Lord Lyndhurst was also one of the glories of this inn. The trial of Dr.
Watson for treason, in 1817, first gained for this son of an American
painter a reputation which, joined with his prudent conduct in the trial
of Cashman the rioter led to his being appointed Solicitor-General in
1818. From that he rose in rapid succession, to the posts of
Attorney-General, Master of the Rolls, Lord Chancellor, and Lord
Lyndhurst. Old, eccentric, “irrepressible” Sir Charles Wetherell was
Copley’s fellow-advocate in Watson’s case, that ended in the prisoner’s
acquittal.[683] In 1827, when Abbott became Lord Tenterden, Copley
accepted the Great Seal, displacing Lord Eldon, and joined Canning’s
cabinet, becoming Lord Lyndhurst. In 1830 he became Chief Baron of the
Exchequer.
Charles Pepys, Lord Cottenham, born 1781, was called to the bar by the
Society of Lincoln’s Inn in 1804. He was appointed King’s Counsel in 1826,
was made Solicitor-General in 1834, succeeded Sir John Leach as Master of
the Rolls in the same year, and was elevated to the woolsack in 1836. This
Chancellor, who was a very excellent lawyer, was descended from a branch
of the family of Samuel Pepys, author of the celebrated _Diary_.
Sir E. Sugden was a member of Lincoln’s Inn. He was born in the year 1781.
He was the son of a Westminster hairdresser who became rich by inventing a
substitute for hair-powder. He was created Lord St. Leonards on the
formation of a Conservative ministry in 1852, when he accepted the Great
Seal.
Lord Brougham also studied in Lincoln’s Inn. He was born in 1778, and
started the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1802. In 1820 he defended Queen
Caroline; but it would take a volume to follow the career of this
impetuous and versatile genius. His struggles for law-reform, for Catholic
emancipation, for abolition of slavery, for the education of the people,
and for Parliamentary reform, are matters of history. In his old age,
though still vigorous, Lord Brougham grew tamer, and condemned the armed
emancipation of slaves practised by the Northern States in the present
American war. He died at his residence at Cannes in the South of France in
1868.
Cottenham and Campbell were students in Lincoln’s Inn; so was that
eccentric reformer Jeremy Bentham, who was called to the bar in 1722, and
was the son of a Houndsditch attorney; and so was Penn, the founder of
Pennsylvania.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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