Samuel Heywood (chief justice)


Samuel Heywood was an English serjeant-at-law and a Chief Justice of the Carmarthen Circuit of Wales.

Life

Heywood was born in Liverpool, Lancashire to Benjamin and Phoebe Heywood, née Ogden. He was educated at Warrington Academy, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, though as a Unitarian did not attend college chapel, and could not graduate as he would not subscribe to the Church of England's 39 Articles. He studied law at the Inner Temple, rising to prominence as a lawyer and barrister. He was called to the Bar in 1778. Based at Lancaster, Lancashire, he was appointed Serjeant-at-Law and also Chief Justice of the Carmarthen Circuit of Wales. He was one of very few religious dissenters holding a national public office at this time. He was a fierce opponent of the high church aspects of Anglicanism.

Family and death

He married Susannah Cornwall on 1 January 1781 at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street, London. They had at least one son and five daughters:
  1. Phoebe Augusta Heywood
  2. Edward Heywood
  3. Susannah Maria Heywood
  4. Sophia Heywood
  5. Anne Heywood, who married 6 January 1815 to Lieutenant-General William Granville Eliot, a son of Francis Perceval Eliot.
  6. Mary Isabella Heywood
On 29 August 1828, during one of his Welsh circuits, Heywood was seized with paralysis at Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire and died on 11 September at nearby Tenby.

Publications