Owen Ruffhead

Who was Owen Ruffhead?

Owen Ruffhead was a miscellaneous writer.

The son of Owen Ruffhead, the descendant of a Welsh family and baker to King George I of Great Britain, he was born in Piccadilly. When still a child his father bought him a lottery ticket, and, drawing a prize of £500, invested the money in his son's education. He entered the Middle Temple in 1742, was called to the bar in 1747, and he gradually obtained a good practice, less as a regular pleader than as a consultant and framer of bills for parliament. In the meantime he sought to form some political connections, and, with this end in view, he in 1757 started the ‘Con-Test’ in support of the government against the gibes of a weekly paper called the ‘Test,’ which was run by Arthur Murphy in the interests of Henry Fox Both abounded in personalities, and the hope expressed by Johnson in the ‘Literary Magazine,’ that neither would be long-lived, was happily fulfilled. From about 1760 he commenced editing, at the cost of great labour, ‘The Statutes at Large from Magna Charta to 1763,’ which was issued in nine volumes folio, London, 1762–5, and again in 1769. Ruffhead's collection maintained a position of authority, and has been continued successively by Runnington, Tomlins, Raithby, Simons, and Sir George Kettilby Rickards. In 1760 Ruffhead addressed to Pitt a letter of some eloquence upon the ‘Reasons why the approaching Treaty of Peace should be debated in Parliament,’ and this was followed by pamphlets, including ‘Considerations on the Present Dangerous Crisis’, and ‘The Case of the late Election for the County of Middlesex considered’, in which he defended the conduct of the administration in relation to Wilkes.