Page:A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices.djvu/21

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Second son of the Rev. John Abbot, S.T.P., of Colchester. He was educated at Westminster and Oxford, where he had a distinguished career, and where he was Vinerian Scholar, 1781. He was called to the Bar 9 May, 1783, but finding the practice of the law distasteful, in 1794 he accepted the office of Clerk of the Rules in the King's Bench, which he held for seven years. In 1795 he entered Parliament as member for Helston. Here he devoted his attention to many practical improvements in legislative procedure, and he was the author of the first Census Act. In 1801 he became Chief Secretary for Ireland, where he applied himself to departmental reforms, till in the following year he was recalled to succeed Sir John Mitford in the Speakership of the House of Commons (11 Feb. 1802). This position he occupied for fifteen very eventful years, retiring in 1817, with a peerage as Lord Colchester. On attaining to the Speakership he was elected a Bencher of the Inn, and was appointed Reader in 1805. He died suddenly on the 7 May, 1829. His Diary and Correspondence were published by his son in 1861.



Second son of John Abbott, of Canterbury—"filius natu minor humilibus sortis parentibus, patre vero prudenti, matre pia ortus," as he described himself—where he was born, 7 Oct. 1762. He was educated at the Grammar School there, and subsequently at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he had a distinguished career. From the Middle Temple he passed to the Inner, where he was called to the Bar in 1796, and speedily acquired a large practice, taking part in most of the important State Trials of the time. He was also Counsel to the Bank of England and other great commercial bodies. In Feb. 1816 he was appointed a judge of the Common Pleas, and in the same year advanced to the Court of King's Bench with the honour of knighthood. Two years later he succeeded Lord Ellenborough as Chief Justice of that court, and in 1827 was raised to the peerage. He died 4 Nov. 1832.

Notwithstanding his application to the law, he never relinquished his study of classical literature, and found time for researches in botany, etc. He was the author of the following works: Rules and Orders on the Plea Side of the King's Bench (1795); Jurisprudence and Practice of the Court of Great Sessions of Wales in the Chester Circuit (1795); Treatise on the Law of Merchant Ships and Seamen, in four parts (1802). This last is a legal classic of which many editions have been published.