James Whitelocke - Under Charles I

Under Charles I

He was continued in office by Charles I, and in the following autumn it fell to him, as junior judge in his court, to discharge the hazardous duty of adjourning term during the plague outbreak of 1625. To escape from the contagion he drove, halting only at Hyde Park Corner to dine, in his coach from Horton, near Colnbrook, Buckinghamshire, to Westminster Hall, and, after hurrying through the necessary forms, re-entered his coach and drove back to Horton.

In November 1626 Whitelocke concurred with Sir Ranulph Crew in declining to certify the legality of forced loans. In Darnell's Case, however, he supported the Crown. The remand was not allowed to pass without the citation of the judges to the House of Lords to answer for their conduct. They obeyed, and through Whitelocke's mouth glossed their order by representing it as only intended to allow time for further consideration.

In February 1629 the House of Commons enquired into the release of the supposed Jesuits recently discovered in Clerkenwell. Whitelocke, as one of the judges who had examined them, was cited to justify the release, which he did on the ground that there was no evidence that the prisoners were in priest's orders. The stormy scenes which preceded the dissolution of this parliament (10 March) and the subsequent committal of Sir John Eliot and his friends to the Tower of London brought the judges once more into delicate relations both with the Crown and Parliament. The evasion by the three common-law chiefs of the issues submitted to them by the king (Whitelocke, Heath and John Walter) was followed by the reference of substantially the same questions to the entire common-law bench (25 April). The points of law were again evaded, but eleven out of the twelve judges sanctioned proceedings in the Star-chamber; of the eleven Whitelocke was one. He also concurred in the course taken after the argument upon the writs of habeas corpus, the application by letter to the king for directions, and the remand of the prisoners pending his answer (June). At a private audience with the king at Hampton Court on Michaelmas day he obtained consent to the release of the prisoners on security given for their good behaviour, a concession which they unanimously rejected. On the trial Whitelocke concurred in the judgment.

Whitelocke was greatly interested in antiquarian studies, and was the author of several papers which are printed in Thomas Hearne's Collection of Discourses (1771); his journal, or Liber famelicus, was edited by John Bruce and published by the Camden Society in 1858.

Whitelocke died at Fawley Court on 22 June 1632. His remains were interred in Fawley churchyard, with a marble monument. His estates were later exempted by the Long Parliament from liability to contribute to the fund for making reparation to Eliot and his fellow-sufferers.

Whitelock married Elizabeth Bulstrode, a daughter of Edward Bulstrode of Hedgerley Bulstrode, Buckinghamshire, and his son was the parliamentarian Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke. Whitelocke's twin-brother, William, served under Francis Drake, and fell at sea in an engagement with the Spaniards. Of two other brothers, the elder, Edmund, was a courtier who was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot.