PRATT, CHARLES, Viscount Bayham and Earl Camden, was the third son of Sir John Pratt, chief-justice of the King's Bench under George I., by his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Hugh Wilson, canon of Bangor, and was born in 1713, the last year of the reign of Queen Anne. He had the misfortune to lose his father when only ten years old; and from the reduced circumstances of his family, he was placed upon the foundation at Eton. Here he had the good fortune to form a lasting friendship with William Pitt, afterwards the "Great Commoner," one of the noblest spirits of the place. He went to Cambridge in October 1731, where he began that course of juridical and constitutional study which afterwards rendered his name so illustrious. In 1735 he took B.A., and was called to the bar in Trinity term 1738. He rode the Western Circuit for the following eight or nine years without receiving fees sufficient to pay the tolls. Disgusted with this sort of life, he resolved to enter the church, when Henley, afterwards Lord Northington, ridiculed the idea with his accustomed raillery, and from that day Pratt's progress was determined. At the next assize town, "it so happened" that Pratt was called to fill the leader's place, when he made a most animated and eloquent reply, obtained the verdict, was complimented by the judge, and received several retainers before he left the hall. He was made a king's counsel in 1755; and in 1757 he was appointed attorney-general by his old friend Pitt, who was at the head of affairs. He received the honour of knighthood shortly afterwards, and was returned to Parliament for the close borough of Downton. He subsequently married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of Nicolas Jefferys, Esq. of Brecknock Place. While attorney-general he had ample opportunity of acting upon those great principles of justice for which he had contended so long. When John Wilkes was seized and committed to the Tower on a charge of publishing, in the North Briton, No. xlv., a paper calculated to inflame the minds of the populace against the government, his lordship granted him a habeas corpus; and on being brought before the Court of Common Pleas, discharged him from his confinement, amid the shouts of the people, which were heard with dismay at St. James's. After the liberation of Wilkes, he condemned successively "general warrants" and "search warrants for papers," which rendered him the idol of the nation. Busts and prints of him were hawked through remote villages; a Reynolds portrait of him was hung up in Guildhall; he had the freedom of London presented to him in a gold box; he grimly laid down the law from sign-posts; and English journals and travellers carried his fame over Europe. A peerage was inevitable; and a peerage came.
Praxiteles. He was styled "Baron Camden, of Camden Place, in the county of Kent," on the 16th July 1765; and next year, by the resignation of Lord Northington, he was made lord high chancellor of Great Britain. His attitude of opposition to the American taxation cost him his office in 1770. On the fall of Lord North he was again taken into the administration; and on the 27th of March 1782 appointed president of the Council, and so important were the lord president's services esteemed, that he was raised in the peerage by being created "Viscount Bayham, of Bayham Abbey, in the county of Kent, and Earl Camden," on the 13th May 1786. The last occasion upon which he took part in the debates was upon the discussion of Mr Fox's celebrated Libel Act in 1792. He died in April 13, 1794, in his eightieth year. (See Lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. v.)