Charles Lynch (judge)

Charles Lynch (1736 – 1796) was an American planter, politician, military officer and judge who headed a kangaroo court in Virginia to punish Loyalists during the Revolutionary War.

[1] He was born in 1736 at an estate known as Chestnut Hill on the banks of the James River in Virginia, a place at which his brother, John Lynch, would later establish the town of Lynchburg.

[2] Lynch's father left his native Ireland and emigrated to the British colony of Virginia in about 1725 as an indentured servant, called a "redemptioner" in the nomenclature of the day.

[5] Following the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, the danger associated with life at the frontier greatly lessened, and a flood of newcomers began to appear in Bedford County.

In several incidents in 1780, Lynch and several other militia officers and justices of the peace rounded up suspects who were thought to be a part of a Loyalist uprising in southwestern Virginia.

The suspects were given a summary trial at an informal court; sentences handed down included whipping, property seizure, coerced pledges of allegiance, and conscription into the military.

In 1811, a man named Captain William Lynch claimed that the phrase, already famous, actually came from a 1780 compact signed by him and his neighbors in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to uphold their own brand of law independent of legal authority.