John Bramston the Elder

His son (Sir John Bramston, the younger) remarks that this was an expensive year for him, the costs entailed by the office of reader being considerable, besides the fee of £500 to the exchequer payable on admittance to the order of Serjeants.

In 1629 he was one of the counsels for seven of the nine members of the House of Commons (including Sir John Eliot and Denzil Holles) who were then indicted for making seditious speeches in Parliament.

Next year the Bishop of Ely (John Buckeridge) appointed him chief justice of his diocese, a position he held until his elevation to the king's bench.

A similar sentence was passed on him at a later date, Bramston being again a member of the court, on a charge of libelling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the late lord treasurer Weston.

In the celebrated Ship money case (Rex v. Hampden), decided in the following year (12 June), Bramston gave his judgment against the king, though on a purely technical ground, viz.

that by the record it did not appear to whom the money assessed was due, in that respect agreeing with the lord chief baron, Sir Humphry Davenport, who, with Brooke, Hutton, and Denham, also gave judgment in Hampden's favour; but taking care at the same time to signify his concurrence with the majority of the court upon the main question.

On 21 December of the same year proceedings were commenced in the House of Commons to impeach the lord keeper Finch, Bramston, and five other of the judges who had subscribed the opinion on Ship money.

In 1644, he was consulted by the leaders of the party as to the evidence necessary for the prosecution of Connor Maguire and Hugh Og MacMahon, two prisoners who had made their escape from the Tower of London and been retaken.

In 1647, it was proposed to make him one of the commissioners of the great seal, and it was voted that he should sit as an assistant in the House of Lords, "which", says his son, "he did not absolutely deny, but avoided attending by the help of friends".

Fuller characterises him as "one of deep learning, solid judgment, integrity of life, and gravity of behaviour; in a word, accomplished with all the qualities requisite for a person of his place and profession".

She died in the thirty-sixth year of her age (whilst John was still at school at Blackmore, Essex) in Phillip Lane, Aldermanbury, and was buried in a vault in St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street.