There had been lawyers in the family for many generations: "He himself, and his three immediate ancestors, having been of the profession for near two hundred years, and in judicial places; and (through the blessing of Almighty God) have prospered by it.

The points of the case are technical, but it excited keen political interest, and Atkyns's judgment, in which he differed from the majority of the court, marks the beginning of his separation from the party in power (reprinted in his Tracts, and in 6 St. Tr.

His judgment in Barnardiston v. Soame had given offence; he had declared against pensions to parliament men; he had quarrelled with Scroggs about the right to petition; and he had offended North by speaking against the sale of offices.

When the Oxford Parliament was summoned, he was persuaded, though unwillingly, to stand for Bristol, but was defeated by Sir Richard Hart and Thomas Earle,[7] both Tories.

The prosecution failed, but "Sir Robert Atkyns, on the Lord Pemberton's and his brother's persuasion, resigned his recordership; which was all that the city of Bristol aimed at by their indictment".

[8] In the following year came the trial of Lord Russell; he could not appear by counsel, but his friends exerted themselves in the preparation of his defence, and applied to Atkyns, who wrote to them a statement of the law.

"And the like assistance being afterwards desired from me, by many more persons of the best quality, who soon after fell into the same danger, I, living at some distance from London, did venture by letters, to find the best rules and directions I could, towards the making of their just defence, being heartily concerned with them".

[9] Five years afterwards he published the letters, together with A Defence of the late Lord Russel's Innocency, a spirited and eloquent reply to an anonymous pamphlet called An Antidote against Poyson.

To a rejoinder from the same pen, The Magistracy and Government of England vindicated, he wrote in answer The Lord Russel's Innocency further defended, assailing his opponent with abuse and almost expressly naming him as Sir Bartholomew Shower.

In point of legal criticism, Atkyns's letters and pamphlets are effective and still worth reading, but they do not shake the received opinion that the law of treason was not strained against Lord Russell.

In 1689 he succeeded his brother as chief baron, and in October of the same year, the great seal being in commission, he was appointed speaker of the House of Lords in the place of the Marquis of Halifax.

This was followed a few years afterwards by another tract, addressed as a petition to the House of Commons, in which, while repeating his complaint against the court of Chancery, and lamenting the uncertainty of the law, he argued from the history of Parliament that the exercise of judicial functions by the Lords was a usurpation.