Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/393

 performance 'perfect oratory.' In 1861 he obtained a Balliol scholarship, and was placed in the first class in moderations in 1863 and in the final classical school in 1865. In 1863 he obtained the Stanhope prize for an essay on 'The Influence of the Feudal System on Character,' and in 1867 the Arnold prize for one upon 'The Mohammedan Power in India.' He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple on 17 Nov. 1868. In 1874, upon the establishment in its present form of Hertford College, he was made one of the original fellows.

Before his call to the bar Jeune worked for some time in the office of Messrs. Baxter, Rose, and Norton, the well-known firm of solicitors, and in 1869 he proceeded, upon their instructions, to Australia, to inquire into and report upon the evidence proposed to be adduced in support of the claim of Arthur Orton to be 'Sir' Roger Tichborne. After his return he was counsel for the plaintiff in the famous action of ejectment, Tichborne v. Lushington, which was tried for 103 days before chief justice Bovill, from June 1871 to March 1872, when the jury stopped the case, and the claimant was committed for trial for perjury. Jeune's leaders were Serjeant William Ballantine [q. v. Suppl. I], Mr. Giffard, Q.C. (now Earl of Halsbury), and Mr. Pollard. He held no brief in the criminal trial which followed.

Jeune won a great reputation as a junior of exceptional learning and industry, and a large proportion of his practice was in ecclesiastical courts, or before the judicial committee of the privy council. In ecclesiastical litigation he was engaged usually but not always on the evangelical side — that being the party to which his father, the bishop, had belonged. He was on that side in the Mackonochie case, in the litigation of Green v. Lord Penzance, in the cases of Dale, and Enraght, and that of Julius v. the Bishop of Oxford, and in Cox [Mr. Bell-Cox] v. Hake. Another case in which he appeared before the judicial committee was an application for leave to appeal by Louis Riel [q. v.], a Canadian who was hanged for armed rebellion in 1885. He served on the royal commission on ecclesiastical patronage in 1874, and on that on ecclesiastical courts in 1881, and before his appointment to the bench was chancellor of the dioceses of St. Albans, Durham, Peterborough, Gloucester and Bristol, St. Asaph, Bangor, and St. David's.

In 1880 he stood as conservative candidate for Colchester, and was defeated by two votes by William (afterwards Judge) Willis, Q.C. [q.v.Suppl. II]. After this election he sat with Messrs. Holl, Q.C., and Turner as a commissioner to inquire into the corruption reported after the trial of an election petition to have prevailed at Sandwich, then a parliamentary borough. The commission reported the existence of the most flagrant corruption. The borough was consequently disfranchised, until by the Redistribution Act of 1885 it became part of one of the divisions of Kent.

In 1888 Jeune was appointed a queen's counsel, and in June 1801 was elected a bencher of the Inner Temple. The last case of great importance in which he appeared at the bar was the prosecution before the archbishop of Canterbury (Benson), with assessors, of Edward King [q. v. Suppl. II], bishop of Lincoln, for alleged unlawful ritual. Jeune was counsel for the accused bishop, and the result of the trial was that some of the practices impugned were held to be lawful and others unlawful.

In 1890 the suggestion was authoritatively made to Jeune that he should again stand for parliament, with a view to his appointment as solicitor-general upon the occurrence of an expected vacancy in that office, but he declined the proposal on the ground that his health would be unequal to the strain of parliamentary and official work. In 1891 Sir James Hannen [q. v. Suppl. I] was created a lord of appeal, and Jeune accepted the office of judge of the probate, divorce and admiralty division in place of Hannen's junior colleague. Sir Charles Parker Butt [q. v. Suppl. I], who succeeded Hannen as president. Jeune was knighted in the usual course. The work of the division fell principally upon his shoulders for the following year and a half, owing to Butt's illness, which terminated fatally in May 1892. It was then determined to cure by legislation an ambiguity in the Judicature Acts as to the precise conditions in which a judge succeeded to the office of president of the probate division. An Act was passed creating a definite office of president of the probate, etc., division, with the judicial rank of one of the lords justices of appeal. The new arrangement practically involved that the president should always be a privy councillor. Of this office Jeune was the first holder.

Jeune's tenure of this office, which lasted thirteen years, was distinguished and successful. A sound lawyer and a strong man, he gave a conspicuous example of the patience and personal courtesy which towards the end of the nineteenth century