Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/368

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ings of the lord chief justice in cases now reported are innovations in the trial of men for their lives and liberties;’ ‘that he hath used an arbitrary and illegal power’ which ‘tends to the introducing of an arbitrary government;’ that he ‘hath undervalued, vilified, and contemned Magna Charta,’ ‘that he be brought to trial in order to condign punishment in such manner as the house shall judge most fit and requisite.’ On the 13th Kelyng was heard in his defence at the bar of the house, which contented itself with resolving that ‘the precedents and practice of fining and imprisoning jurors is illegal,’ and that ‘this house proceed no further upon the matter against the lord chief justice.’ He appears to have been generally unpopular. Pepys mentions his ‘abusing’ his cousin, Roger Pepys, at Cambridge, ‘very wrongfully and shamefully, but not to his reproach, but to the chief justice's in the end, when all the world cried shame upon him for it.’ Roger Pepys was recorder of Cambridge, and for speaking slightingly of Lord-chief-justice Hyde had been bound to his good behaviour by Kelyng at the assizes in March 1665. On 1 March 1670–1 Kelyng was charged before the House of Lords by Lord Hollis [q. v.] with libelling him from the bench during the parliamentary session, the libel complained of consisting in describing Hollis's action in connection with a certain case pending before Kelyng as ‘a foul contrivance.’ The house judged the libel proved and a gross breach of privilege, and compelled Kelyng to make a public withdrawal and apology. He was already in failing health, having been absent from court all the preceding Michaelmas term from illness. On 10 May 1671 he died of a lethargy at his house in Hatton Garden. It was remarked as strange ‘that a man of so bilious a complexion should have so phlegmatic a conveyance to the other world’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 6th Rep. App. p. 370). He was buried on the 13th in St. Andrew's, Holborn. Sir Thomas Raymond (Reports, 2nd edit. p. 209) characterises him as ‘a learned, faithful, and resolute judge.’

Kelyng married thrice: first, Martha, daughter of Sir Thomas Botiler of Bidenham, Bedfordshire, who died on 18 July 1660, and was buried in the Temple Church; secondly, Mary, daughter of William Jesson, draper, of London, who died on 24 Sept. 1667, and was buried in St. Andrew's, Holborn; thirdly, on 23 March 1667–8, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Francis Bassett of Cornwall. He had four sons and four daughters. His eldest son (by his first wife), Sir John Kelyng (1630?–1680), was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1660, became a bencher of that society in 1677, was knighted at Whitehall on 26 Oct. 1679, was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law on 12 May 1680, and died at his house at Southhill, Bedfordshire, 29 Dec. 1680, leaving a widow (Philippa, daughter of Signor Antellminelli, resident for the duke of Tuscany), three sons (John of Southhill, Charles, d. 1707, and Anthony, a clergyman in Bedfordshire), and five daughters.

Kelyng left a manuscript collection of reports, part of which was published by the direction of Sir John Holt [q. v.] under the title ‘A Report of Divers Cases in the Pleas of the Crown adjudged and determined in the Reign of the late King Charles,’ London, 1708, fol.; reprinted in 1739, 8vo, and again at Dublin in 1789, 8vo. The only complete edition, however, is that by Mr. Richard Loveland Loveland, of the Inner Temple, entitled ‘Sir John Kelyng's Reports of Crown Cases in the time of King Charles,’ &c., London, 1873, 8vo. Kelyng's judgment in a curious case of some rioters charged in 1668 with high treason for making an attack on some brothels in Moorfields was published in pamphlet form in 1710, 8vo, and will also be found in Cobbett's ‘State Trials,’ vi. 879 et seq.

[Inner Temple Books; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 404; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1638–9 p. 109, 1653–4 p. 349, 1664–5 p. 39, 1665–6 p. 67; Comm. Journ. ii. 597, 602, 951, 961, ix. 22, 36, 37; Lords' Journ. xii. 440, 452; Wynne's Serjeant-at-Law; Siderfin's Reports, i. 4, 150; Le Neve's Pedigrees of Knights (Harl. Soc.), p. 150; Burnet's Own Time, fol., i. 184; Cobbett's State Trials, v. 1177, 1196, 1229, vi. 76, 171; Pepys's Diary, ed. Braybrooke; Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. ii. App. i. a.; Mercur. Publ. 7–14 Feb. 1661; Kingdom's Intelligencer, 11–18 Feb. 1661; London Gazette, 10–13 May, 1680; Chester's London Marriage Licences; Sir Thomas Raymond's Reports, 2nd edit. p. 189.]

J. M. R.


KEM or KEME, SAMUEL (1604–1670), puritan divine, born in London in 1604, was son of a cooper. He matriculated at Oxford as a commoner of Magdalen Hall on 23 June 1621, was elected to a demyship at Magdalen College in 1624, and graduated B.A. on 19 Feb. 1624–5. He resigned his demyship in 1626, on being presented to a college living. On 13 Aug. he was created B.D., and shortly afterwards became rector of Albury, Oxfordshire, and chaplain to Edward Wray of Ricot in the same county, the patron of the church. On 11 Aug. 1640, being then rector of Little Chart, Kent, he preached a violent republican sermon to the captains and soldiers ‘exercising armes in