Jeffreys, GEORGE, BARON, the infamous judge, was born at Acton in Denbighshire in 1648, educated at Shrewsbury, St Paul's, and Westminster schools, and called to the bar in 1668. He rose rapidly into practice at the Old Bailey bar, and became in 1671 common serjeant of the City of London. Hitherto he had affected to belong to the Puritan party, but he now began to intrigue for court favour, was made solicitor to the Duke of York, was knighted in 1677, and became Recorder of London in the following year. He was actively concerned in many of the Popish Plot prosecutions, was made chief-justice of Chester and king's serjeant in 1680, baronet in 1681, and chief-justice of the King's Bench in 1683. His first exploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sidney, but in every state-trial he proved himself a willing tool to the crown, thus earning the special favour of James, who raised him to the peerage soon after his accession. Among his earliest trials were those of Titus Oates and Richard Baxter, and in both he showed his customary brutality and vindictiveness. In the summer of 1685 he was sent to the west to try those involved in Monmouth's rising, and earned the Lord Chancellorship by a series of judicial murders which has left his name a byword for cruelty. Three hundred and twenty were hanged as rebels during the 'Bloody Assize,' as Jeffreys made his way through Dorset and Somerset, while eight hundred and forty-one were transported, and a still larger number imprisoned and whipped with merciless severity. A drunken and brutal bully, he heaped the foulest reproaches upon his unhappy victims, and gloated with fiendish malignity over their prospective sufferings. It was his boast that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors since the Conquest. He held the Great Seal from September 1685 until the downfall of James, and supported all the king's despotic measures as president of the newly-revived Court of High Commission, and in the trial of the seven bishops. Yet he had rational views on witchcraft, and was too honest to turn Catholic like many better men. On the flight of his master he tried to follow his example, but was caught disguised as a sailor at Wapping, and sent to the Tower to save him from being torn in pieces by the mob. Here he died four months after, his frame already worn out by hard drinking, April 18, 1689.
See the Life by Woolrych (1827) and the apologetic or eulogistic one by H. B. Irving (1898).