JEFFREYS, GEORGE JEFFREYS, 1ST BARON (1648-1689), lord chancellor of England, son of John Jeffreys, a Welsh country gentleman, was born at Acton Park, his father's seat in Denbighshire, in 1648. His family, though not wealthy, was of good social standing and repute in Wales; his mother, a daughter of Sir Thomas Ireland of Bewsey, Lancashire, was "a very pious good woman." He was educated at Shrewsbury, St Paul's and Westminster schools, at the last of which he was a pupil of Busby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge; but he left the university without taking a degree, and entered the Inner Temple as a student in May 1663. From his childhood Jeffreys displayed exceptional talent, but on coming to London he occupied himself more with the pleasures of conviviality than with serious study of the law. Though he never appears to have fallen into the licentious immorality prevalent at that period, he early became addicted to hard drinking and boisterous company. But as the records of his early years, and indeed of his whole life, are derived almost exclusively from vehemently hostile sources, the numerous anecdotes of his depravity cannot be accepted without a large measure of scepticism. He was a handsome, witty and attractive boon-companion, and in the taverns of the city he made friends among attorneys with practice in the criminal courts. Thus assisted he rose so rapidly in his profession that within three years of his call to the bar in 1668, he was elected common serjeant of the city of London. Such advancement, however, was not to be attained even in the reign of Charles II. solely by the aid of disreputable friendships. Jeffreys had remarkable aptitude for the profession of an advocate--quick intelligence, caustic humour, copious eloquence. His powers of cross-examination were masterly; and if he was insufficiently grounded in legal principles to become a profound lawyer, nothing but greater application was needed in the opinion of so hostile a critic as Lord Campbell, to have made him the rival of Nottingham and Hale. Jeffreys could count on the influence of respectable men of position in the city, such as Sir Robert Clayton and his own namesake Alderman Jeffreys; and he also enjoyed the personal friendship of the virtuous Sir Matthew Hale. In 1667 Jeffreys had married in circumstances which, if improvident, were creditable to his generosity and sense of honour; and his domestic life, so far as is known, was free from the scandal common among his contemporaries. While holding the judicial office of common serjeant, he pursued his practice at the bar. With a view to further preferment he now sought to ingratiate himself with the court party, to which he obtained an introduction possibly through William Chiffinch, the notorious keeper of the king's closet. He at once attached himself to the king's mistress, the duchess of Portsmouth; and as early as 1672 he was employed in confidential business by the court.