Sir Nicholas Hyde

Sir Nicholas Hyde (died Aug. 25, 1631) was the chief justice of England during the reign of Charles I.

Hyde entered Parliament in 1601 and soon became prominent as an opponent of the court of James I, though he does not appear to have distinguished himself in the law. Before long, however, he deserted the popular party, and in 1626 he was employed by George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, in his defense to impeachment by the House of Commons. In the following year he was knighted and appointed chief justice of the king’s bench, in which office it fell to him to give judgment in the celebrated case of Sir Thomas Darnell and others who had been committed to prison on warrants signed by members of the privy council, which contained no statement of the nature of the charge against the prisoners. In answer to the writ of habeas corpus the attorney-general relied on the prerogative of the crown, supported by a precedent of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign. Hyde, three other judges concurring, decided in favour of the crown, but without going so far as to declare the right of the crown to refuse indefinitely to show cause against the discharge of the prisoners.

In 1629 Hyde was one of the judges who refused bail to the seven members of the House of Commons (including John Eliot, Denzil Holles, and Benjamin Valentine) whom the king imprisoned for sedition for their actions in the 1629 Parliament. The judges refused to admit the members’ plea that they could not be called upon to answer out of Parliament for acts done in Parliament.