Sir Edward Northey

ConstituencyDatesTIVERTON16 Dec. 1710 - 1722Family and Education b. 7 May 1652, 2nd s. of William Northey, barrister, of the Middle Temple and Old Ford, Mdx. by his 2nd w. Elizabeth Garrett. educ. Queen’s, Oxf. 1668; M. Temple 1668, called 1674, bencher 1696. m. lic. 1 Dec. 1687 Anne, da. of John Jolliffe of St. Martin Outwich, London and Woodcote Green, Surr., alderman of London, sis. of Sir William Jolliffe, 2s. 3da. Kntd. 1 June 1702.

Offices Held

Attorney-gen. June 1701-Apr. 1707, Oct. 1710-Dec. 1717; commr. for building 50 new churches in and about London and Westminster 1715.

Biography The son of a bencher of the Middle Temple, Northey was appointed attorney-general, without a seat in Parliament, in the last year of the reign of William III. He was continued in this office under Anne till 1707, when he was removed as a result of changes made by the Whig Junto.1 Re-appointed and brought into Parliament by the Tory Government in 1710, he continued in office at George I’s accession, being classed in 1715 as a Whig who would often vote Tory. He spoke in the debate of 21 June on Ormonde’s impeachment, admitting that there were some matters in the secret committee’s report upon which an impeachment might be grounded but declining to explain himself further at that time. In the autumn he replaced Sir Richard Onslow on the secret committee. He voted for the septennial bill in 1716 and spoke in support of the vote of credit for measures against Sweden 8 Apr. 1717. In December 1717 he retired with a pension of £1,500 a year for the joint lives of the King and himself, subject to the condition that it should be forfeited upon his accepting any office of at least equal value to the annuity.2 In 1719 he voted against the Government on the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts and the peerage bill. He did not stand in 1722, having been put down in Sunderland’s plans for that Parliament as to be replaced by Arthur Arscott at Tiverton. For the last three years of his life he was ‘afflicted with a paralytic distemper whereby he was deprived of the use of his right hand and became unable to write’.3 He died 16 Aug. 1723.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754 Author: Shirley Matthews Notes 1. Luttrell, vi. 169. 2. Cal. Treas. Bks. xxxii, 240. 3. PCC 170 Richmond.

Sir Edward Northey

• Born on 7 May 1652 in London.
• Educated at St Paul's School, London and Queen's College, Oxford
• Called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1674. He had a long and distinguished career in the law and politics and very often they were intertwined. He is credited with establishing a rookery in the Inner Temple Gardens with crows brought from his Woodcote estate. He also owned property in Wiltshire, being Lord of the Manor of Box, and in Essex Street, London.

Politically he was regarded as a 'mild Tory'.

One of Edward's first famous legal cases was Godden v Hales in 1686, a contrived lawsuit engineered by King James II to obtain a ruling that confirmed his 'divine right' to dispense with Acts of Parliament which didn't suit him, principally those concerning religion. James was a Roman Catholic who favoured the Catholics and persecuted Anglicans. As he had sacked most of the judges who disagreed with him, it comes as no surprise that the ultimate decision in Godden v Hales went in his favour - but it was a hollow and temporary victory, for in 1788 seven leading Anglicans, known as 'The Immortal Seven', invited his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange, to invade the country and depose him, which William did, ruling jointly with James's daughter, Mary, as William III.

In 1689 Edward was appointed Attorney General of the duchy of Lancaster and of England and Wales in 1701. William III died in that year; Edward was reappointed by Queen Anne and knighted in 1702.

It was said that Edward was not a particularly successful Attorney General and, whether this was true or not, he lost the position in 1707 for political reasons: however, he did not fall entirely out of favour and was expected to be reappointed in 1708, when his successor resigned, but Sir James Montagu, brother of the Earl of Halifax, got the job instead (Montagu had been the barrister who successfully defended John Tutchin in his 1704 trial). Edward was reported to have said that

'though they have at last given Sir James the title of attorney-general, they can never give him the reputation to support it'.

In 1710 machinations in the corridors of power led to Edward's reappointment as attorney-general; he also became the Member of Parliament for Tiverton in Devon. He was appointed to many parliamentary drafting committees and then became involved in attempts to prosecute the Duke of Marlborough for alleged corruption in dealing with army bread contracts. Marlborough had fallen out of favour and the aim was to have him dismissed from the Army, which he was (but only temporarily).

Edward survived as Attorney General and retired in 1717 with a pension of £1,500 a year (which would be well over a quarter of a million pounds in today's money). He retained his seat in Parliament until 1722, by which time he was suffering from a serious paralysing illness, and died in Epsom on 16 August 1723. His wife, formerly Anne Jolliffe, whom he had married in 1687 at St Martin Outwich, City of London, survived him until 17 August 1743: they were buried at St Martin's, Epsom, as instructed in their wills.

Edward had not been particularly wealthy as a young man; he was a second son and the inheritance was earmarked for his elder brother, William, which is why he became a working lawyer. However, in 1686 he inherited a third share of the estate of Lady Philadelphia Wentworth, which amounted to £14,000. See more at http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/Northeys1.html