1715. He afterwards, on 26 July 1724, migrated to Lincoln's Inn, of which in the following November he was elected bencher and treasurer, and in 1726 master of the library.
In the ‘Spectator’ of 28 April 1712 Philip Homebred discourses judiciously and not inelegantly on the absurdity of sending raw lads on foreign travel. This modest performance is ascribed by early and credible tradition to Yorke, and, if authentic, is not without biographical interest. It affords, however, no reason to regret the strictness with which he on the whole devoted himself to his legal studies.
Among Yorke's early associates were Robert (afterwards Viscount) Jocelyn [q. v.] and Thomas (afterwards Sir Thomas) Parker [q. v.] By the latter he was introduced to Lord Macclesfield, in whom he found a patron and friend. He thus made his début very early, both in the courts and in parliament, to which the Pelham interest secured his return on 21 April 1719 for Lewes, and afterwards, on 20 March 1721–2, for Seaford, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the peerage. He made his first recorded speech in the debate on going into committee on the measure declaratory of the supremacy of the British over the Irish parliament (4 March 1719–20). The speech apparently established his reputation as a constitutionalist; for a few days later he was sworn in as solicitor-general, in succession to Sir William Thompson [q. v.] On 11 June following he was knighted. He had previously been elected to the recordership of Dover, which he retained throughout life.
As solicitor-general Yorke assisted Sir Robert Raymond [q. v.] in the prosecution of the Jacobite conspirator Christopher Layer [q. v.] He also took a subordinate part in the proceedings against Atterbury and his associates [see Atterbury, Francis]. On 31 Jan. 1723–4 he succeeded Raymond as attorney-general. The impeachment of Lord Macclesfield was then impending, and in the ordinary course it would have fallen to the attorney-general to conduct it. Yorke thus found himself in a position of extreme delicacy; for what duty prescribed friendship forbade. The government respected his scruples, and permitted him to devolve the management of the impeachment upon the solicitor-general, Sir Clement Wearg [q. v.] His own professional honour was immaculate, and might well have induced him to take a severe view of Macclesfield's case; but charity and the sense of personal obligation prevailed, and his intimacy with the earl was neither ruptured nor impaired by the conviction. He showed a similar generosity towards political offenders, and, though himself the quintessence of whiggism, did not fail to support the bill for Bolingbroke's restitution (20 April 1725).
He was as much at home in the senate as in the forum, and rendered Walpole signal service by his defence of the financial expedients adopted on the rupture of diplomatic intercourse with Austria (April 1727).
Continued in office on the accession of George II, he conducted in the early years of the new reign several cases of more than ordinary public interest, among them the prosecutions of Edmund Curll [q. v.] (Michaelmas term 1727) for obscene libel, of Thomas Woolston [q. v.] for blasphemy, of William Hales (9 Dec. 1728) for the conversion of letter-franks into negotiable instruments, of the ex-wardens of the fleet Bambridge and Huggins (1729) for murder [see Bambridge, Thomas], and of Richard Francklin, publisher of the ‘Craftsman,’ for seditious libel [cf. Raymond, Robert, Lord Raymond]. His bearing in these, and indeed in all, crown cases blended vigilance and moderation in happy contrast with the excessive zeal displayed by some of his predecessors, and served as an ensample to his successors. In parliament he proved a mainstay to the government in the heated debates on the Hessian and Swedish subsidies (7 Feb. 1729), the foreign loan prohibition bill (24 Feb. 1730), the army estimates (26 Jan. 1731–2), and the excise bill (14 March 1732–3). At the bar he had now but one rival, Charles Talbot (afterwards Baron Talbot) [q. v.], and as a common-law practitioner even Talbot was his acknowledged inferior. Accordingly, on the death of Lord Raymond (18 March 1732–3), Talbot was reserved for the chancellorship, which the decrepitude of Lord King promised soon to vacate [see King, Peter, first Lord King], and Yorke, after some delay, accepted the vacant chief-justiceship, with a salary of 4,000l., double that of his predecessor. He was invested with the coif and appointed chief justice on 31 Oct., was sworn of the privy council on 1 Nov., and on 23 Nov. was created Baron Hardwicke of Hardwicke (where he had already a seat) in Gloucestershire. On 29 March 1735 he was elected recorder of Gloucester.
Hardwicke took his seat in the House of Lords on 17 Jan. 1733–4, and on 28 March following distinguished himself by his effective and dignified reply to Lord Chesterfield's strictures upon the royal message announcing an immediate augmentation of the forces. The war of the Polish succession was then raging, and served as a pretext for the measure. But Hardwicke saw in it a security
