JENKINS, SIR LEOLINE (1623-1685), English lawyer and diplomatist, was the son of a Welsh country gentleman. He was born in 1623 and was educated at Jesus college, Oxford. Dur ing the civil war and the commonwealth he was an ardent royalist; in 1661 he was made registrar of the consistory court of West minster; in 1664 deputy judge of the court of arches; about a year later judge of the admiralty court; in 1689 judge of the preroga tive court of Canterbury. In these offices Jenkins did enduring work in elucidating and establishing legal principles, especially in relation to international law and admiralty jurisdiction. He was selected to draw up the claim of Charles II. to succeed to the property of his mother, Henrietta Maria, on her death in 1666, and while in Paris for this purpose he succeeded in defeating the rival claim of the duchess of Orleans, being rewarded by a knight hood on his return. He was one of the English representatives at the Congresses of Cologne in 1673, and of Nijmwegen in 1676 79. He was made a privy councillor in 168o and became secretary
of state in April of the same year, in which office he was the official leader of the opposition to the Exclusion Bill. He re signed office in 1684, and died on Sept. 1, 1685. Jenkins left his impress on the law of England in the Statute of Frauds, and the Statute of Distributions, of which he was the principal author, and of which the former profoundly affected the mercantile law of the country, while the latter regulated the inheritance of the personal property of intestates. He was never married.
See William Wynne, Life of Sir Leoline Jenkins (2 vols., 1724), which contains a number of his diplomatic despatches, letters, speeches and other papers. See also Sir William Temple, Works, vol. ii. (4 vols., 1770) ; Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (Fasti), ed. by P. Bliss (4 vols., 1813-20), and History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, ed. by J. Gutch (Oxford, 1792-96).