Francis Mitchell

Francis Mitchell (c. 1556 – died in or after 1628) was the last British knight of the realm to be publicly degraded (stripped of his knighthood), after being found guilty of extorting money from licensees following his being granted monopoly on the licensing of inns by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham and James I.

Mitchell was probably of an Essex family. He matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, about 1574 and seems to have been subsequently employed as private secretary to a succession of noblemen. In a letter to Secretary Conway (February 1626) he speaks of having served 'six great persons' in that capacity, but only gives the name of Lord Burgh, lord deputy of Ireland. He was secretary from 1594 to 1597 to Sir William Russel, lord deputy, and was probably in the employment of William Davison and Lord Salisbury — possibly in the service of the latter he visited Rome, where he was imprisoned by the inquisition. He appears to have performed services in Scotland on behalf of James I before that king's accession to the English throne. Doubtless through the favour of one of his patrons he secured (25 May 1603) the grant in reversion of the office of clerk of the market for life. He seems to have returned from abroad, where he had been travelling for six years, about 1611, and subsequently to have lived in Clerkenwell as a justice for Middlesex. There is an entry in the register of St. James, Clerkenwell, dated 16 Aug. 1612, of the marriage of Francis Michell and Sisley Wentworth.

While Parliament was dissolved under the order of James I, grievances against monopolists grew to such an extent that it was one of the first orders of business that the House of Commons discussed when Parliament sat in 1621. Early in James' reign it had been established in the case of Darcy v. Allein that monopolies were in breach of both common and statute law, because they raised the price of the commodity, lowered the standard of the product and put craftsmen out of work. The judges in the Darcy case ruled that monopolies were only acceptable when a new invention was introduced or when the interests of the state demanded it. The grants of monopolies had continued nevertheless, and despite Parliament's complaints in 1606, 1610, and 1614 little action had been taken. Grants of monopolies were a method of rewarding the supporters of the current royal favourite—at that time, Buckingham.

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