Edward Atkyns

Sir Edward Atkyns SL (1587–1669) was an English judge, a baron of the exchequer of the Commonwealth period. Life He was the third son of Richard Atkyns, and was born in 1587, apparently at Bensington in Oxfordshire. Admitted on 5 February 1601 as a student of Lincoln's Inn, where his father and grandfather had both attained legal honours, he was called to the bar 25 January 1614, became governor of the society in 1630, and was two years later nominated Autumn Reader. On 7 February 1633 Atkyns appeared before the Star Chamber as counsel for William Prynne, charged with libelling the queen Henrietta Maria in his Histriomastix, and defended his client's character from his personal acquaintance with him. He may have given similar help to Henry Burton and John Bastwick when brought before the same tribunal in 1637; in 1640 Burton and Bastwick, while petitioning the Long Parliament to reconsider their sentence of imprisonment, requested permission to obtain Atkyns's legal assistance in stating their case. Atkyns was promoted to a serjeanty by the king on 19 May 1640 (a fortnight after the dissolution of the Short Parliament). Atkyns accepted the honour, and made no change in his pro-Parliament conduct. But a royal patent, issued on 7 October 1640, appointing Atkyns a Baron of the Exchequer, did not take effect. In 1643, when the House of Commons entered into negotiations with Charles I, they demanded that ‘Mr. Serjeant Atkyns should be made justice of the King's Bench’, and on 28 October 1645, despairing of any settlement with the crown, they created him, by their own order, baron of the exchequer. This post Atkyns held till 4 August 1648, when, by an order of the Lords, he was removed to the Court of Common Pleas. Around 1650, he bought the manor of Hensington from Edward Shiere, but sold it on to Lewis Napier in 1661.