c. 1628-Unknown
Attorney General of New York, 1687; 1691
George Farewell was born in England in the late 1620s and is believed to have graduated from Cambridge University in 1648. That year, he was admitted to the Inner Temple where he studied law, and was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1656.
Farewell is believed to have arrived in New York around 1684 and he is listed as Attorney General of the Province in 1687. Farewell moved to Boston when Governor Edmund Andros appointed him Attorney General of the Dominion of New England in 1688 and when the Puritans launched a revolt against Andros in 1689, Farewell was among those officers that were arrested with Andros, imprisoned and returned to England.
George Farewell came back to New York in 1691 and was appointed one of the prosecutors in the Jacob Leisler Treason Trial. Subsequently, Farewell was appointed Attorney General of New York but he gave poor advice to the Assembly over bills to be drafted, including the bill for “Settling the Courts of Judicature,” and the Assembly had him removed from office.
When the Supreme Court of Judicature convened for the first time in October 1691, Farewell had a few matters on the calendar but there is no subsequent record of him in the Province of New York. He is believed to have returned to England where he testified before the House of Commons on April 26, 1695 regarding Jacob Leisler’s administration of New York.
Source
Paul Hamlin and Charles Baker. The Supreme Court of the Province of New York, 1691-1704 (1959).