PRATT, CHARLES, earl of Camden, was the third son of Sir John Pratt, knight, chief-justice of the court of 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 remaining 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 the 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 talent 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 raillery, 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.
him. He was chosen to represent the borough of Down-
ton, 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 de-
gree 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 warrant, his lordship, with
the intrepidity of a British magistrate, and the becoming
fortitude of an Englishman, granted him an habeas cor-
pus; and on his being brought before the court of com-
mon pleas, discharged him from his confinement in the
Tower, May 6. 1763, in a speech which did him hon-
our. His wife and spirited behaviour on this remark-
able 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 corpora-
tion in a gold box, and desired his picture, which was
put up in Guildhall, with this inscription: