When he is tried, let him be found guilty, and may his prayers condemn him. – Psalm 109:7

Today's Scripture Reading (September 5, 2025): Psalm 109

His name was George Jeffreys, 1^st Baron Jeffreys (May 15, 1645 – April 18, 1689). Jeffreys was a Welsh judge who had garnered a reputation as a hanging judge during the reign of James II and VII, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He also had a reputation for being an unfair judge. To those he disliked or didn't know, he handed out very stiff punishments. But to his friends, he quickly overlooked their transgressions. In contemporary society, we hold to the idea that justice should be blind, although I think we know it is not. Some people seem to get the favor of the courts, while others receive stiff sentences. Jeffreys's task as a judge was to enforce royal policy, a job that he applied himself to with a reputation for severity and bias. If you found yourself before George Jeffreys, your sentence depended more on who you were than it did on the crime you had committed.

Maybe befitting Jefferys's judicial bias, it was appropriate that the Baron should find his downfall in the days after the end of James's reign. During the Glorious Revolution, James II and VII had fled the country in search of a safe place to live; however, as William III's troops approached the city, Jeffreys attempted to escape the area, following the path of James's flight abroad. According to the stories we have of this flight, he disguised himself as a sailor and was arrested at a Tavern in the Town of Ramsgate. What is appropriate about his arrest is that it was based on the eyewitness report of one of his judicial victims who had survived the time spent in the court of the Hanging Judge. He was arrested on September 12, 1688, and placed in the Tower of London.

However, this is where the story takes a somewhat unusual turn. Jeffreys wasn't a healthy man, and he died of kidney disease on April 18, 1689. However, the uproar against Jeffries was so great that he was left in the Tower, where he was buried at the Chapel Royal of Saint Peter in the Tower of London. It wasn't until September 1692 that the supporters of George Jeffreys felt secure enough to go to the court and petition for permission to move the body of their deceased friend from the Tower of London to St Mary Aldermanbury, four years after the judge was taken to the Tower in the first place. Jeffreys's body was reinterred in a vault under the communion table of the church on November 2, 1694.

Yet, the story of George Jeffreys wasn't quite over. In 1810, repairs to the church meant that Jeffreys's coffin was uncovered for a time, and the people got to feast their eyes on the remains of this feared and hated magistrate. Eventually, the remains were once again hidden in a crypt beneath the church. During the blitz in 1940-41, German bombers destroyed the church and Jeffreys' Tomb. Today, there is nothing left of George Jeffreys' remains, possibly a fitting outcome for this biased hanging judge.

David asked that those who were guilty would find their sentence in the way that they were judged, that their consciences would convict them. It is a great prayer. It often seems that those who commit evil deeds never feel the guilt of their actions. Yet, George Jeffreys felt guilty enough to run once the protection of his king had been removed, and even after death, there seems to have been no peace for this Welsh Hanging Judge, and even his prayers and the prayers of his friends, in the end, seemed to condemn him.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 110