IVilliam Atwood.
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WILLIAM ATWOOD, CHIEF-JUSTICE OF THE COLONY OF NEW YORK, 1701-1703. By Charles P. Daly, LL.D., Ex-Chief-Justice of the New York Court of Common Pleas. I. TOWARDS the close of the seventeenth century, the vessels of the notorious pirates known as the Red Men, which then infested the East Indian seas and were the terror of the maritime world, sailed under commissions granted to them ostensibly as privateers, by Fletcher, the governor of the Colony of New York. The place of retreat of these sea robbers was the island of Madagascar, whither their booty was brought, but their vessels were fitted out, manned, and equipped in the port of New York, and New York merchants furnished them regularly with supplies, sending out vessels to Madagascar loaded with every thing that these marauders required, and bringing back in exchange bullion, spices, and costly Indian fabrics, together with slaves, procured upon the coast of Africa, which was visited upon the return voyages. New York was, in fact, at the time, a nur sery of piracy, which the British govern ment determined to put an end to, and for that purpose it removed Fletcher from the office of governor, and sent out in his place Lord Bellamont, a man of capacity, in tegrity, and military experience. At first Bellamont was unable to accom plish anything, either through the indiffer ence or the incapacity of Chief-Justice Smith, who had not been bred to the law, and the corruption of James Graham, the Attorney-General, who was in league with the merchants in keeping up this infamous traffic, by which several of them acquired large fortunes. Bellamont wrote to the home government that, in spite of all his endeavors, piracy would continue in New
York for the want of good judges and an honest attorney-general, and suggested that a chief-justice and an attorney-general, who were barristers, should be sent out from England; for Graham, like the Chief-Justice, was not an educated lawyer, and in addition to being corrupt, had not the professional knowledge that was requisite for the proper discharge of the duties of his office. The government acted upon Bellamont's sugges tion, appointing in 1701 William Atwood, Chief-Justice, and Sampson S. Broughton, Attorney-General; and in view of the part which these men had in the troublesome events that followed, it will be appropriate to state what is known previously respecting them. Atwood was a man of a good family, of the manor of Littlebury and Rickenhoe in the county of Essex. He was one of two sons of John Atwood of Broomfield, in Es sex. It appears by the record of the license for his marriage in 1678 to Mary Leigh, that he was a fellow of, Gray's Inn, and by the records of the Inn that he was admitted a member of that body in 1669; was called to the bar in 1674, and in that year was master of the revels in the Inn.' Whether he had acquired any prominence in the courts as a practitioner I have been unable to ascertain, beyond the fact that the 1 Morant's History of Essex, Vol. I., 155; id., Vol. II.; Chelmsford Hundred, p. 78; Wright's History of Essex, Vol. I., p. 367; Register of the Marriage Licenses of the Vicar-General of the Archbishop of Canterbury, from 1660 to 1700; Harlein Coll., Vol. XXIII., p. 293; Harlein Coll., Vol. XIII., p. 338; Foster's Registers of Admissions to Gray's Inn, from 1521 to 1881, p. 24.
