Ranulph Crewe - Involvement in Leading Trials

Involvement in Leading Trials

His name does not appear in the official list of returns to parliament after 1597. He was certainly, however, the member for Saltash in 1614, and was elected speaker (7 April). He was knighted in June, and took the degree of serjeant-at-law in July of the following year. In the address with which, according to custom, he opened the session in 1614, he enlarged upon the length of the royal pedigree, to which he gave a fabulous extension. In January 1614-15 Crewe was appointed one of the commissioners for the examination, under torture, of Edmond Peacham. Peacham was sent down to Somersetshire to stand his trial at the assizes. Crewe prosecuted, and Peacham was convicted. His reputation was somewhat damaged by the Leicester Witch Trials, where nine women were hanged on the evidence of a young boy whom Crewe found entirely credible, but who KIng James soon after declared to be a fraud. Crewe was a member of the commission which tried Weston for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1615, and was concerned with Bacon and Montague in the prosecution of the Earl and Countess of Somerset as accessories before the fact in the following year. In 1621 he conducted the prosecution of Henry Yelverton, the attorney-general, for certain alleged misdemeanors in connection with patents. The same year Crewe prosecuted Sir Francis Mitchell for alleged corrupt practices in executing 'the commission concerning gold and silver thread,' conducted the impeachment of Sir John Bennet, judge of the Prerogative court, for corruption in his office, and materially contributed to the settlement of an important point in the law of impeachment. Edward Floyde, having published a libel on the Princess Palatine, was impeached by the commons, and sentenced to the pillory. The lords disputed the right of the commons to pass sentence upon the offender on two grounds : (1) that he was not a member of their house ; (2) that the offence did not touch their privileges. At the conference which followed Crewe adduced a precedent from the reign of Henry IV in support of the contention of the lords, and the commons being able to produce no counter-precedent the question was quietly settled by the commons entering in the journal a minute to the effect that the proceedings against Floyde should not become a precedent. In 1624 Crewe presented part of the case against Lionel Cranfield, earl of Middlesex, on his impeachment. The same year he was appointed king's serjeant.