Belknap, Robert (lived late 14th century)

English jurist. He was chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas from 1374 to 1388, when he was removed for having, unwillingly, signed an affirmative to the question of Edward III: ‘Whether I might by my regal power revoke that which was acted in Parliament’.

In the succeeding Parliament all the judges were arrested in Westminster Hall on a charge of high treason, but Belknap escaped with his life through the intercession of the bishops.