important parliamentary effort, in opposition to the Septennial Bill (24 April 1716). He re-entered parliament in 1719, being returned on 26 March for Ludlow, for which borough he was re-elected on accepting, 20 May 1720, the office of attorney-general; in that capacity he conducted the prosecution of the Jacobite Christopher Layer [q. v.] At the general election of April 1722 he was returned to parliament for Helston, Cornwall. On 31 Jan. 1723–4 he received a puisne judgeship in the king's bench, having been sworn serjeant-at-law on the previous day. He was one of the lords commissioners for the custody of the great seal during the interval, 7 Jan. to 1 June 1725, between its surrender by Lord Macclesfield and its delivery to Lord King [see Parker, Thomas, first Earl of Macclesfield; King, Peter, first Lord King]. In the meantime, 2 March 1724–5, he succeeded Sir John Pratt [q. v.] as lord chief justice, and on 12 April was sworn of the privy council. He was continued in office by George II, by whom he was raised to the peerage on 15 Jan. 1730–1731 with the title of Baron Raymond of Abbot's Langley, Hertfordshire. He took his seat in the House of Lords on 21 Jan., and was at once placed on the committee of privileges. He died of stone at his house in Red Lion Square, London, on 18 March 1732–3. His remains were interred in the chancel of Abbot's Langley church, whence his monument, an elaborate but tasteless structure of marble, has recently been removed to the south nave aisle. His estate at Langley Bury, Abbot's Langley, passed, with his title, to his only son, Robert, by his wife Anne (d. 1720), eldest daughter of Sir Edward Northey of Woodcote Green, Epsom, attorney-general to Queen Anne. Robert Raymond, second lord Raymond (1717–1756), married, on 25 June 1741, Mary, daughter of Montagu, viscount Blundell in the peerage of Ireland, but died without issue on 19 Sept. 1756.
Raymond was a man of great learning, and, though he does not rank with the most illustrious of the sages of the law, left an enviable reputation for strict, impartial, and painstaking administration of justice. His judgments in the cases of the notorious duellist, Major Oneby, in 1726, and the warden of the Fleet prison in 1730 [see Chesshyre, Sir John; Darnall, Sir John, the younger], contributed to elucidate the distinction between murder and manslaughter; in the case of Rex v. Curll in 1728 he established the principle that the publication of an obscene libel is punishable at common law. In a subsequent libel case, Rex v. Franklin, in 1731, where the offence was the publication of certain strictures on the peace of Seville in the ‘Craftsman,’ No. 235, his direction, which was followed by the jury, afterwards furnished Lord Mansfield with a precedent in support of his view of the functions of the jury in such cases. Raymond's portrait (artist unknown) is in Gray's Inn Hall.
Raymond's ‘Reports of Cases argued and adjudged in the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas in the reigns of the late King William, Queen Anne, King George I, and his present Majesty,’ appeared at London in 1743, 2 vols. fol. (2nd ed. 1765). They were edited, with the entries of pleadings, by Serjeant Wilson, London, 1775, 3 vols. fol.; and again by John (afterwards Sir John) Bayley [q. v.] in 1790, London, 3 vols. 8vo; a fifth edition, by Gale, 1832, London, 8vo. They are of great but unequal authority, by no means all of the earlier cases being Raymond's own reporting.
[Hist. Reg. Chron. Diary, 19 March 1732–3; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, ix. 432; Nicolas's Hist. Peerage, ed. Courthope; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage; Burke's Extinct Peerage; Hist. MSS. Comm. 1st Rep. App. 28, 4th Rep. App. 418, 7th Rep. App. 684, 8th Rep. App. pt. i. pp. 25, 50, 11th Rep. App. pt. iv. pp. 142, 211; Douthwaite's Gray's Inn; Lists of Members of Parl. (official); Hardy's Cat. of Lords Chancellors, &c.; Commons' Journ. xviii. 534; Lords' Journ. xxiii. 591; Parl. Hist. vii. 335, viii. 39, 861; Howell's State Trials, xiv. 642, 987, 1327, xvi. 97, xvii. 154, 671; Le Neve's Pedigrees of Knights (Harl. Soc.); Strange's Rep. ii. 619, 623, 948; Cussans's Hertfordshire, Hundred of Cashio, p. 99; Campbell's Chief Justices; Foss's Judges; Bridgman's Legal Bibliography; Wallace's Reporters.]
RAYMOND, Sir THOMAS (1627–1683), judge, son of Robert Raymond of Bowers-Gifford, near Downham, Essex, born in 1627, was admitted from Stortford School pensioner of Christ's College, Cambridge, 5 April 1643, aged 16, being admitted student of Gray's Inn 4 Feb. 1644–5, and graduating B.A. at Midsummer 1646. He was called to the bar at Gray's Inn on 11 Feb. 1649–50, and on 26 Oct. 1677 was sworn serjeant-at-law. He succeeded Edward Thurland on the exchequer bench 8 May 1679; was knighted on 26 June following; transferred to the common pleas on 7 Feb. 1679–80, and advanced to the king's bench on 29 April following. He sat with Scroggs at Westminster during the trials of Elizabeth Cellier [q. v.] and Roger Palmer, earl of Castlemaine [q. v.], and as assessor to the House of Lords at the trial of Lord Stafford [see Howard, William, Viscount Stafford]. He concurred with Chief-justice Sir Francis Pemberton [q. v.] in
