Page:A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices.djvu/235

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Sandys — Saunders.
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SANDYS or SANDIS, Sir EDWIN.
Statesman.
1561—1629.

Admitted 11 February, 1589-90.

Second son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, previously Bishop of Worcester, and brother of George Sandys (q.v.), the poet. He was educated at Oxford, where he had the celebrated Richard Hooker for his tutor. In 1579 he became a Fellow of Corpus Christi, and in 1581 a prebend of York. He subsequently travelled abroad, and embodied the result of his observations in a book entitled Europe Speculum (1605, 1629). In 1603 he was knighted by King James, and returned to Parliament for Stockbridge, and for many years took a leading part in the debates. For the enunciation of principles deemed subversive of the royal prerogative, he was summoned before the Council in 1614, and bound over to appear again when called upon. In the same year he became a member of the East India Company, and took an active interest in Colonial affairs. In 1619 he was elected Treasurer of the Virginia Company. In 1621 he was imprisoned along with John Selden on a charge of malversation of the company's funds, but was shortly released. After another stormy career in Parliament he died in Oct. 1629, at Northbourne.


SANDYS or SANDIS, GEORGE.
Poet.
1578—1644.

Admitted 23 October, 1596.

Sixth son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, born at Bishopthorpe, 2 Mar. 1577-8. He was sent to Oxford, but did not graduate, and in 1610 set out on a long course of travel, of which he published an account in 1615. In 1621 he sailed for America as Treasurer of the Virginia Company, and there acquired a plantation, and spent many years.

During his residence he completed a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses into English verse, which was printed in London, 1626. On his return to England he became a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Charles I.; but the chief part of his life was spent in retirement in literary exercises, particularly in a Paraphrase of the Psalms and Hymns of the Old Testament, licensed for the Press in 1635. He died at Boxley in Kent in 1644. His poetical works were collected by the Rev. Richard Hooper, and published in 1872.


SAUNDERS, Sir EDMUND.
Judge.
1630—1683.

Admitted 4 July, 1660.

He appears on the Register as "Edmund Saunders of the county of the City of Gloucester," and he was the son of poor parents at Bam wood, where he was born about 1630. At an early age he found his way to London, and at first picked up a precarious livelihood about the Inns of Court by "obsequiousness and courting the attorneys' clerks for scraps." Subsequently a lawyer in Clement's Inn caused a desk to be fixed for him on the top of a staircase, and gave him papers to copy. "Thus by degrees he pushed his faculties, and fell to forms and … became an exquisite entering clerk." He was called to the Bar on 25 Nov. 1664, and two years later began to compile the Reports which bear his name. By degrees he was taken into the King's business, and the drawing and perusal of almost all the indictments and informations that were then to be prosecuted. On 24 Nov. 1682, he was elected a Bencher of his Inn, and on 13 Jan. 1683, raised to the Chief Justiceship of the King's Bench, and knighted. This promotion, with the change in his habits of life which it involved, cut short his career, for he was seized with apoplexy, and died in the sixth month of his office, 19 June, 1683. Roger North (q.v.) gives some