All Saints Church in Eyeworth contains a number of impressive brasses and monuments to Anderson and his wife, Magdalen Smyth.^[1]

Anderson's Reports is still a book of authority.