John Maynard (MP) - Reputation

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 Thomas Fuller quaintly wrote before the Restoration, seeming ‘sick with long longing for his sitting thereon.' Roger North admits that he was 'the best old book lawyer of his time.' Clarendon speaks of his 'eminent parts,' ‘great learning,' and 'signal reputation.' Anthony A Wood praises his 'great reading and knowledge in the more profound and perplexed parts of the law,' and his devotion to ‘his mother the university of Oxon.' As a politician, his moderation and consistency were generally recognised, though for his part in the impeachments of Strafford and Stafford he was savagely attacked by Roscommon in his Ghost of the late House of Commons (1680–1). Though hardly eloquent, Maynard was a singularly facile and fluent speaker (Roscommon sneers at ‘his accumulative hackney tongue' and could sometimes be crushing in retort. Jeffreys once taxing him in open court with having forgotten his law, he is said to have replied : 'In that case I must have forgotten a great deal more than your lordship ever knew.' He humorously defined advocacy as ars bablativa.

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).