Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Darnall, John (d.1706)
DARNELL, Sir JOHN, the elder (d. 1706), lawyer, son of Ralph Darnall of Loughton's Hope, near Pembridge, Herefordshire, clerk to the parliament during the Protectorate (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1653–4, p. 282), was assigned in 1680 to argue an exception taken by the Earl of Castlemaine, on his trial for complicity in the supposed popish plot, to the evidence of Dangerfield, on the ground that the witness had been convicted of felony. Scroggs inclined for a while in favour of the exception, but eventually overruled it. He also defended a certain John Giles, tried for the murder of a justice of the peace named Arnold in the same year. In 1690 he was assigned by special grace of the court to show cause why one Crone, who had been found guilty of raising money for the service of the late king and sentenced to death, should not be executed. He raised the somewhat technical point that the indictment was bad because the indorsement contained a clerical error, ‘vera’ being spelt ‘verra.’ He was called to the degree of serjeant in 1692, defended Peter Cooke charged with conspiring to assassinate the king in 1696, became king's serjeant in 1698, and was knighted on 1 June 1699. The same year he appeared with the attorney-general (Sir Thomas Trevor) for the crown on an information brought against Charles Duncombe, cashier of the excise office, for falsely endorsing exchequer bills and paying them into the excise office with intent to defraud the revenue. The case broke down, no fraud being proved. In 1702 he was employed on the prosecution of William Fuller, an imitator of Titus Oates. He was engaged in the prosecution of John Tutchin, the author of the ‘Observator,’ for seditious libel in 1704. He died at his house in Essex Street, Strand, on 14 Dec. 1706, and was buried in the chancel of St. Clement Danes.
[Notes and Queries, 4th ser. ii. 42; Cobbett's State Trials, vii. 1085, xiii. 311–98, 1062–1106, xiv. 903, 1099, 1110; Wynne's Serjeants-at-Law; Lord Raymond's Rep. p. 414; Le Neve's Pedigrees of Knights (Harleian Soc.), p. 467; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs, ii. 54, 427, vi. 117; Woolrych's Serjeants-at-Law.]