He left a widow named Lilia, who in 1619 was married to Sir Charles Cornwallis, knt., of Beeston in Norfolk; also two sons, Robert and John, the former of whom built a large house upon the estate at Buxton, and resided there many years. The latter was buried near his father in 1631. Jegon's only daughter, Dorothy, married Robert Goswold of Otley in Suffolk.
Jegon was short in stature and somewhat corpulent, and his countenance, judging from his portrait in the lodge of Corpus Christi College, was far from pleasing in expression. Fuller, while attributing to him ‘the seriousness and gravity becoming a governor,’ says that he was ‘at the same time of a most facetious disposition, so that it was hard to say whether his counsel was more grateful for its soundness, or his company more acceptable for the pleasantness thereof.’
[Strype's Life of Whitgift; Masters's Hist. of Corpus Christi College, ed. Lamb; J. B. Mullinger's Hist. of Univ. of Cambr. vol. ii.; Brydges's Restituta, ii. 241.]
JEHNER, afterwards JENNER, ISAAC (1750–1806?), portrait-painter and engraver in mezzotint, born in Westminster in 1750, was son of a German gunsmith, who is credited with having introduced the art of silver-plating into England. At the age of nine he met with accidents which left him a deformed dwarf for life. When about twenty he was apprenticed for five years to an engraver, and afterwards worked as assistant to William Pether [q. v.], mezzotint-engraver. He also drew and painted portraits in various styles. About 1780 Jehner appears to have settled at Exeter. Among his earlier engravings were Richard, earl of Barrymore, as Cupid, after R. Cosway; Admiral Keppel, after Scott; William, fourth duke of Portland, as a boy, after Sir Joshua Reynolds; ‘A Girl with a Muff’ and ‘Dionysius Areopagita,’ after the same; ‘The Four Seasons,’ after J. Brueghel; ‘The Entombment,’ after Rubens; ‘The Incredulity of St. Thomas,’ after Correggio, &c. In Devonshire he engraved some curious portraits of the Spry family as private plates, and one of Richard Bartlett, from which we learn that Jehner was a freemason; he also engraved in 1799 a small mezzotint portrait of himself, ‘from a small original cast, as large as the life.’ In 1806 he published a sketch of his own career, under the title of ‘Fortune's Football.’ Latterly he altered his name to Jenner. The date of his death is not known.
[Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers, ed. Graves; Dodd's manuscript Hist. of English Engravers (Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 33402); Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits.]
JEKYLL, Sir JOSEPH (1663–1738), master of the rolls, born in 1663, was son of John Jekyll of London, by Tryphena his wife, relict of Richard Hill. He entered the Middle Temple in 1680, and was called to the bar in 1687. While a student he came under the influence of Somers [q. v.], afterwards lord chancellor, and Gilbert Burnet [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Salisbury, then chaplain at the rolls. In 1697 he was appointed chief justice of Chester; on 6 Nov. 1700 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law, and appointed king's serjeant; and on 12 Dec. he was knighted. On the death of William III he refused to resign his patent of chief justice of Chester, though threatened with a prosecution by the tories if he did not, and succeeded in retaining the place until his appointment to the mastership of the rolls in 1717 (Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 319, 604, 702; Wynne, Serjeant-at-Law). In parliament he sat for Eye, Suffolk, between 1697 and 1713, then for Lymington, Hampshire, until 1722, and during the rest of his life for Reigate, acting consistently with the whigs throughout. He was a friend to the poorer clergy, and in 1704 moved, by way of amendment to the royal message proposing to appropriate a part of the revenue from first-fruits and tenths to their relief, that the entire tax should be removed and a fund formed for the augmentation of small livings. About the same time he delivered a weighty but ineffectual speech on the great constitutional question raised by the action of the House of Commons in regard to the case of Ashby v. White, Jekyll urging with much learning and sense that the franchise was a right incident by common law to an estate of freehold, and that by consequence an elector disfranchised by the arbitrary act of a returning officer must have a right of action in the courts of common law [cf. Holt, Sir John]. While this was pending Jekyll accepted a brief for the defence of Lord Halifax on his trial for breach of duty as auditor of the imprests. As the prosecution had been ordered by the House of Commons this was resented as a breach of privilege, and Jekyll was publicly censured. On the impeachment of Sacheverell in 1710, Jekyll opened the articles against him in a speech full of energy and zeal, and so strongly did he feel on the matter that he went the length of ordering the indictment of a clergyman who preached before him against the impeachment while he was on circuit in Wales. The grand jury, however, threw out the bill (Parl. Hist. vi. 271, 327; Burnet, Own Time, fol., pp. 369–70; Luttrell, Relation of State Affairs, v. 486, 563; Howell, State Trials, xv. 95). Jekyll was
