John Pratt (judge)

Sir John Pratt (1657 to 1725) was an English judge and politician who served as Lord Chief Justice of England from 15 May 1718 until 2 March 1725. He studied at Oxford, where he became a fellow of Wadham College, was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1682 and became a serjeant-at-law in 1700. He sat in Parliament for Midhurst from 1711, was made a puisne judge of the court of king's bench in 1714 and knighted, and in 1718 acted for a few weeks as one of the commissioners of the great seal. In 1721 he served briefly as interim Chancellor of the Exchequer. In Colbatch v. Bentley in 1722 he resisted the combined influence of Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Macclesfield, while his handling of the case of the Jacobite Christopher Layer damaged his reputation. Armory v Delamirie, decided in 1722, is among his cases, and his son by his second marriage was Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden.