Sir Edmund Anderson (1530–August 1 1605), Chief Justice of the Common Pleas under Elizabeth I, sat as judge at the trial of Mary I of Scotland.

The Anderson family originated in Scotland and then came to Northumberland. They settled in Lincolnshire in the 14th century and became a prominent family there.

Sir Edmund Anderson, son of Edward Anderson, was born in Flixborough in Lincolnshire c. 1530. He received the first part of his education in the country and then spent a brief period at Lincoln College, Oxford, before entering the Inner Temple in June 1550.

In 1577, Anderson was created Serjeant-at-Law and in 1578 he was appointed Queen's Sergeant. In 1581 he was appointed Justice of Assize on the Norfolk circuit and tried Edmund Campion and others in November 1581, securing an unexpected conviction.

On the back of that success, Anderson was made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1582 and was knighted. He was reappointed by James I and held office until his death[1]. Throughout his career he played a prominent role in some of the most important political trials of Elizabeth’s reign including that of Mary 1 of Scotland and Sir Walter Ralegh [2]. At one point Sir Edmund presided over the trial of Davison, the Queen’s secretary who was accused of erroneously issuing the warrant for the execution of Mary I of Scotland.

Anderson married Magdalen Smyth from Hertfordshire and had 9 children, 3 sons and 6 daughters. He had a number of distinguished decendants, including a Chief Justice of Colonial Maryland [3].

Anderson was often described as a strict lawyer who was “completely governed by the law”. He even stated at an important trial that, “I sit here to judge of law, not logic” [4]. In Sir Edward Coke and the Elizabeth Age by Allen D. Boyer, Sir Edmund is described as “the monster: an angry man in the courtroom and a resentful man afterward, an advocate who begrudged other lawyers’ victories” [5].

Anderson became lord of the parish of Eyeworth in Bedfordshire and his family remained the local gentry for many generations. All Saints Church in Eyeworth contains a number of impressive brasses and monuments to Anderson and his wife. The most revered of these monuments is one that is in the south wall of the chancel of the Church of All Saints. It is an ornate monument of Sir Edmund Anderson and his wife, Magdalen Smyth. The monument has two statues, one of Sir Edmund dressed in his judicial robes and the other is of his wife in a fine gown from that period. Both of these figures are set on a marble alter tomb. The canopy of this monument is semi-circular and the projecting piece is supported by two seven foot pillars and the whole is topped by the family coat of arms. Besides this great monument, there are two other monuments, though somewhat more modest, that honor members of the Anderson family [6].

Anderson wrote two books, Reports of Many Principal Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, in the Common Bench 1644 and Resolutions and Judgments on the Cases and Matters Agitated in All the Courts of Westminster, in the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1653, which are still today very influential legal references [7].

Sources

1. The Barontage of England By William Betham (1801)

2. Uk National Portrait Gallery http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp00100

3. Collective Geneological Research http://www.ancestry.com

4. The Barontage of England

5. Sir Edward Coke and the Elizabethen Age By Allen D Boyer

6. http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/EdmundAnderson.htm

7. The Barontage of England