Francis Mitchell

Who is Francis Mitchell?

Francis Mitchell was the last British knight of the realm to be publicly degraded, after being found guilty of extorting money from licensees via his monopoly on the licensing of inns.

While Parliament was dissolved under the order of James I, grievances against monopolists grew to such an extent that it was one of the first orders of business that the House of Commons discussed when Parliament sat in 1621. Early in James' reign it had been established in the case of Darcy v. Allein that monopolies were in breach of both common and statute law, because they raised the price of the commodity, lowered the standard of the product and put craftsmen out of work. The judges in the Darcy case ruled that monopolies were only acceptable when a new invention was introduced or when the interests of the state demanded it. The grants of monopolies had continued nevertheless, and despite Parliament's complaints in 1606, 1610, and 1614 little action had been taken. Grants of monopolies were a method of rewarding the supporters of the current royal favourite—at that time George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.

Mitchell and Giles Mompesson had been granted monopolies over the licencing of inns. This monopoly aroused particularly bad feeling. They were called before the Commons, where Mitchell was sentenced, without a hearing, for his "grievous exactions" in the first impeachment for 162 years.