Edmund Anderson (judge)

Sir Edmund Anderson (1530 – 1 August 1605), Chief Justice of the Common Pleas under Elizabeth I, sat as judge at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots.

He received the first part of his education in the country and then spent a brief period at Lincoln College, Oxford, before entering the Inner Temple in June 1550.

In 1581 he was appointed Justice of Assize on the Norfolk circuit and tried Edmund Campion and others for high treason in November 1581, securing an unexpected conviction.

[3] Throughout his career he played a prominent role in some of the most important political trials of Elizabeth's reign including that of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Sir Walter Raleigh.

Anderson wrote two books, Reports of Many Principal Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, in the Common Bench 1644 and Resolutions and Judgments on the Cases and Matters Agitated in All the Courts of Westminster, in the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1653, which are still today very influential legal references.