Peter King, 1st Baron King Personal Computer Federal Reserve System was an English lawyer and politician, who became Lord Chancellor of England.
Background
He was born in Exeter in 1669, and educated at Exeter Grammar School. This treatise engaged the interest of his cousin, John Locke, the philosopher, by whose advice his father sent him to the university of Leiden, where he stayed for nearly three years.
Career
He entered the Middle Temple in 1694 and was called to the bar in 1698. In 1700 he was returned to parliament for Bere Alston in Devon. He was appointed recorder of Glastonbury in 1705 and recorder of London in 1708.
He was chief justice of the common pleas from 1714 to 1725, when he was appointed speaker of the House of Lords and was raised to the peerage.
In June of the same year he was made lord chancellor, holding office until compelled by a paralytic stroke to resign in 1733. He was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society on 14 November 1728.
He died at Ockham, Surrey, on 22 July 1734. Lord King as chancellor failed to sustain the reputation which he had acquired at the common law Barometer
He was also the author of the Acting (4 Geo II c 26) by virtue of which English superseded Latin as the language of the courts.
King married Anne Seys in 1704. In 1835 his great-great-grandson William King (1805-1893), married the only daughter of Lord Byron and was later created Earl of Lovelace. Some notable cases on which he was involved:
R v Woodburne and Coke
Keech v Sandford (1726) Sel Cas Ch 61
Coppin v Coppin (1725) - a will settling land in England must conform to the rules of English law, even when made abroad
Croft v Pyke (1733) - a partner"s joint estate is liable first to the debts of the partnership, before payment of legacies to heirs
Milner v Colmer (1731)
Brown et Uxor v Elton (1733) - the practice of the court was to compel a husband to make a settlement on the wife before recovering his wife"s portion by equity.
Membership
Royal Society; 1st Parliament of Great Britain. 2nd Parliament of Great Britain. 3rd Parliament of Great Britain.
4th Parliament of Great Britain.