learned judge,’ and in spite of his political conduct, which was somewhat variable, as ‘a most just and charitable man.’
Atkyns married (1) Ursula, daughter of Sir Thomas Dacres, by whom he had two sons, Robert and Edward, who both became judges of eminence, and three daughters; and (2) Frances, daughter of John Berry, of Lydd, Kent, by whom he had no issue. His first wife died 26 June 1644, and was buried in Cheshunt Church, Hertfordshire (Cussan's Hertfordshire, ii. 225). His second wife, whom Atkyns married 16 Sept. 1645, long survived him, and died 2 March 1703–4, at the reputed age of 100.
[Foss's Lives of the Judges, vii. 53 et seq.; State Trials, vols. iii. v. vi.; State Paper Calendars, 1640–1667; Whitelocke's Memorials (1853), iv. 107, 246; Noble's continuation of Granger, ii. 295; Chauncy's Hertfordshire (1817), i. 294, &c.; Harl. MS. 5801 f. 9 b; Notes and Queries (2nd series) ix. 197, 294.]
ATKYNS, Sir EDWARD (1630–1698), baron of the exchequer and younger son of Sir Edward Atkyns, who held a similar office, was born in 1630. He became a student at Lincoln's Inn at the age of 18, and five years later was called to the bar. In 1675 he was appointed ‘autumn reader’ at his inn of court, and in Easter term, 1679, was made a serjeant-at-law. A few weeks afterwards (22 June 1679) Atkyns, who had secured some reputation for legal learning and for hospitality, was raised to the bench as one of the barons of the exchequer, and knighted. He took a prominent part in the trial of Thomas Twining and Mary Pressicks, who were charged on 29 July 1680, at the instigation of the anti-catholic agitators of the day, with compassing the death of the king and seeking the overthrow of the protestant religion; in his summing up Atkyns placed the case before the jury with becoming impartiality. At the close of the same year he was one of the judges appointed to try Lord Stafford and other catholic peers on a charge of high treason, but he there supported his colleagues in their contention that the law, which demanded two witnesses to every overt act of treason, might on occasion be waived. On 21 April 1686, when lord chief baron Montagu was removed from the bench for refusing to certify to the legality of the dispensing power exercised by James II, Atkyns was promoted to his place. After the revolution of 1688 he consistently refused to take the oaths of allegiance to William III, and consequently resigned his office, to which Sir Robert Atkyns, his elder brother, was immediately appointed [see Atkyns, Sir Robert]. Shortly afterwards Atkyns retired from public life, and withdrew to his country seat at Pickenham, in Norfolk. Although he continued to hold Jacobite opinions, he showed no bitterness of spirit to those who differed from him, and earned the gratitude of all classes of his neighbours by his tact in settling their disputes. He died of the stone in London during October 1698.
[Foss's Judges of England, vii. 210–11; State Trials, vii. 1179, 1258; Noble's Continuation of Granger, ii. 296; Chauncy's Hertfordshire, p. 149; Blomefield's History of Norfolk, vi. 71, viii. 349, ix. 69, 70.]
ATKYNS, JOHN TRACY (d. 1773), barrister-at-law, was the third son of John Tracy, of Stanway, Gloucestershire, and great-grandson of the third Viscount Tracy, of Toddington. His mother was a daughter of Sir Robert Atkyns, lord chief baron, and it was probably on account of the legal eminence of his grandfather that he adopted the name of Atkyns. He entered Lincoln's Inn in 1724, and was called to the bar in 1732. In 1755 he was appointed cursitor baron of the exchequer. He had taken notes of the cases in the court of Chancery from Hilary term 1736 to Michaelmas term 1754, and he published condensed reports of them in three volumes, 1765–7–8; a second edition appeared 1781–2, and a third, edited by Francis William Sanders, in 1794. In 1768 he made a codicil to his will under the name of Tracy. By his wife, whose name was Katherine Lindsay, he left no children. He died 25 July 1773. Lord Chief-Justice Wilmot describes him in his diary as ‘a cheerful, good-humoured, honest man, a good husband, master, and friend.’
[Britton's Graphic Illustrations of Toddington, Gloucestershire; Foss's Judges of England, viii. 101, 238; Wilmot's Life of Chief-Justice Wilmot, p. 199.]
ATKYNS, RICHARD (1615–1677), writer on typography, was descended from an old Gloucestershire family that for upwards of a century leased from the dean and chapter of Gloucester the manor of Tuffley, two miles south-south-east from the cathedral city. After receiving a home education at the hands of two inefficient clerical tutors, he was sent to the Free (Crypt) Grammar School in Gloucester. Thence, at the age of fourteen, he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, where he remained two years, probably without taking a degree, as he afterwards informs us ‘that he was not so well grounded as he ought to have been to read a Greek or Latin
