CAMDEN, CHARLES PRATT, 1St EARL lord chancellor of England, was born in Kensington in 1714. He was a descendant of an old Devonshire family, the third son of Sir John Pratt, chief-justice of the king's bench in the reign of George I. He was educated at Eton and King's college, Cam bridge. In 1734 he became a fellow of his college, and in the following year obtained his degree of B.A. He entered the Middle Temple in 1738, and ten years later he was called to the bar. He practised at first in the courts of common law, travelling also the western circuit.
The first case which brought him into notice was his successful defence of a bookseller on a charge of libel. In this case he first maintained the principle for which he fought all his life, that in libel the jury is judge both of law and fact. He was appointed attorney general in 1787 and the same year entered the House of Commons as member for Downton in Wiltshire, sitting there for four years. One of the most noticeable incidents of his tenure of office as attorney-general was the prosecution of Dr. J. Shebbeare (1709-88), a violent party writer of the day, for a libel against the government contained in his notorious Letters to the People of England, which were published in the years 1756-58. This, in a period when State Trials were the chief weapon of party warfare, was the only official prosecution for libel he set on foot. In Jan. 1762 Pratt was raised to the bench as chief-justice of the common pleas. He was at the same time knighted. Soon after his eleva tion the nation was thrown into great excitement about the prose cution of John Wilkes, and the question involved in it of the legality of "general warrants." Chief-Justice Pratt pronounced, with decisive and almost passionate energy, against their legality, thus giving voice to the strong feeling of the nation and winning for himself an extraordinary degree of popularity in the country. In July 1765 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Camden, of Camden Place, in the county of Kent; and in the following year he was made lord chancellor (July 3o, 1766). But though his excellence as a judge was such that only one of his decisions was reversed on appeal, his uncompromising hostility to the govern ments of the day on such questions as the treatment of the Ameri can colonies and the proceedings against Wilkes forced the gov ernment to ask him to resign. He retired from the court of chancery in Jan. 17 70. He continued steadfastly to oppose the taxation of the American colonists, and signed in 5778, the protest of the Lords in favour of an address to the king on the subject of the manifesto of the commissioners to America. In 1782 he was appointed president of the council under the Rock ingham administration, but retired in the following year. Within a few months he was reinstated in this office under the Pitt ad ministration, and held it till his death. Lord Camden was a stren uous opponent of Fox's India Bill, took an animated part in the debates on important public matters till within two years of his death, introduced in 1786 the scheme of a regency on occasion of the king's insanity, and defended zealously and at last success fully his early views on the functions of juries, especially of their right to decide on all questions of libel. He was raised to the dignity of an earl in May 1786, and was at the same time created Viscount Bayham. Earl Camden died in London, on April 18, I 794. He was buried in Seale church, Kent.
See E. Foss, Judges of England, vol. viii. p. 375 (1848-64).