234) DEATH AND CHARACTER OF -LORD TENTERDEN. 



Mr. Wood (afterwards a baron of the Exchequer), one of the most 

 eminent special pleaders ;^and, after the terms of his pupelage expired, 

 practised himself as a special pleader under the bar. About 1795 he 

 was called to the bar, and went the Oxford circuit. He was counsel 

 for Lockhart Gordon on the prosecution of the celebrated Mrs. Leigh 

 (a natural daughter of old Lord Le Despenser), for abduction, and 

 saved him by one single sagacious cross-question to the witness. The 

 native quality of his mind displayed itself as an advocate ; he was 

 eminent for his solidity and skill, but not a flourishing orator : he 

 therefore addressed a court with more effect than a jury. He thus 

 continued in moderate and certain, but not the leading practice, for 

 nearly twenty years, when, early in 1816, he was promoted to the 

 bench of the Common Pleas, and thence, in a few months, to the 

 King's Bench, on the death of Justice Le Blanc, and, as a rare in- 

 stance, he was, on the resignation of Lord Ellenborough, in Novem- 

 ber, 1818, advanced, by the favour of Lord Eldon, to the chief-justice- 

 ship, but without a peerage. There never was a more virtuous, just, 

 and uninfluenced appointment. It had not the remotest connexion 

 with political weight or intrigue ; the promotion was solely on the 

 ground of pure merit and fitness. It need not be said that he dis- 

 charged that high and most laborious office for fourteen years, with 

 unequalled ability, skill, learning, and integrity, because, even during 

 his life, it was universally admitted. In 1827, when his majesty's 

 ministers thought proper to elevate to the peerage two other eminent 

 members of the law, Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Plunkett, Mr. Can- 

 ning, the premier, in a few beautiful words of high acknowledge- 

 ment of the merits of the chief-justice, also offered, in his majesty's 

 name, the peerage to him, as due to the exalted station he filled, and 

 the exemplary, able, and honourable manner in which he had dis- 

 charged its duties ; and he was accordingly raised to the title of Lord 

 Tenterden, a small town in Kent, of which his mother was a native, 

 and from whom, if talents and virtues are inheritable, he derived his 

 talents and virtues. 



He was himself a native of Canterbury, born in a house directly 

 opposite to the great west-end of the cathedral; which house had 

 had an extrrordinary fate, as it had been formerly the birth-place of 

 the Countess of Salisbury (Miss Keate), grandmother of the present 

 marquis. Lord Tenterden, at nine years old, was sent to the public 

 school of that city, founded Henry VIII. (then under Dr. Beauvoir, 

 an eminent classical scholar), and from his very entrance distinguished 

 himself by industry, talent, and correct conduct. At twelve years 

 old, 1775, he began to write Latin verses, and always kept at the 

 head of his class. In 1795 he married Miss Lamotte, daughter of 

 John Lamotte, Esq., then of Basledon, in Berkshire, afterwards of 

 Thorn-Grove, near Worcester, by whom he has left two sons and 

 two daughters. A few years ago he bought a seat at Hendon, in 

 Middlesex, that it might be within reach of his official duties. Many 

 years past, in the early part of his practice at the bar, he published a 

 Treatise on the Law of Commercial Navigation, which has had several 

 editions, and is in high estimation and authority. It is not a crude 

 collection of cases, like most in this science, but a methodical and 



