marriage of Charles I he was appointed solicitor-general to Queen Henrietta Maria, after whom one of his daughters was named. When in November 1627 the five gentlemen who had been thrown into prison for refusing to contribute to the forced loan applied to the court of king's bench for a writ of habeas corpus, Calthorpe was counsel for Sir Thomas Darnell, being associated in the case with Noy, Serjeant Bramston, and Selden; and we are told that ‘the gentlemen's counsel pleaded at Westminster with wonderful applause, even of shouting and clapping of hands, which is unusual in that place.’ In the proceedings against the seven members in the spring of 1630, Calthorpe was counsel for Benjamin Valentine, one of the three who held down the speaker in the chair. In the conduct of this case he seems to have shown some lack of zeal, though when his turn came to speak he defended his client with conspicuous ability, notwithstanding that his sympathies were with the court party. In December 1635 he succeeded Mason as recorder of London, the corporation having been specially requested to elect him in a letter which Charles addressed to them on his behalf.
He held the recordership only a few weeks, for in January 1636 he was made attorney of the court of wards and liveries, and resigned the other appointment. Shortly after this he was knighted, and was chosen to be reader of his inn, but he never discharged the duties of his office, ‘causa mortalitatis,’ as Dugdale notes. He was now in his fifty-first year, and his path seemed clear to the highest legal preferments, but death came upon him in the full vigour of his powers in August 1637. Calthorpe married Dorothy, daughter and heiress of Edward Humphrey, and by her had a family of ten children, only one of whom, Sir James Calthorpe of Ampton (said to have been knighted by Oliver Cromwell), attained maturity. From him the present Lord Calthorpe is lineally descended.
[Papers of Norfolk and Norwich Archæol. Soc. ix. 153; Nichols's Progresses of James I, i. 217; Foster's Sir John Eliot, i. 406, ii. 313 et seq.; State Trials, iii. 309; Dugdale's Origines, p. 220; Cal. of State Papers, Dom. 1635 and 1637; Blomefield's Norfolk, vii. 45, viii. 4.]
CALTHROPE, Sir CHARLES (d. 1616), judge, was probably one of the Calthropes of Suffolk, and was largely employed in the service of the crown in Ireland. He was made attorney-general for Ireland 22 June 1584, and was continued in his office by James I 19 April 1603. Calthrope's chief occupation was in connection with grants of forfeited lands, and in securing proper reservation of all royal rights in them. Thus, 24 Dec. 1585, he writes to Burghley that the queen gets but little by her tenures, and many frauds are practised to avoid them, and proposes the application to Ireland of the Statute of Uses and the Statute of Wills (31 Hen. VIII), and to put an end to gavelkind and Irish tenure; he repeats his complaint to Walsingham 27 Feb. 1586, and suggests that Coleman, the queen's remembrancer, is inattentive to his duties in the matter. On 15 July 1585 he is named as one of several commissioners to summon the chiefs in Connaught and Thomond, and to compound for their cesse by a fixed rent to the crown. During 1586 he acted as commissioner for all the attainted lands in Munster, visiting Dungarvan 21 Sept., and remaining eight days each at Lismore and Youghal, ‘meting such lands as Sir Walter Rawley is to have.’ Winter drove him back to Dublin after surveying 27,400 acres, and the work was left to be completed in December by subordinates. On 28 Jan. 1586–7 he represents to Burghley that by his good services the queen recovered 4,000l. owing for arrears, and accordingly his fees were augmented, and Mallow was assigned to him, not much to his satisfaction. Norreys, who had had it before, writes, 8 March 1586–7, begging to have it again, and saying the attorney-general will easily yield it up. Perhaps he felt ill requited, for 14 March 1586–7 Geoffrey Fenton writes to Burghley that reforms do not progress: ‘If the attorney-general were the man he ought to be, the justice (Gardener) might have help of him; but for that he is discovered here to be short of that learning and judgment which his place requireth, and to be rather a pleaser of the lord deputy than careful of the public service; and lastly, too much addicted to the Irishry, the assistance he giveth profiteth little.’ On 26 April he is named in a commission to settle all differences among the undertakers in the plantations in Munster, and he held an inquisition at Youghal in the same year on the death of Conohor O'Mahowne, late of Castle Mahowne, a rebel with the Earl of Desmond, and again in 1588 (10 June) he holds an inquisition with others as to the lands of O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, and of O'Connor Sliggaghe of Sliggaghe, Connaught (Morrin, Irish Patent Rolls, ii. 145). In 1594 he was in the commission for putting in execution the acts concerning the queen's supremacy (id. 27 Nov. 1594). As attorney-general of Leinster his salary was now 78l. 13s. 4d. He was in a commission of 1604 appointing justices for Connaught, and after being confirmed in his office by James he was
