John Maynard (MP) - The Reign of Charles II

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 Henry Vane in Trinity term 1662. He represented Bere Alston in the Pensionary Parliament, 1661–79, and sat for Plymouth during the rest of Charles II's reign. He was the principal manager of the abortive impeachment of Lord Mordaunt in 1666–7, and constituted himself counsel for the defence in the proceedings against Lord Clarendon in the following October. He appeared for the House of Lords in the king's bench on the return to Lord Shaftesbury's habeas corpus on 29 June 1677, and sustained its sufficiency on the ground that, though a general warrant for commitment to prison would be invalid if issued by any court but the House of Lords, the king's bench had no jurisdiction to declare it so when issued by that house. In 1678 he made a spirited but ineffectual attempt to secure the conviction of Lord Cornwallis for the brutal murder of a boy in St. James's Park. The severe censure which Lord Campbell passed upon him for his conduct of this case is based upon an entire misapprehension of the facts.

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).

Maynard opened the case against Edward Colman on 27 November 1678, and took part in most of the prosecutions arising out of the supposed popish plot, including the impeachment of Lord Stafford, in December 1680. Lord Campbell's interesting story of his slipping away to circuit without leave during the debate on the Exclusion Bill in the preceding November, 'upon which his son was instructed to inform him that if he did not return forthwith he should be sent for in custody, he being treated thus tenderly in respect of his having been long the Father of the House’ is a sheer fabrication.

Maynard favoured the impeachment of Edward Fitzharris, declared its rejection by the House of Lords a breach of privilege (26 March 1681), and took part in the subsequent prosecution in the king's bench. In the action for false imprisonment during his mayoralty brought by Sir William Pritchard against the ex-sheriff Thomas Papillon on 6 November 1684, an incident in the conflict after the court took on the liberties of the City of London, Maynard conducted the defence with eminent skill and zeal, though a Jeffreys-ridden jury found a verdict for the plaintiff with £10,000 damages. Summoned to give evidence on behalf of Oates on his trial for perjury in May 1685, and questioned concerning the impeachment of Lord Stafford, Maynard pleaded total inability to swear to his memory in regard to that matter, and was dismissed by Jeffreys with a sneer at his supposed failing powers.