Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Herne, John
HERNE, JOHN (fl. 1644), lawyer, was admitted a student at Lincoln's Inn on 21 Jan. 1610–11, and was afterwards called to the bar there. On 5 March 1627–8 he was returned to parliament for Newport, Cornwall, but was unseated on petition. In 1632 he defended Henry Sherfield, bencher of Lincoln's Inn and recorder of Salisbury, on his trial in the Star-chamber for defacing a stained-glass window in St. Edmund's Church, Salisbury. He was also counsel for Prynne on his trial for the publication of ‘Histrio-Mastix’ in February 1633–4, and for the warden of the Fleet before a commission which sat to investigate alleged abuses in the management of that prison in March 1634–5. In 1637 he was elected a bencher of his inn, and was Lent reader there in the following year. In 1641 he was one of the counsel for Sir John Bramston the elder [q. v.] and Sir Robert Berkeley [q. v.], two of the judges impeached by the Long parliament. He was assigned (23 Oct.) to defend the bishops impeached the same year for issuing the new canons of 1640, but declined to act on the ground that as a commoner he was ‘involved in all the acts and votes of the House of Commons.’ He was also one of the counsel for Laud on his impeachment, and delivered a learned and eloquent speech in his defence on 11 Oct. 1644. It was supposed at the time to have been composed by Hale, another of Laud's counsel [see Hale, Sir Matthew]. The gist of the argument was that no one of the articles of the impeachment was sufficient by itself to ground a charge of high treason, and that therefore the totality of them could not do so any more than, as Herne wittily put it, ‘two hundred couple of black rabbits would make a black horse.’ After the trial was over Herne visited Laud in the Tower, procured him his prayer-book, which was in Prynne's hands, and was consulted by him about his speech on the scaffold. After his death, the date of which is uncertain, appeared ‘The Learned Reading of John Herne, Esq., late of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inne, upon the Statute of 23 H. 8, cap. 3, concerning Commissions of Sewers. Translated out of the French Manuscript,’ London, 1659, 4to.
Another John Herne (fl. 1660), who appears to have been the elder Herne's son, and the translator of the reading, entered Lincoln's Inn on 11 Feb. 1635–6, and published a collection of precedents called ‘The Pleader,’ London, 1657, fol.; ‘The Law of Conveyances,’ London, 1658, 8vo.; ‘The Modern Assurancer,’ 1658; and ‘The Law of Charitable Uses,’ London, 1660, 8vo.
[Lincoln's Inn Reg.; Lists of Members of Parliament (Official), i. 474 n.; Comm. Journ. i. 883, iii. 241, iv. 401, 405, 428; Cobbett's State Trials, iii. 519 et seq., 562 et seq, iv. 577 et seq.; Laud's Autobiog.; Prynne Papers (Camd. Soc.); Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1634–5, p. 566; Dugdale's Orig. pp. 255, 266; Bramston's Autobiog. (Camd. Soc.), p. 78.]