Edward II bade his agent at the papal court demand it for Baldock, but the agent secured the papal nomination for himself, and three years later, in the case of Norwich, the king's candidate was again thwarted by the pope's favourite, William de Ayreminne [q. v.]. Ministerial offices were more at the king's disposal, and in 1320 he made Baldock his privy seal; in 1323 he was one of the negotiators of a thirteen years' truce with Scotland; and soon after his return from the north he obtained the lord chancellorship. Together with the De Spencers he now exercised the greatest power and incurred the fiercest hate. Their position was critical. The queen sought to use the popular feeling to get rid of a husband who neglected her, and of ministers whom she could not control. The French king seized this moment of weakness to demand the personal homage of Edward for his foreign possessions. The ministers dared not let Edward go, yet dared not anger Charles, and, failing to bribe the French envoys to conceal the object of their mission, they hit upon the fatal policy of letting the queen and her son cross over and satisfy the French king. Having gathered a force abroad, she return in 1326 to find the people ready to assist her in overthrowing the government. She proclaimed the De Spencers and Baldock enemies of the realm. As they fled westward with the king, the Londoners wrecked their houses. At Bristol the elder De Spencer was taken and beheaded, the hiding-place of the other fugitives in Wales was revealed by a sufficient bribe, Edward was forced to abdicate, and the younger De Spencer shared his father's fate. The death of Baldock was equally desired by the victorious party, but his orders protected him from a legal execution. He was handed over to Bishop Orlton of Hereford [see Adam of Orlton], a ministerial churchman more able and more unscrupulous than himself. In February 1327 he was confined in this bishop's house in London, and the mob was allowed, or even incited, to break in and drag the prisoner with violence and cruelty to Newgate, where he shortly afterwards died of his ill-treatment.
[Chronicles of Adam of Murimuth, Trokelowe, and Walsingham, Rolls Series; Rot. Claus. et Pat. temp. Ed. II; Newcourt's Repertorium, p. 78; Foss's Judges of England, ii. 222-5.]
BALDOCK, Sir ROBERT (d. 1691), judge, son and heir of Samuel Baldock of Stanway, in Essex, bore the same arms as Robert de Baldock [q. v], lord chancellor in Edward II's reign. Entering as a student at Gray's Inn in 1644, he was called to the bar in 1651. There appears to be no contemporary allusion to his early professional career beyond Roger North's mention of him in connection with a 'fraudulent conveyance managed by Sir Robert Baldock and Pemberton,' the chief justice, which he thinks 'Baldock had wit and will enough to do' (North's Life of Lord Guilford, 223). In 1671 he was recorder of Great Yarmouth, and was knighted on the king's visit to that town. In 1677 he took the degree of serjeant, and was autumn reader to his inn of court; and on the accession of James II he became one of the king's serjeants. The only event of any importance in which he is known to have taken a part was the trial of the seven bishops, in which he was one of the counsel for the king. His principal argument, in a tedious irrelevant speech, is that the reasons given by the bishops for not obeying the king are libellous, inasmuch as 'they say they cannot in honour, conscience, or prudence do it; which is a reflection upon the prudence, justice, and honour of the King in commanding them to do such a thing' (State Trials, xii. 419).
This argument seems to have commended him so strongly to the king that within a week he was promoted to a seat in the King's Bench, two of the judges, Sir John Powell and Judge Holloway, being removed in consequence of having expressed opinions in favour of the accused bishops (Sir J. Bramston's Autobiography, 311). The revolution which took place before the beginning of next term drove the new judge from the bench before he had time to render himself liable to the condemnation which in the next reign fell on so many of his fellow judges, of whom no less than six were excepted from the act of indemnity in consequence of their assistance to James II in his unconstitutional proceedings (Stat. of Realm, vi. 178).
The remaining three years of Sir Robert's life were spent in obscurity. He died on 4 Oct. 1691, and was buried at Hockham in Norfolk, in the parish church of which is a monument erected by him to his only son, Robert, who was killed in a naval battle in 1673. His first wife was Mary, the daughter of Bacqueville Bacon (third son of Sir Nicholas of Redgrave), and one of the three co-heiresses of her brother Henry, who was lord of the manor of Great Hockham. She having died in 1662, he married again, but the name of his second wife is not known (Blomefield's Norfolk, i. 312, 314).
[Foss's Judges of England, and works cited above.]
