Henry Yelverton (attorney-general)

Sir Henry Yelverton (29 June, 1566 – 24 January, 1629) was an English lawyer, politician, and judge.

The eldest son of Sir Christopher Yelverton and his wife Margaret Catesby, Henry Yelverton was born on 29 June 1566, most likely at Easton-Mauduit, his father's house in Northamptonshire. He became a barrister on 25 April 1593 and an ancient on 25 May of the same year. He was reader in 1607.

In 1597, 1604 and 1614 Yelverton was elected to Parliament for the borough of Northampton. On 30 March 1604, when Sir Francis Goodwin's case was before the house, he argued for allowing Goodwin to take his seat in the teeth of the support given by the king to his rejection by chancery. On 5 April, when James had issued his orders, Yelverton was frightened, and argued that the prince's command was like a thunderbolt or the roaring of a lion. In the session of 1606–7 he was again in trouble, attacking George Home, 1st Earl of Dunbar, the king's Scottish favourite, and generally criticising the bills brought in for effecting a partial union with Scotland, while he fell under Francis Bacon's suspicion as having had a hand in a book published by the puritan lawyer Nicholas Fuller. On the other hand, he did not argue against the king's wishes in Calvin's Case, and before the session of 1610 he sought an interview with Dunbar, and ultimately was admitted by the king to an audience, in which he explained away the words that had given offence. On 23 June 1610 he asserted that the law of England extended only to the low-water mark, and the king might therefore restrain all goods at sea from approaching the shore, and therefore only allow their being landed on payment of a duty.

In 1613 Bacon spoke of Yelverton as having been won to the side of the Crown, and on 28 October of the same year he succeeded Bacon as solicitor-general. He was knighted on 8 November, perhaps through the good word of the king's favourite, Rochester, shortly afterwards Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset. In 1614 Yelverton again took his seat as member for Northampton in the Addled parliament. On 19 January 1615 he took an official part in the examination of Edmond Peacham under torture. About the same time he joined in signing a certificate in favour of the chancery in the conflict with Sir Edward Coke on the question of praemunire.

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