John Maynard (1604–1690)
Sir John Maynard Tavistock | |
---|---|
Died | 1690 Gunnersbury Park |
Resting place | Ealing Church |
Nationality | English |
Education | Exeter College, Oxford |
Occupation(s) | lawyer and politician |
Known for | Revising the Year Books[2] |
Spouses |
|
Children | one son and four daughters |
Parent(s) | Alexander and Honora Maynard |
Sir John Maynard
Origins and education
Maynard was born in 1604 at the Abbey House, Tavistock, in Devon, the eldest son and heir of Alexander Maynard of
Barrister
In 1619 he entered the
Parliamentarian
He represented
In the committee, which sat at
A curious testimony to Maynard's reputation at this time is afforded by a grant made in his favour by parliament in October 1645 of the books and manuscripts of the late Lord Chief Justice Bankes, with liberty to seize them wherever he might find them. In the House of Commons he was heard with the profoundest respect, while he advocated the abolition of feudal wardships and other salutary legal reforms. He also prospered mightily in his profession, making in the course of the summer circuit of 1647 the unprecedentedly large sum of £700. As a politician he was a strict constitutionalist, protested against the first steps taken towards the deposition of the king, and on the adoption of that policy withdrew from the house as no longer a lawful assembly (November 1648).[6]
State trials under the Commonwealth
Nevertheless, on the establishment of the Commonwealth he did not scruple to take the engagement, and held a government brief at the trial of Major Faulconer for perjury in May 1653. Assigned by order of court to advise John Lilburne on his second trial in July 1653, Maynard at first feigned sickness. A repetition of the order, however, elicited from him some exceptions to the indictment which confounded the court and secured Lilburne's acquittal by the jury. The jury were afterwards interrogated by the council of state as to the grounds of their verdict, but refused to disclose them, and Maynard thus escaped censure, and on 9 February 1653/4 was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law.[6]
In the following year his professional duty brought him into temporary collision with the government. One Cony, a city merchant, had been arrested by order of the council of state for non-payment of taxes, and Maynard, with Serjeants Thomas Twysden and Wadham Wyndham, moved on his behalf in the upper bench for a habeas corpus. Their argument on the return, 18 May 1655, amounted in effect to a direct attack on the government as a usurpation, and all three were forthwith, by order of Cromwell, committed to the Tower of London; they were released on making submission (25 May).[6]
Continuing political preferment
Maynard was among the commissioners appointed to collect the quota of the
Education
In 1658, Maynard was involved in the founding of two schools in
The Restoration
On Richard's abdication and the resuscitation of the
The reign of Charles II
As king's serjeant, Maynard appeared for the crown at some of the state trials with which the new reign was inaugurated, among others that of Sir
In the debate on Lord Danby's impeachment (December 1678) Maynard showed a regrettable disposition to strain the Treason Act 1351 (25 Edward III) to his disadvantage, maintaining that its scope might be enlarged by retrospective legislation, which caused Swift to denounce him, in a note to Burnet's Own Time, as 'a knave or a fool for all his law.' On constitutional questions he steered as a rule a wary and somewhat ambiguous course, professing equal solicitude for the royal prerogative and the power and privileges of parliament, acknowledging the existence of a dispensing power, without either defining its limits or admitting that it had none (10 February 1672/3), at one time resisting the king's attempts to adjourn parliament by message from the Speaker's chair (February 1677/8), and at another counselling acquiescence in his arbitrary rejection of a duly elected speaker (10–11 March 1678/1679).[6]
Maynard opened the case against
Maynard favoured the impeachment of
The reign of James II
During the reign of
The reign of William III
We are at the moment out of the beaten path. If therefore we are determined to move only in that path, we cannot move at all. A man in a revolution resolving to do nothing which is not strictly according to established form resembles a man who has lost himself in the wilderness, and who stands crying "Where is the king's highway? I will walk nowhere but on the king's highway." In a wilderness a man should take the track which will carry him home. In a revolution we must have recourse to the highest law, the safety of the state. Maynard[2]
In the convention which met on 22 January 1688/9, Maynard sat for Plymouth, and in the debate of the 28th on the state of the nation, and the conference with the lords which followed on 2 February, argued that James had vacated the throne by his
Reputation
So brief a tenure of office at so advanced an age afforded Maynard little or no opportunity for the display of high judicial powers. As to his merits, however, all parties were agreed; the bench, as
To Maynard we owe the unique edition of the reports of Richard de Winchedon, being the Year Books of Edward II, covering substantially the entire reign to Trinity term 1326, together with excerpts from the records of Edward I, London (1678–9).
Gunnersbury Park
Maynard amassed a large fortune, bought the manor of Gunnersbury, and there in 1663 built from designs by Inigo Jones or his pupil Webb a palace, Gunnersbury House, (afterwards the residence of the Princess Amelia, daughter of George II). He died there on 9 October 1690, his body lying in state until the 25th, when it was interred with great pomp in Ealing Church.[6]
Family and posterity
Maynard married, firstly, Elizabeth Henley, daughter of Andrew Henley of
By his first wife Maynard had sons
Portraits are in the
One of Maynard's opinions was printed in London's Liberty. For his speeches at Strafford's trial see John Rushworth's Historical Collections. For other of his speeches see William Cobbett's State Trials, Parliamentary History, and Somers Tracts.
He must be carefully distinguished from his namesake,
References
- ^ a b Portraits of Sir John Maynard (1604-1690) at the National Portrait Gallery, London
- ^ a b Chafee, Jr., Zechariah (1956). Three Human Rights in the Constitution of 1787. University or Kansas Press.
- ^ French main, "hand"
- ^ Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L., (Ed.) The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the Heralds' Visitations of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, p.561
- ^ "Maynard, Sir John (1604-1690)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Rigg, James McMullen Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- ^ a b Vivian, Lt.Col. J.L., (Ed.) The Visitations of the County of Devon: Comprising the Heralds' Visitations of 1531, 1564 & 1620, Exeter, 1895, p.561, pedigree of Maynard
- ^ Brampston, p.75
- ^ Westminster Assembly Project accessed 20 June 2008
- ^ Plympton St. Maurice History accessed 22 June 2008
- ^ Lewis, p. 327
- ^ 'House of Commons Journal Volume 7: 6 June 1657', Journal of the House of Commons: volume 7: 1651–1660 (1802), pp. 548–549. url. Date accessed: 22 June 2008.
Sources
- History of Parliament Online – John Maynard
- Bramston, Sir John. (Baron Richard Griffin Braybrooke editor), The autobiography of Sir John Bramston: K.B., of Skreens, in the hundred of Chelmsford; now first printed from the original ms. in the possession of his lineal descendant Thomas William Bramston, Esq., Camden society. Publications, no. xxxii, Printed for the Camden society, by J. B. Nichols and son, 1845
- Lewis, Samuel (1831). A Topographical Dictionary of England Comprising the Several Counties, Cities, Boroughs, Corporate & Market Towns ...& the Islands of Guernsey, Jersey, and Man, with Historical and Statistical Descriptions; Illustrated by Maps of the Different Counties & Islands; ... and a Plan of London and Its Environs]
- Rigg, James McMullen Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Maynard, John (1602-1690)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.