PRATT (Charles), earl of Camden, was the third son of Sir John Pratt, knight, chief-justice of the court at king's-bench under George I. by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend Hugh Wilson canon of Bangor, and was born in 1713, the year before his father was called to the honour of the bench. He received the first rudiments of his education at Eton,
and afterwards removed to king's college Cambridge. Of his early life at both places there is little known, other than that at college he was found to be remarkably diligent and studious, and particularly so in the history and constitution of this country. By some he was thought to be a little too tenacious of the rights and privileges of the college he belonged to; but perhaps it was to this early tendency that we are indebted for those noble struggles in defence of liberty, which, whether in or out of office, he displayed through the whole course of his political life. After staying out the usual time at college, and taking his master's degree, in 1739 he entered himself a student of the Inner Temple, and was in due time admitted by that honourable society as a barrister at law. And here a circumstance develops itself in the history of this great man, which shows how much chance governs in the affairs of this world, and that the most considerable talents and indisputable integrity will sometimes require the introduction of this mistress of the ceremonies, in order to obtain that which they ought to possess from their own intrinsic qualifications.
Mr Pratt, after his being called to the bar, notwithstanding his family introduction, and his own personal character, was very near nine years in the profession, without ever getting in any degree forward. Whether this arose from a natural timidity of constitution, ill-luck, or perhaps a mixture of despondence growing out of the two circumstances, it is now difficult to tell; but the fact was so: and he was so dispirited by it, that he had some thoughts of relinquishing the profession of the law, and retiring to his college, where, in rotation, he might be sure of a church living, that would give him a small but honourable independence. With these melancholy ideas he went as usual the western circuit, to make one more experiment, and then to take his final determination. Mr Henley, afterwards Lord Northington and chancellor of England, was in the same circuit: he was Mr Pratt's most intimate friend; and he now availed himself of that friendship, and told him his situation, and his intentions of retiring to the university and going into the church. He opposed his intention with strong railing, and got him engaged in a cause along with himself; and Mr Henley being ill, Mr Pratt took the lead, and displayed a professional knowledge and elocution that excited the admiration of his brother barristers as much as that of the whole court. He gained his cause; and besides, he acquired the reputation of an eloquent, profound, and constitutional lawyer. It was this circumstance, together with the continued good offices of his friend Henley, which led to his future greatness; for with all his abilities and all his knowledge, he might otherwise in all probability have passed his life in obscurity unnoticed and unknown.
He became now one of the most successful pleaders at the bar, and honours and emoluments flowed thick upon him. He was chosen to represent the borough of Downton, Wilts, after the general election in 1759; recorder of Bath 1759; and the same year was appointed attorney-general; in January 1762 he was called to the degree of sergeant-at-law, appointed chief-justice of the common pleas, and knighted. His Lordship presided in that court with a dignity, weight, and impartiality, never exceeded by any of his predecessors; and when John Wilkes, Esq., was seized and committed to the Tower on an illegal general
Pratt general warrant, his Lordship, with the intrepidity of a British magistrate, and the becoming fortitude of an Englishman, granted him an habeas corpus; and on his being brought before the cohort of common pleas, discharged him from his confinement in the Tower, May 6. 1763, in a speech which did him honour. His wife and spirited behaviour on this remarkable occasion, so interesting to every true-born Briton, and in the consequent judicial proceedings between the printers of The North Briton and the messengers and others, was so acceptable to the nation, that the city of London presented him with the freedom of their corporation in a gold box, and desired his picture, which was put up in Guildhall, with this inscription: