John Tabor Kempe Editorial Note
John Tabor Kempe
Despite his youth, John Jay was not averse to controversy in his practice. In several instances, he locked horns with powerful attorney general John Tabor Kempe.1 The letters below concern the matter of Bloomer v. Hinchman and demonstrate Jay’s commitment to professional and personal honor.
In 1769, Governor Henry Moore named Joshua Bloomer (1735–90), an Anglican clergyman, to the vacant pulpit at Jamaica, N.Y. The churchwardens refused to pay Bloomer, and the minister retained John Jay and James Duane to represent him in a suit to gain his salary. The exchange of letters below was initiated by Jay upon learning that Kempe, acting for the governor as attorney general, was engaged in Chancery in arguing a demurrer2 pleaded by the vestrymen of the parish. As one of the counsel to Bloomer, Jay felt that the interests of his client as well as professional courtesy dictated consultation with all of Bloomer’s attorneys.
Jay opposed Kempe on yet another occasion in April 1773, when he defended Mayor Underhill of the borough town of Westchester in a contested election. The government, represented by Kempe, contended that unqualified voters had been permitted to vote in the election. Jay exploited a variety of procedural maneuvers to have the case postponed, in effect giving his client another three months of his term.3 Hard on the heels of the Underhill case was a mandamus issued against the officials of the town ordering them to admit Gilial Honeywell and Isaac Legget to the offices of aldermen, to which, the government contended, they had been duly elected. By dilatory tactics, Jay succeeded in keeping them out of their posts from July 1773 to April 1774.4 In both cases, Jay supported local authorities against the royal government.
1. John Tabor Kempe (c. 1735–95), last royal attorney general for the Province of New York (1759–77). Kempe, a De Lancey partisan, followed his father in the position of attorney general. Among the cases he prosecuted was King v. Alexander McDougall (1769). Kempe made his fortune from fees, a strategic marriage to Grace Coxe, and speculation in New York and Vermont lands. A Loyalist, he fled to England in 1783 and died there in 1795. Catherine Snell Crary, “The American Dream: John Tabor Kempe’s Rise from Poverty to Riches,” 14 (1957): 176–95. Kempe came into conflict with a member of the Jay family in the 1760s, when he chaired the committee appointed by King’s College to investigate Sir James Jay’s handling of funds he collected in England for the college.
2. Demurrer: “a pleading which, admitting for the moment the facts as stated in the opponent’s pleading, denies that he is legally entitled to relief, and thus stops the action until this point be determined by the court.” , 2nd ed.
4. See Minutes, Supreme Court of Judicature, 1772–76, pp. 101, 131, 153; 1278–79.