Peter King 1st Baron King
He was born in Exeter in 1669 and educated at Exeter Grammar School. In his youth he was interested in early church history, and published anonymously in 1691 An Enquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity and Worship of the Primitive Church that flourished within the first Three Hundred Years after Christ. This treatise engaged the interest of his cousin, John Locke, the philosopher, by whose advice his father sent him to the Leiden University, where he stayed for nearly three years. He entered the Middle Temple in 1694 and was called to the bar in 1698.

In 1700 he was returned to Parliament of England as the member for Bere Alston in Devon, holding the seat until 1715.

He was appointed recorder of Glastonbury in 1705 and recorder of London in 1708. Made a Serjeant-at-Law, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1714 to 1725, when he was raised to the peerage as a Lord Justice and Speaker of the House of Lords. In June of the same year he was made Lord Chancellor, holding office until compelled by a paralytic stroke to resign in 1733.

He was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society on 14 November 1728
He died at Ockham, Surrey, on 22 July 1734
 

Of a Rouen family of goldsmiths. The first of the name in England seems to be Esaie 'Pontin' who married Elizabeth Maubert 3 October 1658 at the French Church Threadneedle Street, both being described as 'natif(ve)de Rouen'. Esaie remarried in 1666 as widower, Marie Bouquet, widow of Isaac Maubert, perhaps his brother-in-law. By his first marriage, Esaie had a son, also Esaie, baptized 4 March 1660, who would seem to be the Esaie Pantin, goldsmith of St. James's, Westminster, recorded by Heal, 1709, but for whom there is no entry of a mark. His daughter married Peter Courtauld in 1709. It would seem highly likely that Simon Pantin was another son of Esaie I and younger brother of Esaie II. Unfortunately, the record of his apprenticeship to Peter Harrache has not survived. He was free by apprenticeship to the latter 4 June 1701. This would put his indentures at about 1694, and his likely birth about 1680. He is presumably the Simon Pantin who appears in the Denization List, 16 December 1687, and as witness to the baptism of Suzanne de Joncourt at Threadneedle Street Church, 12 December 1697. First mark entered as largeworker, 23 June 1701. Address: St. Martin's Lane. Second mark, 16 September 1717. Address Castle Street. Third mark (Sterling), 30 June 1720, same address. Livery, October 1712. His name appears in the Naturalization Act 1709 as Simon Pantin, goldsmith, St. Martin in the Fields, witnesses Paul Beauvais and Henry Riboteau, and Pantin in turn as witness to four others. Heal records show him as plateworker, Peacock Street, Martin's Lane, 1699-1701; St. Martin in the Fields, 1709-11; and as removed to Peacock, Castle Street, Leicester Fields 1717 till death in 1728. The Peacock is included in his marks. Listed by Evans as Huguenot.