989 



LYNDHURST, LORD. 



LYONS, LORD. 



990 



chancery judge. On the 15th of November 1830 (the very day on 

 which the decision on Sir Henry Parnell's motion on the Civil List 

 gave the ministry, of which he was a member, its mortal blow), he 

 introduced a bill for regulating the Regency, in case of the demise of 

 the king during the minority of his successor. This bill was adopted 

 and carried by Lord Grey; and it is a singular proof of the soundness 

 of this bill, of the skill with which it had been prepared, and of the 

 very full and lucid manner in which its provisions were explained by 

 Lord Lyndhurat, that after this speech not the slightest discussion 

 took place on either the principle or the details of an arrangement, 

 which had never before been settled without prolonged debate, and 

 the fiercest strife of parties. 



Having been bred to the common-law bar, it was some time before 

 Lord Lyndhurat attained a perfect knowledge of that particular 

 branch of law which he was called upon to administer in the Court of 

 Chancery ; and in spite of his vigour of intellect, his fairness of mind, 

 and his natural acuteness, he certainly did not establish for himself so 

 high a judicial character as he has since obtained. Lord Lyndhurst 

 retired from office with the Duke of Wellington in November 1830; 

 but he had so far conciliat.-d the respect and esteem of the liberal 

 party that he was made by them, shortly after their accession to power, 

 Chief Baron of the Exchequer ; and it was in this post that he earned 

 that high reputation as a judge which he has ever since retained. 

 Overcoming his natural tendency to indolence, he won his way with 

 the bar by his uniform courtesy and fairness, and with the public by 

 his integrity and impartiality. Decided and self-reliant almost to a 

 fault, hia great qualities were exhibited to advantage in guiding the 

 proceedings of the court over which he presided ; and the efficiency 

 of his administration of justice is proved by the fact that, during hia 

 tenure of the judicial dignity, the Court of Exchequer, from having 

 comparatively little business to transact, became the most buaily 

 occupied of all, and ita decisions were considered of greater weight 

 than those of the King's Bench itself. 



Whilst presiding in the Exchequer (from 1831 to 1834) Lord Lynd- 

 liurst took little or no part in the proceedings of the Upper House 

 except upon the introduction of the Reform Bill, to which he offered 

 a very strenuous and persevering opposition. His able speech against 

 the second reading of the bill placed him at the head of the Con- 

 servative party in the House of Lords. On the 7th of May 1832 he 

 proposed and carried a postponement of the clauses which disfranchised 

 the rotten boroughs. The ministry of Earl Grey resigned office ; and 

 the formation of a new ministry, on Tory principles, was actually 

 proposed to Lord Lyndhurst and accepted by him, in conjunction with 

 the Duke of Wellington, but speedily abandoned on account of the 

 refusal of Sir Robert Peel and other moderate Conservatives to lend 

 him their co-operation. Accordingly Earl Grey resumed office, and 

 the Reform Bill passed into law. 



During the next three yeara Lord Lyndhurst took little or no part 

 in any questions except those of a legal and technical nature. He 

 carried a bill for settling the litigations arising out of the will of Mr. 

 Thellusson, and lent his aid to the defeat of Lord Brougham's bill for 

 the establishment of local courts. In November 1834 Lord Melbourne's 

 resignation of office occurred, and Lord Lyndhurst accepted the Great 

 Seal under the brief administration of Sir Robert Peel which followed, 

 but his official career during these months is in no way distinguishable 

 from that of the ministry of which he was a member. The struggle 

 between the contending parties was chiefly in the House of Commons, 

 and Lord Lyudhurst found little exercise for his abilities in the 

 Lords. On the retirement of his party however he devoted his entire 

 energies to politics, with the exception of a rare attendance to his 

 judicial duties in the House of Peers and the Privy Council. In 

 the latter part of the session of 1835 he took the lead in opposing the 

 Bill for the Reform of Municipal Corporations, and succeeded in 

 inducing the House of Lords to insert in it certain amendments which 

 were thought to be fatal to the bill. Experience proved that Lord 

 Lyndhurst and his party had not calculated correctly ; for the amend- 

 ments, when adopted, rendered it more hurtful to the Tory party than 

 it would lave been in its original form. In the following year he 

 took up a still more marked position in the House of Lords, whom 

 he stimulated, while in opposition, to adopt a less conciliatory course 

 than that which approved itself to moderate partisans such as Sir 

 Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington. At the same time he com- 

 menced the plan of delivering at the end of each parliamentary session 

 a speech in which he gave a resume" of its proceedings, accompanied 

 by a sarcastic and withering commentary on the smallucss of minis- 

 terial results. During this time he also gained considerable notoriety 

 by his keen attacks on the Roman Catholics of Ireland, whom he 

 designated as " aliens in blood, in language, and iu religion." 



Upon the accession of Sir Robert Peel to power in 1841, Lord 

 Lyndhurat for the third time undertook the duties of the chancellor- 

 ship, which he held until the dissolution of the Conservative party, 

 and the retirement of Sir Robert Peel in 1846. He has continued dowr 

 to the present time to take an occasional part in the debates of the House 

 of Lords. He warmly and cordially supported the ministry of the Earl 

 of Derby in 1852, and since that time advocated the undertaking of th< 

 war with Russia, and in some speeches which produced a profound im 

 pression throughout the country counselled perseverance in carrying!' 

 to a successful issue. When peace was made at Paris iu March 1856 



le denounced the policy adopted by Lord Clarendon as a practical 

 capitulation on the part of England. He was, and, in spite of the 

 nfirmities of age, he still is, one of the moat effective of parliamentary 

 ipeakers in either house. His style of oratory is captivating in the 

 extreme, being classical and severely simple, owing much of its charm 

 10 the very absence of ornament, though all his speeches show marks 

 of careful preparation. His voice is one of the moat beautiful, and his 

 articulation perfect, being distinct and melodious, without the least 

 appearance of effort, and with a clear and silvery tone which gains 

 the ear by the manner, even if the reason is not always satisfied with 

 the matter of his speeches. His allusions to classical literature, 

 vhich are not unfrequent, aro always in good taste and applicable to 

 the subject; and the structure of his sentences is so correct and 

 elegant that it is said they might be printed straight from his lips 

 without needing correction. His speeches on the Cambridge Uni- 

 versity Reform, delivered in 1855, those on the Wensleydale Peerage 

 in February 1856, and othera still more recently delivered on the state 

 of Italy, and on moving the Oath of Abjuration Bill, may be ranked 

 among the highest of oratorical displays. As Speaker of the House 

 of Lords he was remarkable for an easy carelessness and a disregard 

 of the formalities of his position, which showed iu him an indifference 

 ;o ceremony not frequently fouud in those who have risen to the 

 peerage from the ranks of the people. 



* LYONS, EDMUND, LORD, better known as ADMIRAL SIB 

 EDMUND LYONS, G.C.B., is the second son of the late John Lyons, Esq., 

 of Burton House, near Christchurch, Hants, whero he was boru on 

 the 21st of November 1790. At au early age he was sent to Hyde 

 Abbey School, near Winchester, then under i>r. Richards, who num- 

 jered among his pupils George Cunning, Dean Gaisford, and Wolfe, 

 she author of the celebrated * Ode on the Burial of Sir John Moore.' 

 In June 1801 he entered the service of the navy under the late 

 Admiral Sir Harry Burrard Neale, on board H.M.S. the Royal 

 Charlotte, whence, in the following year, ha was transferred to the 

 Maidstone, Captain R. Moubray. Iu 1S07 he served under tha late 

 Sir J. T. Duckworth in the Dardanelles, on board the Active, and was 

 engaged in the successful attack on the redoubt of Point Fesquies, on 

 the Adriatic shore. In November 1809 he became lieutenant of the 

 Burraeouta brig; and in the following year he formed one of the 

 storming party who attacked by night the castle of Belgica, iu the 

 island of Banda Neira, aud by a gallant exploit added another Dutch 

 to the British possessions in the Indian Seas. In 1811 he stormed aud 

 captured the strong fortress of Marrack, on the coast of Java, but was 

 forced to return home to Euglaud to recruit his health. In 1813 ho 

 was appointed to the Rinaldu, in which vessel he conveyed Louis X VI11. 

 to France, aud brought the allied sovereigns back to England. Ho 

 obtained post rauk iu 1814, but was not actively employed between 

 that date and 1828, when, iu coiurnaud of the Blonde, he took part in 

 blockading Navarmo, and superintended the naval expedition sent to 

 aid the French in their investment of the castle of Morea, the last 

 hold of the sultan in the Peloponnesus. On this occasion he is 

 reported to have served in the trenches without intermission for 

 twelve days aud nights ; aud ou the cessation of hostilities, his 

 courteous bearing, professional skill, and unflinching bravery were 

 rewarded by the orders of St. Louis of France and the Redeemer of 

 Greece. In 1829 he was employed to convey Sir R. Gordon, the British 

 ambassador to Constantinople, iu the Blonde ; and iu the year 1831 

 he took the late Sir John Malcolm as far aa Alexandria on his route to 

 Persia. It is not a little singular that Captain Lyons's ship, the Blonde, 

 should have been the first British veasul of war that ever entered the 

 Black Sea, and that in her he should have visited both Odessa and 

 Sebastopol upwards of twenty years before the breaking out of the 

 recent war against Russia. In 1832, while commanding the Mada- 

 gascar, he was an eye-witness of the bombardment of Acre by Ibrahim 

 Pasha ; in the following year he escorted King Otho aud the Bavarian 

 embassy from Trieste to Athens, in order to assume the kingdom of 

 Greece. 



Having paid off the Madagascar in the early part of 1835, he 

 received the houour of knighthood from King William IV., and soon 

 afterwards was appointed minister plenipotentiary and ambassador 

 extraordinary at the court of Athens. The duties of this post he 

 continued to discharge with great ability and discretion for upwards 

 of fourteen years, but resigned it in February 1849 on becoming 

 ambassador to the Swiss cantons, whence he was transferred in 1851 

 in order to fill the same high post at the court of Stockholm. The 

 latter appointment he resigned towards the close of 1853, when a 

 rupture with Russia had become imminent. On the breaking out of 

 the Russian war, Sir E. Lyons took the post of second in command in 

 the Black Sea, under Admiral Sir J. W. Deaus-Dundas, on whose 

 resignation in June 1855 he became commander-in-chief of the Black 

 Sea fleet. The transport of the English troops from Varna to the 

 Crimea, in September 1854, was executed under the direction of Sir 

 E. Lyous without the loss of a single man. At the battle of the Alma 

 (September 20th) he supported the French army ashore by bringing 

 the guns of hia ship, the Agamemnon, to bear upon the left flank of 

 the Russians ; and he was an eye-witness of the engagements at Bala- 

 klava and Inkermanu (October and November), though, as a naval 

 officer, he could take no part in them. He planned the expedition 

 against the Russian forts along the Sea of Azof!" (May and June 1855), 



