Robert Heath

Sir Robert Heath (20 May 1575 – 30 August 1649) was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1625.

Heath was the son of Robert Heath, attorney, and Anne Posyer. He was educated at Tunbridge grammar school (Tonbridge School), St John's College, Cambridge from age 14 and Clifford's Inn from age 17. He became a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1603.

By 1620, he was listed as one of the 40 patent holders for the Council for New England as the "Recorder of our Citie of London." In 1621 he was elected Member of Parliament for the City of London. He became solicitor-general in 1621, when he was knighted. In 1624 he was elected MP for East Grinstead and was re-elected in 1625.

He married Margaret Miller, daughter of John Miller of Kent, and had six children, including Robert, John and Mary, who married the Royalist politician Sir William Morley of Halnaker.

Heath served King Charles I as Attorney General, from 1625. He owed his appointment to the influence of the Duke of Buckingham. Despite a reputation as a shadowy, opaque figure, records show him able to argue shrewdly and independently in order to reduce problems for the Crown.

Heath brought a 1625 case in the Exchequer Court for the High Peak lead miners against Francis Leke who claimed a tithe from them. Through the offices of Heath, the tithe right was eventually transferred, in a possibly corrupt way, to Christian, Countess of Devonshire. From 1629, he was taking an entrepreneurial interest in the lead mines of Derbyshire, engaging Sir Cornelius Vermuyden as a partner in a major drainage operation at Wirksworth, at the ore-rich Dovegang Rake.

Heath argued for the Crown in Darnel's Case (the Five Knights' Case) of 1627. The judges rejected his argument on absolute prerogative; and a scandal blighted his reputation the following year, when it was revealed, or alleged, by John Selden that he had interfered with the King's Bench records (a felony), in order to promote the decision in the case to a binding precedent (an interpretation that has recently been disputed by Mark Kishlansky). The agitation caused by the business was of major importance for the formulation of the Petition of Right.

Heath notionally founded both North Carolina and South Carolina. He was on a commission to consider the tobacco trade with Virginia in 1627–8. In 1629 he was awarded a patent for the Province of Carolina; but in fact he made no settlements there. The grant also mentioned the Bahamas, the beginning of their colonial history.