Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden, PC (baptised 21 March 1714 – 18 April 1794) was an English lawyer, judge and Whig politician who was first to hold the title of Earl Camden. As a lawyer and judge he was a leading proponent of civil liberties, championing the rights of the jury, and limiting the powers of the State in leading cases such as Entick v Carrington.
He held the offices of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Attorney-General and Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, and was a confidant of Pitt the Elder, supporting Pitt in the controversies over John Wilkes and American independence. However, he clung to office himself, even when Pitt was out of power, serving in the cabinet for fifteen years and under five different prime ministers.
During his life, Pratt played a leading role in opposing perpetual copyright, resolving the regency crisis of 1788 and championing Fox's Libel Bill. He started the development of the settlement that was later to become Camden Town in London.
Early life Born in Kensington in 1714, he was a descendant of an old Devon family of high standing, the third son of Sir John Pratt, Chief Justice of the King's Bench in the reign of George I. Charles's mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Rev. Hugh Wilson of Trefeglwys, and the aunt of landscape painter Richard Wilson. He received his early education at Eton, where he became acquainted with William Pitt, and King's College, Cambridge. He had already developed an interest in constitutional law and civil liberties. In 1734 he became a fellow of his college, and in the following year obtained his degree of BA. Having adopted his father's profession, he had entered the Middle Temple in 1728, and ten years later he was called to the Bar.
Early years at the Bar He practised at first in the courts of common law, travelling also the western circuit. For some years his practice was so limited, and he became so much discouraged that he seriously thought of turning his back on the law and entering the church. He listened, however, to the advice of his friend Sir Robert Henley, a brother barrister, and persevered, working on and waiting for success. Reputedly, once instructed as Henley's junior, Henley feigned illness so that Pratt could lead and earn the credit.Rigg (1896)
He was further aided by an advantageous marriage on 5 October 1749 to Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas Jeffreys of the Priory, Brecknock, by whom he had a son John Jeffreys, his successor in title and estates, and four daughters,Thomas (2008). Rigg (1896) has three daughters. of whom the eldest, Frances, married Robert Stewart, 1st Marquess of Londonderry on 7 June 1775.
The first case which brought him prominently into notice and gave him assurance of ultimate success was the government prosecution, in 1752, of a bookseller, William Owen. Owen had published a book The Case of Alexander Murray, Esq; in an Appeal to the people of Great Britain which the House of Commons had, by resolution of the House, condemned as "an impudent, malicious, scandalous and seditious libel". The author had left the country so the weight of the government's censure fell on Owen.Towers (1764) Pratt appeared in Owen's defence and his novel argument was that it was not the sole role of the jury to determine the fact of publication but that it was further their right to assess the intent of a libel. In his summing up, the judge, Lord Chief Justice Sir William Lee directed the jury to find Owen guilty as publication was proved and the intent of the contents was a question of law for the judge, not a question of fact for the jury. The jury disagreed and acquitted Owen. Pratt was appointed King's Counsel in 1755, and knighted in December 1761.
Political career
Since their youthful meeting at Eton, Pitt had continued to consult Pratt on legal and constitutional matters and Pratt became involved in the group that met at the Leicester House home of George Prince of Wales and who were opposed to the government of Prime Minister the Duke of Newcastle. In 1756, Newcastle offered Pratt a judgeship but Pratt preferred to take the role of Attorney General to the Prince of Wales.
In July 1757, Pitt formed a coalition government with Newcastle and insisted on Pratt's appointment as Attorney-General. Pratt was preferred over Solicitor General Charles Yorke. Yorke was the son of Lord Hardwicke, a political ally of Newcastle who, as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain had obstructed Pratt's career in favour of his own son. Though this led to an uncomfortable relationship between the two law officers of the Crown, it led to the landmark Pratt-Yorke opinion of 24 December 1757 whereby the pair distinguished overseas territories acquired by conquest from those acquired by private treaty. They asserted that, while the Crown of Great Britain enjoyed sovereignty over both, only the property of the former was vested in the Crown. Though the original opinion related to the British East India Company, it came to be applied elsewhere in the developing British Empire.
The same year he entered the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough of Downton in Wiltshire. He sat in Parliament for four years, but did not distinguish himself as a debater. He introduced the Habeas corpus Amendment Bill of 1758, which was intended to extend the writ of Habeas corpus from criminal law to civil and political cases. Despite Pitt's support, the Bill fell in the House of Lords. At the same time, his professional practice increased, particularly his Chancery practice which made him financially secure and enabled him to purchase the Camden Place estate in Kent.
As Attorney-General, Pratt prosecuted Florence Hensey, an Irishman who had spied for France,(1758) 19 Howell's State Trials 1372 and John Shebbeare, a violent party writer of the day. Shebbeare had published a libel against the government contained in his Letters to the People of England, which were published in 1756–58. As evidence of Pratt's moderation in a period of passionate party warfare and frequent state trials, it is notable that this was the only official prosecution for libel that he started and that he maintained his earlier insistence that the decision lay with the jury. He led for the Crown in the prosecution of Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers for the murder of a servant, a case that shocked European society.
Wilkes and Entick
Pratt lost his patron when Pitt left office in October 1761 but in January 1762, he resigned from the Commons, was raised to the bench as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, received the customary knighthood and was sworn into the Privy Council.
The Common Pleas was not an obvious forum for a jurist with constitutional interest, dealing as it did principally with disputes between private parties. However, on 30 April 1763, Member of Parliament John Wilkes was arrested under a general warrant for alleged seditious libel in issue No.45 of The North Briton. Pratt freed Wilkes holding that parliamentary privilege gave him immunity from arrest on such a charge. The decision earned Pratt some favour with the radical faction in London and seems to have spurred him, over the summer of that year to encourage juries to award disproportionate and excessive damages to printers unlawfully arrested over the same matter. Wilkes was awarded £1,000 (£127,000 at 2003 prices) and Pratt condemned the use of general warrants for entry and search. Pratt pronounced with decisive and almost passionate energy against their legality, thus giving voice to the strong feeling of the nation and winning for himself an extraordinary degree of popularity as one of the maintainers of English civil liberties. Honours fell thick upon him in the form of addresses from the City of London and many large towns, and of presentations of freedom from various corporate bodies.
In 1762, the home of John Entick had been raided by officers of the Crown, searching for evidence of sedition. In the case of Entick v Carrington (1765), Pratt held that the raids were unlawful as they were without authority in statute or in common law.Thomas (2008)
The American Stamp Act crisis
On 17 July 1765 Pratt was created Baron Camden, of Camden Place, in Chislehurst, Kent, becoming a member of the House of Lords. Prime Minister Lord Rockingham had unsuccessfully made this, and other appointments, to curry favour with Pitt but Camden was not over-eager to get involved in the crisis surrounding the Stamp Act 1765. Camden did attend the Commons on 14 January 1766 and his subsequent speeches on the matter in the Lords are so similar to Pitt's that he had clearly adopted the party line. He was one of only five Lords who voted against the Declaratory Act 1766, a resolution of the House insisting on Parliament's right to tax colonies overseas. Camden insisted that taxation was predicated on consent and that consent needed representation. However, when he came to support the government over the act's repeal, he rather unconvincingly purported to base his opinion on the actual hardship caused by the act rather than its constitutional basis.
Lord Chancellor In May 1766, Pitt again became prime minister and advanced Camden from the court of common pleas to take his seat as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain on 30 July. Camden managed to negotiate an additional allowance of £1500 and a position for his son John. Camden carried out the role in an efficient manner, without any great legal innovation. He presided over the Court of Chancery from which only one of his decisions was overturned on appeal. He also presided over the judicial functions of the House of Lords where in 1767 he approved Lord Mansfield's ruling that the City of London could not fine dissenters who refused to serve the corporation. Dissenters were in any case prohibited from serving under the Corporation Act 1661. In 1768 in the House of Lords he again sat in a case involving John Wilkes, this time rejecting his appeal and finding that his consecutive, rather than concurrent sentences were lawful. He gave a controversial judgment in the Douglas Peerage case.
"A forty days tyranny" However, Camden the politician was less of a champion of civil rights than Pratt the judge. The poor harvest of 1766 led to fears of high grain prices and starvation but parliament was prorogued and could not renew the export ban that expired on 26 August. Pitt, with Camden's support, called the Privy Council to issue a royal proclamation on 26 September to prohibit grain exports until parliament met. However, despite Camden's record on civil liberties, this proclamation was unlawful, contrary to art.2 of the Bill of Rights 1689 and both houses of parliament ultimately accused Pitt and Camden of tyranny. Camden pleaded necessity, a justification he had rejected in the Wilkes and Carrington trials, and styled it "a forty days tyranny". Ultimately the government was forced to suppress the parliamentary attacks by an act indemnifying those involved from legal action.
America In 1767, the cabinet, of which Camden was a member, approved Charles Townshend's attempt to settle the American protest and revolt over taxation. Benjamin Franklin reportedly observed that it was "internal" taxes that the colonists objected to and Townshend took this to suggest that there would be little opposition to import duties imposed at the ports. Camden's support for the tax proposals would return to embarrass him.