Christopher Wray - Lord Chief Justice

Lord Chief Justice

Wray was appointed on 14 May 1572 justice, and on 8 November 1574 chief justice, of the queen's bench. The only state trial in which as puisne he took part was that in Trinity term 1572 of John Hall and Francis Rolston for conspiracy to effect the release of Mary, Queen of Scots. As chief justice, in addition to his ordinary jurisdiction he exercised functions of a somewhat multifarious character. He was a member of the commission appointed on 23 April 1577 to adjudicate on the validity of the election of John Underhill (1545?-1592) to the rectorship of Lincoln College, Oxford; and as assistant to the House of Lords he advised on bills, received petitions, and on one occasion (14 September 1586) was placed on the commission for its adjournment. He was a strong judge, who well knew how to sustain the dignity of his office, and showed as much firmness in restraining by prohibition an excess of jurisdiction on the part of the ecclesiastical commission in 1581 as in enforcing the laws against the sectaries in that and subsequent years. It was not until towards the close of his life that he was himself added to the ecclesiastical commission (Christmas 1589).

The principal state trials over which he presided were those of the puritan John Stubbs or Stubbe, the Jesuit Edmund Campion, and his harbourer, William, lord Vaux (son of Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowdon), and the conspirators against the life of the queen, John Somerville and William Parry (d. 1585) He also presided at the Star Chamber inquest, by which (23 June 1585) the suicide and treasons of the Earl of Northumberland were certified; and was a member of the commissions which attainted Northumberland's accomplice, William, grandson of Sir William Shelley, and passed sentence of death upon Anthony Babington and his associates (September 1586). He was present at Fotheringay Castle as assessor to the tribunal before which the Queen of Scots pleaded in vain for her life (14 October 1586), but appears to have taken no part in the proceedings. He presided, vice Sir Thomas Bromley (1530–1587), absent through illness, at the subsequent trial in the Star Chamber of the unfortunate secretary of state, William Davison, whose indiscreet zeal he blandly censured as bonum sed non bene before pronouncing the ruthless sentence of the court (28 March 1587). The last state trials in which he took part were those of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, on 18 April 1589, and of Sir John Perrot on 27 April 1592. At a conference with his colleagues in Michaelmas term 1590 he initiated the revision of the form of commissions of the peace, then full of corruptions and redundancies.