Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/190

 and says he must style himself, as others do, “a lucky dog.”’ Meanwhile he had removed his chambers to Crown Office Row, and these he retained until he left the bar. Out of his increasing income he was able to assist his father, whose art had ceased to be profitable; but down to 1812 it did no more than meet the immediate wants of his parents and himself. In the March of that year Copley got his first great start in his profession by his defence at the Nottingham assizes of John Ingham, one of the leading Luddites, who was charged with what was then the capital offence of rioting and the destruction of machinery. By an ingenious objection to the indictment he got his client off scot-free. The sympathies of the mob were all with Ingham, and Copley had difficulty in preventing them from carrying himself to his hotel upon their shoulders. Just before this he had resolved to give up the circuit, finding it did not pay; but he never afterwards wanted briefs when he came to Nottingham. The turn in his affairs had come which ‘led on to fortune.’ In 1813 he was raised to the dignity of serjeant-at-law. During the next two years his success enabled him to increase the comforts of his father, but it was not such as to enable him to fulfil his mother's wish that he should marry. His father's death in September 1815 threw the whole burden of his family upon him. It was cheerfully accepted by ‘the best of sons and the best of brothers,’ as he was called by his father. Old Copley left heavy debts; his son assumed them all, and paid them out of his hard-won earnings to the last penny. Years had only drawn closer the bonds of affection between his mother and sister and himself. Mr. and Mrs. Greene tried hard to get them to make a home with them at Boston, but they refused. ‘It would be distressing indeed,’ Mrs. Copley writes, ‘to break up my son's only domestic scene for comfort and resort from his arduous attention to business. His kind and feeling heart you know, and it has had a large scope for action.’ In the action of Boville v. Moore and others for infringement of a patent, tried in March 1816 before Chief-justice Gibbs, Copley gained great distinction by the masterly way in which he explained the intricate machinery of the bobbin-net frame, which, according to Dr. Ure, is ‘as much beyond the most curious chronometer as that is beyond a roasting-jack,’ illustrating his exposition as he went along by working a model of the machine with what seemed the dexterity of a practised hand. He had made himself master of the subject by running down to Nottingham two days before, studying the machine at his client's works, and turning out with his own hands an unexceptionable specimen of bobbin-net lace. Copley succeeded in proving that the plaintiff's machine was only an improvement on the spinning-jenny invented some years before by Mr. Heathcot, and in so doing not only secured a verdict for his clients, but enabled Heathcot to take measures, which he did forthwith, to reap the solid fruits of his invention. From this time fees poured in upon Copley so largely, that he was able by degrees to pay off his father's debts, and to place his family in greater comfort than they had known for years. He now became the acknowledged leader of his circuit, and was recognised by his professional brethren as marked for distinction. This opinion was confirmed by the brilliant appearances which he made in two celebrated trials for treason in 1817. The first of these was that of Dr. Watson and Thistlewood, afterwards the head of the Cato Street conspiracy. Copley's speech is said by Lord Campbell, who heard it, to have been ‘one of the ablest and most effective ever delivered in a court of justice.’ It was marked by that ‘luminous energy’ which characterised all his speeches. Not a superfluous sentence, no patches of rhetoric, the points chosen with unfaltering judgment, and driven home with convincing force, all indicating a mind which, as Sir Samuel Shepherd once said of Copley, ‘had no rubbish in it.’ Mainly through Copley's eloquence a verdict of acquittal was obtained. The exceptional ability shown by Copley determined the government to secure his services at the next state trial. This was that of Brandreth Turner and others for riot at a special assize in Derby (October 1817), when effective use was made by Mr. Denman of the fact that his clients, the accused, were in this way deprived of ‘that bulwark which they would otherwise have found in Copley's talents, zeal, eloquence, and useful experience.’ Less scrupulous politicians accused Copley of deserting his principles, assuming that he had shared the opinions of the Luddites and others whom he had defended, simply because he had done his duty as their counsel to the best of his ability. Soon after this trial Lord Liverpool was the means of bringing Copley into parliament, but without ‘pledge, promise, or condition of any sort,’ which he certainly would not have done, unless he had felt sure that Copley's political opinions were such that his support of the general policy of the government might be relied on. Copley took his seat in March 1818 as member for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. During this session he spoke only twice, but his position