Christopher Yelverton
On 24 October 1597, Christopher Yelverton was elected Speaker of the House of Commons during the reign of Elizabeth I at a Parliament summoned to deal with "the exhaustion of the Queen's exchequer".
[5] Following precedent in modestly requesting to be excused, Yelverton went to extraordinary lengths to cite his unfitness for the role: Neither from my person nor my nature doth this choice arise: for he that supplieth this place ought to be a man big and comely, stately and well-spoken; his voice great, his courage majestic, his nature haughty and his purse plentiful and heavy; but, contrarily, the stature of my person is small, myself not so well-spoken, my voice low, my carriage lawyer-like and of common-fashion, my nature soft and bashful, and my purse thin, light, and never yet plentiful.
He was recorder of Northampton from 1568 to 1599, JP for Northamptonshire from about 1573, and called to the bar and elected treasurer of Gray's Inn in 1579 and 1585.
Yelverton was an excellent technical lawyer and was regarded as a good judge, one of the few to escape criticism by Sir Robert Cecil, principal secretary, in his memorandum on the state of the judicial bench in 1603.
As Queen's Serjeant he led the prosecution in Westminster Hall on 19 February 1601 of those involved in Essex's rebellion.
Legal opinion was at first behind Yelverton, but in June 1602 he was summoned to the Star Chamber and publicly reprimanded for his conduct.
To illustrate the sixteenth-century reverence for the rule of law, Christopher Brooks quotes part of Yelverton's speech made in 1589 at Gray’s Inn, marking his promotion to serjeant-at-law: I cannot sufficiently, nor amply enough magnifie the majestie and dignitie of the lawe, for it is the devine gifte and invention of god, and the profound determination of wise men, the most strong synewe of a common wealth and the soule w[i]thout w[hi]ch the magistrate cannot stand.
[10]Christopher Yelverton, as early as 1566, had written the epilogue to George Gascoigne's Jocasta,[11] and in 1587 it appears that eight persons, Members of the Society of Gray's Inn, were engaged in the production of The Misfortunes of Arthur for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth I, at Greenwich, on 8 February 1587: viz.
Thomas Hughes, the author of the whole body of the tragedy; William Fulbecke, who wrote two speeches substitute on the representation and appended to the old printed copy; Nicholas Trotte, who furnished the introduction; Francis Flower, who penned choruses for the first and second acts; Christopher Yelverton, Francis Bacon and John Lancaster who devised the "dumb shows," mimed representations which at that time usually accompanied such performances.
[12] "Notwithstanding his puritanism in religion, several contemporary diarists record his ribald anecdotes and conversation, and John Manningham hints that he was not averse to enjoying himself in the company of gentlewomen when he was well into his seventies.
