SELDEN, JOHN (1584-1654), English jurist, legal anti quary and oriental scholar, was born on Dec. 16, 1584, at Sal vington, in the parish of West Tarring, Sussex. His father, also John Selden, held a small farm. Selden was educated at Chiches ter grammar school and Hart hall, Oxford. In 1603 he entered Clifford's Inn, London, and in 1604 migrated to the Inner Temple, and in 1612 he was called to the bar. His practice was mostly conveyancing, and he rarely went into court.
Selden's early works were: Analecton Anglo-Britannicon (1615) ; England's Epinomis and Janus Anglorum; Facies Altera (16io), which dealt with the progress of English law down to Henry II. ; Titles of Honour (1614), which, in spite of some obvious defects and omissions, has remained to the present day the most compre hensive and trustworthy work of its kind that we possess ; and De diis Syriis (1617), which immediately established his fame as an oriental scholar among the learned in all parts of Europe. For his History of Tithes (1618), Selden was summoned before the privy council and compelled to retract his opinions, or at any rate what were held to be his opinions. Moreover, his work was sup pressed and himself forbidden to reply to any of the controver sialists who had come or might come forward to answer it.
This seems to have introduced Selden to the practical side of political affairs. It was pretty certain that, although he was not in parliament, he was the instigator and perhaps the draftsman of the memorable protestation on the rights and privileges of the House affirmed by the Commons on Dec. 18, 1621. For this he was committed to the Tower, and he occupied himself in preparing an edition of Eadmer's History, which he published two years afterwards. In 1623 he was returned to the House of Commons for the borough of Lancaster, and sat with Coke, Noy and Pym on Sergeant Glanville's election committee. In Charles's second parliament (1626) he was elected for Great Bedwin in Wiltshire, and took a prominent part in the impeachment of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. In the following year, in the "benevolence" case, he was counsel for Sir Edmund Hampden in the court of king's bench. In 1628 he was returned to the third parliament of Charles for Ludgershall in Wiltshire, and had a large share in drawing up and carrying the Petition of Right.
In the session of 1629 he was one of the members mainly re sponsible for the tumultuous passage in the House of Commons of the resolution against the illegal levy of tonnage and poundage, and, along with Eliot, Holles, Long, Valentine, Strode, and the rest, he was sent once more to the Tower. He was released by the intervention of Laud. In 1628 at the suggestion of Sir Robert Cotton he had compiled, with the assistance of two learned co adjutors, Patrick Young and Richard James, a catalogue of the Arundel marbles. He employed his leisure at Wrest, to which
he now retired, in writing. About this period he seems to have inclined towards the court rather than the popular party, and even to have secured the personal favour of the king. To him in 1635 he dedicated his Mare clausum, and under the royal patronage it was put forth as a kind of State paper. It had been written 16 or 17 years before; but James I. had prohibited its publication for political reasons ; hence it appeared a quarter of a century after Grotius's Mare liberum, to which it was intended to be a rejoinder. He was returned to the Long Parliament without opposition for the University of Oxford.
Selden joined in the protestation of the Commons for the maintenance of the Protestant religion according to the doc trines of the Church of England, the authority of the Crown, and the liberty of the subject. In 1643 he participated in the discussions of the assembly of divines at Westminster, and was appointed shortly afterwards keeper of the rolls and records in the Tower. In 1646 he subscribed the Solemn League and Cove nant, and in 1647 was voted 15,000 by the parliament as compen sation for his sufferings under the monarchy. He published in 1642 Privileges of the Baronage of England when they sit in Parliament and Discourse concerning the Rights and Privileges of the Subject; in 1644, Dissertatio de anno civili et calendario reipublicae Judaicae; in 1646 his treatise on marriage and divorce among the Jews entitled Uxor Ebraica; and in 1647 the earliest printed edition of the old English law-book Fleta. In 165o Sel den passed the first part of De synedriis et prefecturis iuridicis veterum Ebraeorum through the press, the second and third parts being severally published in 1653 and 1655, and in 1652 he wrote a preface and collated some of the manuscripts for Sir Roger Twysden's Historiae Anglicae scriptores decem. His last publi cation was a vindication of himself from certain charges ad vanced against him and his Mare clausum in 1653 by Theodore Graswinckel, a Dutch jurist.
After the death of the earl of Kent in 1639 Selden lived per manently under the same roof with his widow. It is believed that he was married to her, although their marriage does not seem to have ever been publicly acknowledged. He died at Friary House in Whitefriars on Nov. 3o, 1654, and was buried in the Temple church, London. Of all the members of the Antiquarian Society, the centre of historical research of the 17th century, Selden was the acknowledged master.