Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Manwood, Roger
MANWOOD, Sir ROGER (1525–1592), judge, second son of Thomas Manwood, a substantial draper of Sandwich, Kent, by Catherine, daughter of John Galloway of Cley, Hundred of South Greenhow, Norfolk, was born at Sandwich in 1525. Educated at St. Peter's school, Sandwich, he was admitted in 1548 to the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar in 1555. The same year he was appointed recorder of Sandwich, and entered parliament as member for Hastings. In 1557-8 he exchanged Hastings for Sandwich, which he continued to represent until 1572. He resigned the recordership of Sandwich in 1566, but acted as counsel for the town until his death. Manwood was also, for some years prior to his elevation to the bench of the common pleas, steward, i.e. judge, of the chancery and admiralty courts of Dover.
At the Inner Temple revels of Christmas 1561 Manwood played the part of lord chief baron in the masque of 'Palaphilos' [cf. Hatton, Sir Christopher, 1540–1591]. Heearly attracted the favourable notice of the queen' who in 1563 granted him the royal manor of St. Stephen's, or Hackington, Kent, which he made his principal seat, rebuilding the house in magnificent style. He was reader at the Inner Temple in Lent 1565; his reading on the statute 21 Hen. VIII, c. 3, is extant in Harleian MS. 5265 (see also Thoresby, Ducat Leod. Cat. of MSS. in 4to, No. 119). He was a friend of Sir Thomas Gresham and Archbishop Parker, and steward of the liberties to the latter, in concert with whom he founded at Sandwich a grammar school. It took the place of St. Peter's school, which had been suppressed in 1547 with the chantry of St. Thomas, to which it was attached. The school was built on a site near Canterbury Gate, and endowed partly out of Manwood's own funds and money bequeathed him for the purpose, partly by public subscription between 1563 and 1583, and long continued to send scholars to the universities, but has been in abeyance since the middle of the present century. Manwood was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law on 23 April 1567. In parliament he supported the Treason Bill of 1571, was a member of the joint committee of lords and commons to which the case of the queen of Scots was referred in May 1572, and concurred in advising her execution. On 14 Oct. he was rewarded with a puisne judgeship of the common pleas. He was one of the original governors of Queen Elizabeth's grammar school, founded at Lewisham in 1574, and in 1575 obtained an act of parliament providing for the perpetual maintenance of Rochester bridge, which, however, did not prevent its demolition in 1856, to make way for the present iron structure. Manwood was joined with the Bishops of London and Rochester in a commission of 11 May 1575 for the examination of foreign immigrants suspected of anabaptism. The inquisition resulted in the conviction of two Flemings, John Peters and Henry Twiwert, who were burned at West Smithfield. On 23 April 1576 Manwood was placed on the high commission. As a judge he was by no means disposed to minimise his jurisdiction, advised that the Treason Act did not supersede, but merely reinforced the common law, and that a lewd fellow, whom neither the pillory nor the loss of his ears could cure of speaking evil of the queen, might be punished either with imprisonment for life 'with all extremity of irons, and other strait feeding and keeping,' or by burning in the face or tongue, or public exposure, 'with jaws gagged in painful manner,' or excision of the tongue. He also held that non-attendance at church was punishable by fine, and favoured a rigorous treatment of puritans. Nevertheless, he seems to have been popular on circuit, Southampton conferring upon him its freedom on 28 March 1577. By the influence of Walsingham and Hatton, Manwood was created lord chief baron of the exchequer on 17 Nov. 1578, having been knighted at Richmond two days before. He took his seat in the following Hilary term (Add. MS. 16169, f. 67 b). As lord chief baron Manwood was a member of the court of Star-chamber which on 15 Nov. 1581 passed sentence of fine and imprisonment upon William, lord Vaux of Harrowden [q. v.], and other suspected harbourers of the Jesuit Edmund Campion [q. v.] for refusing to be examined about the matter. His judgment, in which he limits the legal maxim, 'Nemo tenetur seipsum prodere,' to cases involving life or limb, is printed in 'Archæologia,' xxx. 108 et seq. (see also Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. vii. pp. 163-5).
In 1582, on the death of Sir James Dyer [q. v.], chief justice of the common pleas, Manwood offered Burghley a large sum for his place, which, however, was given to Edmund Anderson [q. v.] In February 1584-5 he helped to try the intended regicide Parry, and in the following June he took part in the inquest on the death of the Earl of Northumberland in the Tower [see Percy, Henry, eighth Earl of Northumberland], He was a member of the special commission which, on 11 Oct. 1586, assembled at Fotheringay for the examination of the queen of Scots, and concurred in the verdict afterwards found against her in the Star-chamber (25 Oct.) He also sat on the commission which, on 28 March 1587, found Secretary Davison guilty of 'misprison and contempt' for his part in bringing about her execution [see Davison, William, 1541-1608].
In 1591 he was detected in the sale of one of the offices in his gift, and sharply censured by the queen. A curious letter, in which he attempts to excuse himself by quoting precedents, is extant in Harleian MS. 6995, f. 49. This was but one of several misfeasances of various degrees of gravity with which Manwood was charged during his later years. Thomas Digges [q. v.] and Richard Barry, lieutenant of Dover Castle, charged him with deliberate perversion of justice, in the chancery and admiralty courts of Dover, and the exchequer; Sir Thomas Perrott [q. v.] and Thomas Cheyne, with covinous pleading in the court of chancery; and Richard Rogers, suffragan bishop of Dover, with selling the queen's pardon in a murder case for 240l. According to Manningham (Diary, Camden Soc, p. 91), he even stooped to appropriate a gold chain which a goldsmith had placed in his hands for inspection, and on the privy council intervening by writ at the suit of the goldsmith, returned the scornful answer, 'Malas causas habentes semper fugiunt ad potentes. Ubi non valet Veritas, praevalet auctoritas. Currat lex, vivat Rex, and so fare you well my Lords.' 'But,' adds the diarist, 'he was commit.' This strange story is confirmed by extant letters of Manwood, from which it appears that he was arraigned before the privy council in April 1592, refused to recognise its jurisdiction in a contemptuous letter containing the words 'fugiunt ad potentes,' was thereupon confined in his own house in Great St. Bartholomew's by order of the council, and only regained his liberty by apologising for the obnoxious letter, and making humble submission (14 May). His disgrace, however, did not prevent his offering Burghley five hundred marks for the chief justiceship of the queen's bench, vacant by the death of Sir Christopher Wray [q. v.] The bribe was not taken, and on 14 Dec. 1592 Manwood died. The letters above referred to will be found in Lansdowne MS. 71, arts. 5, 6, 7, and 68; Harleian MS. 6995, art. 62; and Strype, 'Annals ' (fol.), iv. 119-28. Other of Manwood's letters are preserved in Egerton MS. 2713, f. 193, Additional MS. 12507, f. 130, Lansdowne MS. arts. 24 and 31, and the 'Manwood Papers' in the Inner Temple Library. His hand is one of the least legible ever written. A note of some of the charges against him in Burghley's handwriting is in Lansdowne MS. 104, art. 32 (see also Lansd. MSS. 24 art. 39, 26 art. 7). Some eulogistic Latin hexameters on his death are ascribed to Marlowe (cf. Works of Christopher Marlowe, ed. Dyce, iii. 308).
Manwood was buried beneath a splendid marble monument, erected during his lifetime, in the south transept of St. Stephen's Church, near Canterbury. Coke calls him a 'reverend judge of great and excellent knowledge in the law, and accompanied with a ready invention and good elocution.' Of the four high courts of justice he wittily said: 'In the common pleas there is all law and no conscience, in the queen's bench both law and conscience, in the chancery all conscience and no law, and in the exchequer neither law nor conscience.' His opinion 'as touching corporations, that they were invisible, immortal, and that they had no soul, and therefore no subpoena lieth against them, because they have no conscience nor soul,' is recorded by Bulstrode, 'Reports,' pt. ii. p. 233.
If an unscrupulous judge, Manwood was a munificent benefactor to his native county. Besides his school, he built a house of correction in Westgate, Canterbury, gave St. Stephen's Church a new peal of bells and a new transept—that under which he was buried—and procured in 1588 a substantial augmentation of the living. He also built seven almshouses in the vicinity of the church, and by his will left money to provide work and wages for the able-bodied poor of Hackington and the adjoining parishes in bad times.
Manwood married twice, in both cases a widow. By his first wife, Dorothy, daughter of John Theobald of Sheppey, he had issue three sons and two daughters; by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of John Copinger, of Allhallows, near Rochester, he had no issue. Of his sons one only survived him, Peter [q. v.] His posterity died out in the male line during the seventeenth century. Both Manwood's daughters married: Margaret, the elder, Sir John Leveson of Home, Kent; Ann, the younger, Sir Percival Hart of Lillingston. Fuller (Worthies, 'Kent') erroneously ascribes to the judge a treatise on 'Forrest Law' [see Manwood, John]. A portrait of Manwood by an unknown hand is in the National Portrait Gallery; it is a sketch in water-colours from an ancient picture.
[Lambard's Perambulation of Kent, 1596, p. 394; Holinshed's Chronicles, anno 1584; Berry's County Genealogies, 'Kent;' Camden's Britannia, ed. Gough, i. 217; Addit. MSS. 5507 p. 329, 12507 f. 130, 29759, 33512 ff. 5-16; Eg. MS. 2713, f. 193; Lansd. MSS. 24 art. 39, 26 art. 7, 27 art. 48, 50 art. 24 and 31, 104 art. 32; Harl. MSS. 6993 ff. 7, 17, 6994 ff. 21,154, 7567 art. 15; Inner Temple Books; Returns of Members of Parliament (Official); Boys's Sandwich, pp. 199-269, 484, 744-5; Hasted's Kent, ii. 20, 621, iii. 598, 600, iv. 273; Hasted's Kent, ed. Drake, pt. i., 'Hundred of Blackheath,' pp. 268, 271 n., 284; Dugdale's Orig. p. 150; Chron. Ser. pp. 93, 94; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547-80, pp. 441, 521, 556, 1581-90 p. 648, 1591-4 pp. 219-20; Burgon's Life of Sir Thomas Gresham, ii. 478; Nicolas's Life of Sir Christopher Hatton, p. 67; D'Ewes's Journ. of Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 1682, pp. 160, 165, 167, 178, 180, 183, 206, 222, 223; Parl. Hist. i. 745; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. pt. iii. p. 20; Analytical Index to the Remembrancia, p. 117; Rymer's Fœdera (Sanderson), xt. 718, 740; Cobbett's State Trials, i. 1095, 1114, ii. 62 et seq.; Somers Tracts, i. 220; Narratives of the Reformation (Camden Soc.), p. 339; Trevelyan Papers (Camden Soc), ii. 84, 86; Camden Miscellany (Camden Soc.), vol. iv.; Lodge's Illustrations, ii. 382; Parker Corresp. (Parker Soc.), pp. 187–92, 338, 405 ; Becon's Prayers (Parker Soc), p. 601 ; Strype's Whitgift, fol., i. 285, ii. 360-73, iii. 138 et seq.; Strype's Aylmer, 8vo, p. 91; Strype's Grindal, fol., pp. 208, 232-3; Strype's Parker, fol., i. 274 et seq., ii. 377, iii. 337, 343; Strype's Annals, fol., vol. iii. pt. i. pp. 62, 138, 270, 364; Coke's Reports, fol., pt. iii. p. 26a; Croke's Reports, 4th ed., p. 290; Froude's Hist. of England, xi.88a; Carlisle's Endowed Grammar Schools, i. 595 et seq.; Parl. Papers, 1865, vol. xliii.; Murray 8 Handbook to Kent; Kelly's Directory to Kent and Sussex; Foss's Lives of the Judges.]