Anthony Browne

Sir Anthony Browne QS (1509–1567), sometimes referred to as Antony Browne, was a British justice. Life He came from a family of lawyers. His father, Sir Wistan Browne, was a barrister of the Middle Temple, and three of his uncles served as benchers there, one of whom was Sir Humphrey Browne, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas. On his mother, Elizabeth's side were Sir John Mordaunt, chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall, and William Mordaunt, chief Prothonotary of the Common Pleas. Keeping with family tradition he joined Middle Temple, and became a pupil of John Jenour, at the time the second Prothonotary of the Common Pleas. In 1545, he became a Member of Parliament, and in 1554 a bencher of Middle Temple. He was made a Serjeant-at-law in 1555 under the patronage of the Earl of Oxford, and was then immediately made Queen's Serjeant, obliged as the junior serjeant of his inn to give a reading, which he did on the subject of the Statute of Jeofails. Execution of William Hunter In 1555 Browne was responsible for the execution of William Hunter one of the Marian martyrs.