Samuel Heywood

Samuel Heywood (1753–1828) was an English serjeant-at-law and Chief Justice of the Carmarthen Circuit of Wales. He was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, to Benjamin and Phoebe Heywood. He received his education at Warrington Academy and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Due to his Unitarian beliefs, he could not graduate from Cambridge as he would not subscribe to the Church of England's 39 Articles. Heywood studied law at the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar in 1778. He established a successful legal career, based in Lancaster, Lancashire, and was appointed Serjeant-at-Law in 1795 and Chief Justice of the Carmarthen Circuit of Wales in 1807. He was notable for being one of the few religious dissenters holding a national public office during that period and was a strong critic of the high church aspects of Anglicanism. Heywood married Susannah Cornwall in 1781, with whom he had at least one son and five daughters. He died in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, on September 11, 1828, after suffering a paralysis seizure during a judicial circuit.