Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Heywood, Samuel

by Charles William Sutton ‎

HEYWOOD, SAMUEL (1753–1828), serjeant-at-law and Welsh judge, son of Benjamin Heywood of Liverpool, afterwards banker at Manchester, was born at Liverpool in 1753. He was educated at the Warrington academy from 1768 to 1772, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Being a unitarian he absented himself from chapel, and incurred the censure of the authorities, which he would have resisted but for his father. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 2 July 1772, and was made serjeant-at-law in 1794. He had considerable practice on the northern circuit. On 8 March 1807 he received the appointment of chief justice of the Carmarthen circuit. He was a personal friend and warm defender of Charles James Fox. He was seized with paralysis while on circuit at Haverfordwest on 27 Aug. 1828, and died at Tenby on 11 Sept., and was buried at Bristol. He married Susan, daughter of John Cornwall, by whom he had several children. He wrote:

1. ‘The Right of Protestant Dissenters to a Compleat Toleration asserted. … By a Layman,’ 1787; 2nd edit. 1789; 3rd edit. 1790. This is said to have converted Dr. Parr, who termed it the only good book produced by the dissenters.
2. ‘High Church Politics’ (in answer to Bishop Horsley), 1790.
3. ‘Digest of the Law concerning County Elections,’ 1790.
4. ‘Digest of the Law respecting Borough Elections,’ 1797 (reprinted 1818).
5. ‘Vindication of Mr. Fox's History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II,’ 1811, 4to; favourably reviewed by Sydney Smith in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ and by Roberts in the ‘Monthly Review,’ lxix. 364.
6. ‘A Dissertation upon the Distinctions in Society and Ranks of the People, under the Anglo-Saxon Governments,’ 1818, 8vo.

Just before his death he was engaged on lives of the Duke of Monmouth and of William, Lord Russell.

[Woolrych's Eminent Serjeants-at-Law, 1869, ii. 701; Monthly Repository, 1814, p. 387; Foster's Lancashire Pedigrees; Lord Holland's Introd. to Fox's James II, p. xxxviii; Howell's State Trials, xii. 257, note; Allibone's Dict. of Authors, i. 839.]

C. W. S.