Edmund Saunders

Sir Edmund Saunders (died 1683) was an English judge, promoted to a high position at the end of the reign of Charles II of England.

He was born of poor parents in the parish of Barnwood, near Gloucester. According to Roger North, he obtained a living and a career in Clement's Inn by importuning the attorneys' clerks. He became a member of the Middle Temple, to which he was admitted on 4 July 1660. He was called to the bar earlier than the custom, on 25 November 1664.

His Reports make it clear that Saunders acquired a large practice at the bar: North says that he was honest, clever and a drinker. In 1680 Saunders defended Anne Price, who was indicted for attempting to suborn one of the witnesses in the Popish Plot; and in the same year he was assigned as counsel for William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford, and the four other Catholic peers accused of high treason. In 1681 he appeared on behalf of the Crown against Edward Fitzharris and Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, both of whom were indicted for high treason. In May 1682 he moved the king's bench for the discharge of Lord Danby, and in the following month he defended William Pain against the charge of writing and publishing letters suggesting that Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey had ‘murdered himself’.

In November 1682 he was elected a bencher of the Middle Temple.

On the institution of the proceedings on quo warranto against the City of London, Saunders, who had advised the proceedings and settled all the pleadings, was appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in the place of Francis Pemberton, who was moved to Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, because he was supposed to be less favourable to the crown.

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