office, by Horace George Rayner, who claimed (but, as was proved, wrongly) to be his illegitimate son and who had been refused pecuniary assistance. Rayner was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to be hanged; but the home secretary (Mr Herbert Gladstone), in response to an agitation for his reprieve, commuted the sentence to penal servitude for life.
WHITELOCKE, SIR JAMES (1570-1632), English judge, son of Richard Whitelocke, a London merchant, was born on the 28th
of November 1570. Educated at Merchant Taylors' School,
London, and at St John's College, Oxford, he became a fellow
of his college and a barrister.
He was then engaged in managing
the estates belonging to St John's College, Eton College and
Westminster College, before he became recorder of Woodstock
and member of parliament for the borough in 1610. In 1620
Whitelocke was made chief justice of the court of session of the
county palatine of Chester, and was knighted; in 1624 he was
appointed justice of the court of king's bench. He died at
Fawley Court, near Reading, an estate which he had bought in
1616, on the 22nd of June 1632. His wife, Elizabeth, was a
daughter of Edward Bulstrode of Hedgerley Bulstrode, Buckinghamshire, and his son was Bulstrode Whitelocke.
Sir James was greatly interested in antiquarian studies, and was the author of several papers which are printed in T. Hearne's Collection of Discourses (1771); his journal, or Liber Jamelicus, was edited by John Bruce and published by the Camden Society in 1858.
Whitelocke's elder brother, Edmund Whitelocke (1565-1608), was a soldier in France and later a courtier in England. He was imprisoned because he was suspected of being concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, and although he was most probably innocent, he remained for some time in the Tower of London.
The soldier John Whitelocke (1757-1833) was doubtless a descendant of Sir James Whitelocke. He entered the army in 1778 and served in Jamaica and in San Domingo. In 1805 he was made a lieutenant-general and inspector-general of recruiting, and in 1807 he was appointed to command an expedition sent to recover Buenos Aires from the Spaniards. An attack on the city was stubbornly resisted, and then Whitelocke concluded an arrangement with the opposing general by which he abandoned the undertaking. This proceeding was regarded with great disfavour both by the soldiers and others in South America and in England, and its author was brought before a court martial in 1808. On all the charges except one he was found guilty and he was dismissed from the service. He lived in retirement until his death on the 23rd of October 1833.
WHITELOCKE, BULSTRODE (1605-1675), English lawyer
and parliamentarian, eldest son of Sir James Whitelocke, was
baptized on the 19th of August 1605, and educated at Merchant
Taylors' School and at St John's College, Oxford, where he
matriculated on the 8th of December 1620. He left Oxford,
without a degree, for the Middle Temple, and was called to the
bar in 1626 and chosen treasurer in 1628. He was fond of field
sports and of music, and in 1633 he had charge of the music in
the great masque performed by the inns of court before the king
and queen. Meanwhile he had been elected for Stafford in the parliament of 1626 and had been appointed recorder of Abingdon
and Henley. In 1640 he was chosen member for Great Marlow
in the Long Parliament. He took a prominent part in the
proceedings against Strafford, was chairman of the committee
of management, and had charge of articles XIX. -XXIV. of the
impeachment. He drew up the bill for making parliaments
indissoluble except by their own consent, and supported the
Grand Remonstrance and the action taken in the Commons
against the illegal canons; on the militia question, however, he
advocated a joint control by king and parliament. On the outbreak
of the Great Rebellion he took the side of the parliament,
using his influence in the country as deputy-lieutenant to prevent
the king's raising troops in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
He was sent to the king at Oxford both in 1643 and 1644 to
negotiate terms, and the secret communications with Charles
on the latter occasion were the foundation of a charge of treason
brought against Whitelocke and Denzil Holies (q. v.) later.
He was again one of the commissioners at Uxbridge in 1645.
Nevertheless he opposed the policy of Holies and the peace
party and the proposed disbanding of the army in 1647, and
though one of the lay members of the assembly of divines,
repudiated the claims of divine authority put forward by the
Presbyterians for their church, and approved of religious tolerance.
He thus gravitated more towards Cromwell and the
army party, but he took no part either in the disputes between
the army and the parliament or in the trial of the king. On the
establishment of the Commonwealth, though out of sympathy
with the government, he was nominated to the council of state
and a commissioner of the new Great Seal. He urged Cromwell
after the battle of Worcester and again in 1652 to recall the royal
family, while in 1653 he disapproved of the expulsion of the Long Parliament and was especially marked out for attack by Cromwell in his speech on that occasion. Later in the autumn, and perhaps in consequence, Whitelocke was dispatched on a mission to
Christina, queen of Sweden, to conclude a treaty of alliance and
assure the freedom of the Sound. On his return he resumed his
office as commissioner of the Great Seal, was appointed a commissioner
of the treasury with a salary of £1000, and was returned
to the parliament of 1654 for each of the four constituencies of
Bedford, Exeter, Oxford and Buckinghamshire, electing to sit for the latter constituency. Whitelocke was a learned and a sound lawyer. He had hitherto
shown himself not unfavourable to reform, having supported
the bill introducing the use of English into legal proceedings,
having drafted a new treason law, and set on foot some alterations
in chancery procedure. A tract advocating the registering
of title-deeds is attributed to him. But he opposed the revolutionary innovations dictated by ignorant and popular prejudices. He defeated the strange bill which sought to exclude lawyers from parliament; and to the sweeping and ill-considered changes in the court of chancery proposed by Cromwell and the council he offered an unbending and honourable resistance, being dismissed in consequence, together with his colleague Widdrington, on the 6th of June 1655 from his commissioner ship of the Great Seal (see Lenthall, William). He still, however, remained on good terms with Cromwell, by whom he was respected; he took part in public business, acted as Cromwell's adviser on foreign
affairs, negotiated the treaty with Sweden of 1656, and, elected again to the parliament of the same year as member for Buckinghamshire,
was chairman of the committee which conferred with
Cromwell on the subject of the Petition and Advice and urged the protector to assume the title of king. In December 1657 he became a member of the new House of Lords. On Richard
Cromwell's accession he was reappointed a commissioner of the Great Seal, and had considerable influence during the former's short tenure of power. He returned to his place in the Long Parliament on its recall, was appointed a member of the council
of state on the 14th of May 1659, and became president in
August; and subsequently, on the fresh expulsion of the Long
Parliament, he was included in the committee of safety which
superseded the council. He again received the Great Seal into
his keeping on the 1st of November. During the period which
immediately preceded the Restoration he endeavoured to oppose
Monk's schemes, and desired Fleetwood to forestall him and make
terms with Charles, but in vain.
On the failure of his plans he retired to the country and awaited events. Whitelocke's career, however, had been marked by moderation and good sense throughout. The necessity of carrying on the government of the country somehow or other had been the chief motive of his adherence to Cromwell rather than any sympathy for a republic or a military dictatorship, and his advice to Cromwell to accept the title of king was doubtless tendered with the object of giving the administration greater stability and of protecting its adherents under the Statute of Henry VII. Nor had he shown himself unduly ambitious or self seeking in the pursuit of office, and he had proved himself ready to sacrifice high place to the claims of professional honour and duty. These considerations were not without weight with his contemporaries at the Restoration. Accordingly Whitelocke was not excepted from the Act of Indemnity, and after the
