Sir William Scroggs (c. 1623 – 25 October 1683), Lord Chief Justice of England, was the son of an Oxford landowner; an account of him being the son of a butcher of sufficient means to give his son a university education is merely a rumour.[1]
Contents |
Scroggs spent his youth in Stifford.[2] He went to Oriel College, and later to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1640, having acquired a fair knowledge of the classics. There is some evidence that he fought on the royalist side during the Civil War. In 1653 he was called to the bar, and soon gained a good practice in the courts. He was appointed a judge of the common pleas in 1676, and two years later was promoted to be Lord Chief Justice.
As Lord Chief Justice Scroggs presided at the trial of the persons denounced by Titus Oates for complicity in the "Popish Plot," and he treated these prisoners with characteristic violence and brutality, overwhelming them with sarcasm and abuse while on their trial, and taunting them when sentencing them to death. He may at first have been a sincere believer in the existence of the plot along with much of the general populice and parliament, regardless he did nothing to test the credibility of witnesses as Oates, Bedloe and Dangerfield.
At the trial in February 1679 of the prisoners accused of the murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey he gave a characteristic exhibition of his methods, indulging in a tirade against the Roman Catholic religion, and loudly proclaiming his belief in the guilt of the accused. It was only when, in July of the same year, Oates's accusation against the Queen's physician, Sir George Wakeman, appeared likely to involve the Queen herself in the ramifications of the plot, that Scroggs began to think matters were going too far; he was probably also influenced by the discovery that the court regarded the plot with discredit and disfavour, and that the country party led by Shaftesbury had less influence than he had supposed with the King. The Chief Justice on this occasion threw doubt on the trustworthiness of Bedloe and Oates as witnesses, and warned the jury to be careful in accepting their evidence.
This inflamed public opinion against Scroggs, for the popular belief in the plot was still strong. Scroggs continued in his poor treatment of Catholic priests who came before him for trial, as he showed when he sentenced Andrew Bromwich to death at Stafford in the summer of 1679, however his proposing the Duke of York's health at the Lord Mayor's dinner a few months later in the presence of Shaftesbury indicated his determination not to support the Exclusionists against the known wishes of the king .At the opening of the Michaelmas Term he delivered a speech on the need for judicial independence: " the people ought to be pleased with public justice and not justice seek to please the people....neither for my part do I think we live in so corrupted an age that no man can with safety be just and follow his own conscience."
Acting in the assurance of popular sympathy, Oates and Bedloe now arraigned the Chief Justice before the Privy Council for having discredited their evidence and misdirected the jury in the Wakeman case, accusing him at the same time of several other misdemeanours on the bench, including a habit of excessive drinking and bad language. In January 1680 the case was argued before the Council and Scroggs was acquitted. At the trials of Elizabeth Cellier and of Lord Castlemaine in June of the same year, both of whom were acquitted, he discredited Dangerfield's evidence, and on the former occasion committed the witness to prison. In the same month he discharged the grand jury of Middlesex before the end of term in order to save the Duke of York from indictment as a popish recusant, a proceeding which the House of Commons declared to be illegal, and which was made an article in the impeachment of Scroggs in January 1681. The dissolution of Parliament put an end to the impeachment, but in April Scroggs was removed from the bench with a pension; he died in London on the 25th of October 1683.
Scroggs was a judge at a time when the courts were considered corrupt and unfair and his temper and treatment of defendants were an example of the endemic problems within the judiciary. He served on the bench during the same period as the infamous Judge Jeffreys who has also been criticised for similar poor treatment of defendants and witnesses. He was the subject of many contemporary satires; he was reputed to live a debauched lifestyle and his manners during trials were considered 'coarse' and 'violent' [3]. .Roger North who knew him well described him as a man of great wit and fluency, but "scandalous, violent, intemperate and extreme."
Scroggs was the author of a work on the Practice of Courts-Leet and Courts-Baron (London, 1701), and he edited reports of the state trials over which he presided.
| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Richard Raynsford |
Lord Chief Justice 1678–1681 |
Succeeded by Sir Fraser Pemberton |