Travers Christmas Humphreys, QC (15 February 1901 – 13 April 1983)[1] was a British jurist who prosecuted several controversial cases in the 1940s and 1950s, and who later became a judge at the Old Bailey.

[1] The death of his elder brother during World War I shocked Humphreys into reflection about his beliefs, and at age 17 he found himself drawn to Buddhism.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Humphreys had begun a broad reading in the available English-language literature on Eastern thought and Buddhism in particular.

Pain (founder of the short-lived Buddhist Society of England) Charles Henry Allan Bennett (aka Ananda Metteya), and Francis Payne.

Both at his home and at the lodge he played host to a variety of spiritual authorities and writers including Nicholas Roerich, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, Alice Bailey and D. T. Suzuki.

[citation needed] In 1945, Humphreys drafted the Twelve Principles of Buddhism for which he obtained the approval of all the Buddhist sects in Japan (including the Shin Sect which was not associated with Olcott's common platform), the Supreme Patriarch of Thailand, and leading Buddhists of Ceylon, Burma, China, and Tibet.

[5] In 1950 he was appointed Senior Treasury Counsel, in which role he led for the Crown in some of the causes célèbres of the era, including the cases of Craig & Bentley[6] and Ruth Ellis.

[9] The Lord Chancellor defended Humphreys in the face of a House of Commons motion to dismiss him, and he also received support from the National Association of Probation Officers.

The Fellowship advanced the theory that the plays generally attributed to Shakespeare were in fact the work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

Humphreys died of a heart attack[12] at his London home, 58 Marlborough Place, St John's Wood.