Thomas Powys (judge)

Sir Thomas Powys (1649 – 4 April 1719), MP, was Attorney General to King James II. He was chief prosecutor at the trial of the Seven Bishops, June 1688; and MP for Ludlow. He served as Justice of the King's Bench 1713–1714, but was dismissed.

Powys was the second son of Thomas Powys of Henley Hall in Shropshire, serjeant-at-law, a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and the representative of one branch of the ancient Welsh family of Powys, by his first wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Adam Littleton, bart. He was the younger brother of Sir Littleton Powys (1648?–1732). Powys was educated at Shrewsbury School, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1673.

He became solicitor-general, and was knighted on 23 April 1686, when Heneage Finch was dismissed. Having acquiesced in the appointment of Roman Catholics to office, and argued in favour of the king's dispensing power, he was promoted to be attorney-general in December 1687, the same year that he became treasurer of Lincoln’s Inn.

He conducted the prosecution of the Seven Bishops in June 1688. The charge was seditious libel, in presenting to the King a petition against the enforcement of his second Declaration of Indulgence. The acquittal of the Bishops was a disastrous blow to the Crown's prestige, and Powys was heavily criticised for incompetence: inexplicably he forgot to adduce evidence that the Petition had ever been presented, so that the trial almost collapsed at the outset. However, given the immense public sympathy for the Bishops, and that two of the four judges directed the jury to acquit, it is unlikely that any prosecutor could have secured a conviction.

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