George Jeffreys, lord, an English judge, born at Acton, Denbighshire (Wales), in 1648, died in the tower of London, April 19, 1689.

His family was good, though not rich. He was educated at Shrewsbury, at St. Paul's school, London, and at Westminster school, under Dr. Busby. He became a member of the Inner Temple, May 19, 1663. Of his boyhood and youth but little is known, and that is not to his credit. He was called to the bar Nov. 22, 1668, 18 months before which he had married Mary Nesham, daughter of a clergyman, under romantic circumstances. On the death of this lady, in 1678, he married Anne, widow of Sir John Jones, who had been lord mayor of London. His rise at the bar was rapid, but his practice was in the Old Bailey and other London courts, always beneath the other tribunals in conduct, and in that age scarcely better than dens of torture and murder. So quickly did he rise that in March, 1671, he became common sergeant of the city of London. At that time he belonged to the "country party," and laid the foundations of his fortune by affecting to be a patriot and a Puritan; but he intrigued secretly for court favor, and was made solicitor to the duke of York, Sept. 14, 1677, and knighted. This startled his associates, but he insisted that the office was strictly professional, and in 1678 men of both parties united to elect him recorder of London. He then went boldly over to the court party.

In the days of the popish plot he was one of the most active against the accused, acting both as judge and as counsel, in different courts; and it was by his advice that the government placed itself at the head of the patrons of the plot, whereby its inventors were prevented from turning it to the profit they had expected. He was appointed chief justice of Chester and made king's sergeant in April, 1680, and in 1681 created a baronet. Having offended the house of commons, he was reprimanded on his knees. The office of recorder he gave up Dec. 2, 1680. When the Oxford parliament was dissolved in 1681, and Charles II. resolved to destroy the whigs, Jeffreys became the most efficient agent of government. He labored against the city of London, and helped to extinguish its liberties. He was of counsel for the crown on the trial of Lord Russell, and was made chief justice of England, in order to effect the destruction of Algernon Sidney. He was deeply concerned in several other judicial murders of the same kind, and in the assaults on the municipal corporations.

He presided at the trials of Oates and Baxter. On May 15, 1685., James II. made him a peer, by the title of Baron Jeffreys of Wem. In the summer of that year he was placed at the head of a special commission to try persons accused of having taken part in Monmouth's rebellion. Of the prisoners brought before him, 320 were. hanged, 841 ordered to be transported and sold into the slavery of the tropics, and others punished with scourgings, imprisonment, etc. Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors since the conquest. His cruelty was all the more offensive because he traded in pardons, and thus enabled rich offenders to escape. The king called his judge's doings "the chief justice's campaign in the west," and rewarded him by making him lord high chancellor of England, Sept. 28, 1685, which office he held until the downfall of the Stuarts. In the house of peers he made a bad figure. Attempting to bully the peers, he was firmly met, and so humiliated that he wept. The court of high commission having been revived, Jeffreys was appointed its president, and took part in its worst acts. It was by his advice that the seven bishops were imprisoned and tried. When the king was frightened into a change of policy, Jeffreys became his agent for good purposes.

He carried back its charter to the city of London, and was hooted by the people. When James fled from London, Jeffreys made arrangements to sail for Hamburg, but landed for the indulgence of drunkenness, and was recognized and seized. The mob wished to tear him in pieces, but the authorities succeeded in placing him in the tower, Dec. 13, 1688. There he remained for upward of four months, when he died of the stone. It is asserted that James II. was so well pleased with him, that he was to have received promotion in the peerage by the title of earl of Flint. Lord Campbell says that " when quite sober he was particularly good as a nisi prius judge." Macaulay says: "His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind. But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which, across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial facts, go straight to the true point." His biographer, Mr. Woolrych, says: "His bright sterling talents must be acknowledged; that intuitive perception which led him to penetrate in a moment the thin veil of hypocrisy, and show things as they were, must have its meed." In spite of these eulogies, few will dissent from the declaration of Mr. Justice Foster, that he was "the very worst judge that ever disgraced Westminster hall." Though Jeffreys was the father of 12 children, his family became extinct at an early day, and his title disappeared from the peerage in 1703.