The First Chief Justice of Carolina. a Chief Justice and an Attorney General. The latter was the notorious Nicholas Trott, famous, among other things, for his connec tion with the trials of the pirates; and the former, Edmund Bohun, of whom this article proposes further to treat. Up to this time the Colony had not only been without a prosecuting officer of any kind, but the entire Court, so far as its operating machinery was concerned, had consisted of a Judge and a Sheriff combined. He issued warrants, served them; then, donning his judicial toga, dispensed justice from the bench. There was consequently much grievous complaint, and the charge of far graver things than mere irregularity. As stated, the Proprietors felt at last compelled to take in hand the providing of a better system of courts for the people of their Colony. But to the last they were piggish, and took to themselves the credit of it all. On sending the Chief Justice they wrote to Governor Blake and to the Council : "Gentlemtn : Wee are intent upon making you the happy settlement in America . . . and be cause good laws without due exercise are a dead letter, and the reputation of a just execution of them is inviting, wee have commissioned Edmund Bohun, Esq., a person who has had a very good reputation in the execution of the laws of Eng land to be your chief justice; who besides the advantage of his owne estate, which will be transmitted to him, is allowed by us a very good salary to keep him beyond the reach of tempta tion of corruption."
Even then the Proprietors realized that their power was waning; but still, with their usual niggardliness, they failed to make liberal bid for the return of the good-will of their colonists. Instead of sending them as their Chief Justice, a man skilled in the law, capa ble of dealing with its knotty problems, they engaged instead the services of a layman, one who had been a mere Justice of the Peace, and who, for the considerations that he had a son in the Colony and that the sud den prospect of the Chief Justice's robe was
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very tickling to his vanity, was willing to ac cept the munificent salary of £60, allowed him as a guard against the " temptations of corruption." But though he was no lawyer, Mr. Bohun was a gentleman, both in birth and in breed ing. Further, he was a cavalier, the scion of a noble house, one of those mentioned by Macaulay as " having broken the Saxon ranks at Hastings," in the days of knight hood, " and scaled the walls of Jerusalem." He was, too, a scholar, a writer, and a trans lator of books. He knew many languages, was fluent in speech, and graceful with the pen, yet as incapable of dealing with the in tricacies of the law as any other man so de ficient in legal training would have been. Mr. Bohun was commissioned Chief Jus tice on May 22, 1698, and from that date, as with the man in the old nursery rhyme, who entered into matrimonial alliance, " his troubles began." Perhaps he might have fared better had he been a man of more tact and of a less irascible temper. But two qualifi cations he possessed in a high degree must be quoted in justice to him. He was both scrupulous and punctilious in the discharge his duty. Mr. Bohun had not long been in office when he came into violent collision with Gov ernor Blake and the Judge in Admiralty, Landgrave Morton. The matter was un doubtedly precipitated through the officiousness of the meddlesome Edward Randolph, Collector of the King's Customs in America, who was famous for making reckless charges which he could not afterwards sustain. The trouble arose through the seizing of a vessel which was condemned in the Court of Admi ralty and sold as a prize. Randolph charged both Governor and Judge with corruption, declaring that Morton had refused to receive the testimony of witnesses, which went to prove that the vessel was owned by English subjects and was regular in every way. He even complained to the King that Blake and Morton were crooked in the administration
