He was born at Claines, near Worcester, the eldest son of John Somers, an attorney in a large practice in that town, who had formerly fought on the side of the Parliament, and of Catherine Ceaverne of Shropshire.

[1] He soon became intimate with the leaders of the country party, especially with Lord Essex, William Russell, and Algernon Sidney but never entered into their plans so far as to commit himself beyond recall.

[4]He was reputed to have written the Just and Modest Vindication of the Two Last Parliaments, which was published in April 1681 as the answer to Charles II's famous declaration of his reasons for dissolving them.

In his peroration Somers answered this charge: My Lord, as to all the matters of fact alleged in the Petition,—that they are perfectly true we have shown by the Journals of both Houses.

A libel it could not be, for the intent of the defendants was innocent, and they kept strictly within the bounds set by the law, which gives the subject leave to apply to his Prince by petition when he is aggrieved.

[9]In the secret councils of those who were planning the Glorious Revolution Somers took a leading part, and in the Convention Parliament was elected a member for Worcester.

[1] In his maiden speech on 28 January 1689, Somers argued that James II had forfeited his claim to the allegiance of the English by casting himself into the hands of Louis XIV of France and conspiring "to subject the Nation to the Pope, as much as to a foreign prince".

[10] On 6 February Somers advocated the word "abdicate" rather than "desert" (which the House of Lords favoured) to describe James' flight to France.

[11]Challenged by the Lords to produce a precedent whereby England had been without a monarch, Somers referred to a parliamentary roll from 1399 that stated that the throne had been unoccupied between the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV.

Here, Somers justified the war against France and the Bill of Rights: The proceedings of the late parliament were so fair, so prudent, so necessary, and so advantageous to the nation, to the protestant interest in general, and in particular to the church of England, that all true Englishmen must needs acknowledge they owe to the then representatives of the nation, their privileges, their liberties, their lives, their religion, their present and future security from popery, slavery, and arbitrary power, had they done nothing else but enacted the rights and liberties of the subject, and settling the succession of the crown.

[16]Somers went on to place the abolition of the dispensing power of sovereigns first in importance, then the parliamentary control of taxation, the outlawing of standing armies in time of peace unless Parliament decided otherwise, and the royal succession.

[1] Re-elected as MP for Worcester in March 1690, he gave a speech in April which carried through the lower house, without opposition, the bill which declared all the laws passed by the Convention Parliament (1689) to be valid.

He was soon after appointed Attorney General for England and Wales and in that capacity strongly opposed the Bill for the regulation of trials in cases of high treason.

The two main provisions of the Bill were severe penalties for anyone who spoke or printed asserted or implied that William and Mary were monarchs only "in fact" and not "of right", and a new oath for all who held offices of profit under the Crown in which they had to swear to defend the government against the exiled King James and his adherents.

[18] On 23 March 1693, the Great Seal of the Realm having meanwhile been in commission, Somers was appointed Lord Keeper, with a pension of £2000 a year from the day on which he should quit his office, and at the same time was made a privy councillor.

The Court of Exchequer Chamber, after litigation of almost unprecedented length, found for the bankers; but Somers reversed the judgement on the technical point that the claim should have been brought by way of petition of right.

While there he received the king's letter announcing the first Partition Treaty, and at once replied with a memorandum representing the necessity in the state of feeling in England of avoiding further war.

On the subject of the Irish forfeitures, a third attack was made in 1700, a motion being brought forward to request the king to remove Somers from his counsels and presence forever; but this again was rejected by a large majority.

In 1701 he was impeached by the Commons on account of the part he had taken in the negotiations relating to the Partition Treaty in 1698, and defended himself most ably before the House, answering the charges seriatim.

He had left a great reputation in the House of Commons, where he had, for four years, been always heard with delight; and the Whig members still looked up to him as their leader, and still held their meetings under his roof.

In council, the calm wisdom, which he possessed in a measure rarely found among men of parts so quick and of opinions so decided as his, acquired for him the authority of an oracle.

[26]A fire at the law offices of Charles Yorke in Lincoln's Inn Square on 27 January 1752 destroyed a large amount of Somers's surviving private papers.