45 



CAMDEN, EARL OF. 



CAMDEN, WILLIAM. 



own sword at Ecbatana, a town of Syria (not Ecbatana the capital of 

 Media). Cteains says that Cambyses died at Babylon. 



Compare with Herodotus (iii.), which is the authority for what is 

 here stated, the account of Ctesias, ' Persica,' 



CAMDEN, CHARLES PRATT, EARL OF, was a younger son of 

 Sir John Pratt, who was successively a puisne judge of the court of 

 King's Bench and chief justice of that court, in the reign of George I. 

 He was descended from a family of consideration in Devonshire, of 

 which county Chief Justice Pratt, his father, was a native. Charles 

 Pratt was born in the year 1714. He went at an early age to Eton, 

 where he formed with William Pitt a warm friendship which lasted 

 through life. In 1731, having obtained the election to King's College, 

 Cambridge, he removed to the university. He became a fellow, 

 according to the usual routine, in 1734 ; in the summer of 1738 he 

 was called to the bar, and in the following year took his Master's 

 degree. He made his first entrance into the profession in the courts 

 of common law, and travelled the western circuit for several years 

 with little or no practice. Conceiving his prospects of success in the 

 profession of the law to be hopeless, he at one time resolved to abandon 

 it and seek his fortune in the church. Henley, afterwards Lord 

 Chancellor Northington, who was at that time in considerable practice 

 on the western circuit, is said to have dissuaded him from the execu- 

 tion of this purpose, and to have induced him to continue in his 

 course until his turn for business and advancement should arrive. 

 He had the good sense to follow this judicious advice, and shortly 

 afterwards his business began to increase. His practice as a junior 

 however appears never to have been considerable. His name appears 

 occasionally in the reports of cases of parochial settlement from the 

 western circuit. In 1752 he was employed as junior counsel in 

 defence of Owen, the bookseller, who had been prosecuted by the 

 attorney-general for publishing a libel upon the House of Commons 

 (How-ell's ' State Trials,' vol. xviii., p. 1 203), and his earnestness and 

 eloquence were believed to have mainly contributed to obtain a 

 favourable verdict for his client. From this time his success was 

 assured. In the following year he appeared as counsel for the prisoner 

 in the trial of Timothy Murphy for forging a will, a case which excited 

 much attention at the time (Howell's 'State Trials,' vol. xix., p. 693). 

 Still previously to his appointment as attorney-general, he had much 

 less general practice in the courts of Westminster Hall than several 

 advocates whom at a subsequent period of his life he left far behind 

 him in professional advancement. In the course of the change of 

 administration which took place in June 1757, Sir Robert Henley, the 

 early friend and adviser of Pratt, was promoted from the office of 

 attorney-general to that of lord keeper; and upon occasion of this 

 vacancy, his friend Pitt, who placed great confidence in him, insisted 

 upon his being made attorney-general ; and he was immediately after- 

 wards returned to parliament as representative of the now abolished 

 borough of Downton, in Wiltshire. During the four years that he 

 continued to be a member of the House of Commons he did not take 

 any very active or distinguished part in the debates. 



His professional business while he was attorney-general became very 

 extensive, particularly in the court of chancery. His official conduct 

 as attorney-general appears to have been uniformly judicious and 

 moderate. The only ex-officio information for libel filed by him was 

 instituted against Dr. Shebbeare for his 'Letter to the People of 

 England;' of which Home Tooke says (Howell's 'State Trials,' 

 vol. xx., p. 708), " that if ever there was an infamous libel against 

 government surely it was that." The death of Chief Justice Willes, 

 at the close of 1761, caused a vacancy on the bench of the common 

 pleas ; and this being one of those judicial offices of which by long 

 usage the attorney-general for the time being is considered to have 

 the refusal, it was accordingly offered to Pratt, and accepted by him. 

 Soon after his elevation to the bench the great question respecting the 

 legality of general warrants was raised, by the proceedings of govern- 

 ment with relation to the celebrated John Wilkes. Lord Chief 

 Justice Pratt expressed his opinion against the asserted power of the 

 secretary of state to authorise arrests, or the seizure of papers upon 

 general wan-ants, with a greater degree of warmth than was usual, or 

 perhaps justifiable, in pronouncing a mere judicial decision; but his 

 energy on this occasion was entirely in accordance with the prevailing 

 feeling of the times, and produced for him a larger share of popular 

 favour than had been possessed by any judge in England since the 

 revolution. Addresses of thanks were voted to him by many of the 

 principal towns, and several public bodies presented him with the 

 freedom of their respective corporations. The city of London, in 

 particular, placed his portrait in Guildhall, with an inscription in 

 honour of the "maintaiuer of English constitutional liberty." 



When the Rockingham administration came into power, in the 

 summer of 1765, Lord Chief Justice Pratt was raised to the peerage 

 by the title of Baron Camden, of Camden-place, in the county of 

 Kent. He did not however by any means become an adherent of that 

 ministry ; on the contrary, he made a vigorous opposition to their 

 measure! declaratory of the right of Great Britain to impose laws upon 

 the American colonies in all esses whatsoever. When Lord Rocking- 

 ham's ephemeral administration broke up in July 1766, Lord Northing- 

 ton, being removed from the court of chancery, became president of 

 the council; and upon the occurrence of this vacancy, the seals were 

 given to Lord Camden. 



The Duke of Grafton's administration, composed as it was of the 

 most heterogeneous materials, contained within itself the elements of 

 its dissolution ; and its fall was accelerated by the proceedings of the 

 House of Commons relating to John Wilkes, and the measures 

 respecting America, both of which had excited a violent fermentation 

 in the public mind. Upon the opening of the session of 1770, Lord 

 Camden declared in the House of Lords his opposition to government, 

 and actually voted for Lord Chatham's amendment to the ministerial 

 address. Such a declaration by the lord chancellor, accompanied by 

 an unequivocal act of hostility to the government, necessarily led to 

 his removal from the woolsack. 



Lord Camden as judge in the court of chancery has won high 

 praise from the profession. Only one of his decisions was reversed, 

 and that, reversal Lord Eldon is said by Lord Campbell to have 

 pronounced probably wrong. His manner in the court was simple, 

 unaffected, perhaps a little too informal; at any rate it was considered 

 to contrast unfavourably with what has been termed ' the lofty 

 dignity ' of Lord Mansfield. In conveying his ideas he has been 

 charged with the adoption of too colloquial a style and with the 

 greater fault of prolixity ; but then, on the other hand, hia statements 

 were always luminous, and his prolixity arose from the desire he 

 evinced to satisfy those interested by viewing the question at issue in 

 every conceivable light. 



With the surrender of the seals in 1770, Lord Camden's judicial 

 career finally closed ; and during the remaining twenty-four years of 

 his life he was entirely a political character. His general parliamentary 

 conduct during the remarkable session of 1770, consisted in a 

 strenuous opposition to the policy of Lord North's administration ; 

 and Lord Mansfield was on most occasions his personal antagonist. 

 The doctrine asserted by Lord Mansfield on the trials of Woodfall 

 and Miller, that the jury, in cases of libel, were to decide upon the 

 fact of publication only (a question which was not finally determined 

 until the passing of Mr. Fox's Libel Act in 1792), was warmly repro- 

 bated by Lord Camden in the House of Lords ; and upon this and 

 upon other occasions he indulged in a degree of personal bitterness 

 towards the chief justice which is variously accounted for by con- 

 temporary writers, but which certainly derogates from the dignity and 

 general merit of Lord Camden's character. Lord Camden also 

 uniformly opposed the ill-advised policy of Lord North respecting 

 America; and in 1778 he signed, and is said to have framed the 

 protest of the Lords against the rejection of Lord Rockingham' s 

 motion for an address to the king, praying him to disavow the 

 obnoxious manifesto of the American commissioners. On the recal of 

 Lord Rockingham and the Whigs to power in 1782, Lord Camden was 

 appointed president of the council; but was displaced upon the forma- 

 tion of the Coalition-ministry in 1783. To this administration he 

 placed himself in zealous opposition ; and in the debate on Mr. Fox's 

 India Bill in the House of Lords, he distinguished himself by an able 

 and eloquent speech against the measure. The fate of this bill put an 

 end to the short existence of the Coalition-ministry ; and soon after 

 the formation of Mr. Pitt's administration, Lord Camden was rein- 

 stated in the office of president of the council, which he continued 

 to hold during the remainder of his life. Though now upwards of 

 seventy years of age, and though his health was considerably impaired 

 by repeated attacks of gout, he continued his attendance in the House 

 of Lords, and actively assisted in the several debates upon the Indian 

 Judicature Bill, the Wine Excise Bill, and several other important 

 measures which were introduced during the early part of Mr. Pitt's 

 administration ; and upon the occasion of the king's derangement in 

 1788, he introduced the plan proposed by government for the establish- 

 ment of a regency. In 1786 he was created Earl Camden, and 

 received the additional title of Viscount Bayham, of Bayham Abbey, 

 in the county of Kent. The last occasion upon which he took a part 

 in the debates was upon the discussion of Mr. Fox's celebrated Libel 

 Act, in 1792. The question of the province of juries in cases of libel 

 was one which during the whole of his life had deeply interested him : 

 in hia defence of Owen, in 1752, he had warmly asserted the popular 

 doctrine upon this subject ; and on the introduction of this bill into 

 the House of Lords he particularly distinguished himself by the 

 animation and eloquence with which, in advanced age, he maintained 

 the principle which in his early years he had often zealously espoused. 

 Lord Camden died April 13th, 1794, in the eightieth year of his age. 



CAMDEN, WILLIAM, one of the most illustrious names in the 

 whole catalogue of learned Englishmen. His father was a paper- 

 stainer, living in the Old Bailey, where Camden was born on the 2nd 

 of May, 1551. It is supposed that his father died when he was but a 

 child, leaving little provision for him. It is certain that he was 

 admitted into Christ's Hospital within a very few years after its estab- 

 lishment. He was afterwards in St. Paul's School, and finally removed 

 to Oxford, where he appears to have studied in more than one college. 

 He left the university in 1571, and became an under-master of West- 

 minster School, the duties of which situation he discharged at the time 

 when he composed the works which have made his name so eminent. 



The most celebrated of these is that entitled ' Britannia,' a survey 

 of the British isles, written in elegant Latin. The first edition of thia 

 work was published in 1586. Many others appeared in his lifetime 

 with enlargements. A singular fate has attended this book. A long 

 succession of writers have made additions to it, till Camden's 



