Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/36

 National Portrait Gallery. Another, by the same artist, a companion picture to the Landor in the National Portrait Gallery, was in the possession of Sir George Scharf, and was exhibited in the Victorian Exhibition (No. 223) held in London in 1892. A marble bust of him, done at Rome in 1841 by T. Crawford, was in the possession of Browning. A lithograph of a half-length in water-colours, by Moore, was presented by him to his friends; and a fine cameo profile of him was executed by Saulini at Rome.

Kenyon published ‘A Rhymed Plea for Tolerance,’ London, 1833, 8vo; ‘Poems, for the most part occasional,’ London, 1838, 8vo; and ‘A Day at Tivoli, with other Verses,’ London, 1849, 8vo. These productions hardly pass muster as poetry. The ‘Rhymed Plea’ is a didactic dialogue in the heroic couplet on the duty of tempering religious zeal with charity. The other two volumes contain some graceful verses.

 KENYON, LLOYD, first (1732–1802), master of the rolls, the second son of Lloyd Kenyon of Gredington, Flintshire, a landed proprietor and farmer of good education but limited means, by his wife Jane, eldest daughter of Robert Eddowes of Gredington and of Eagle Hall, Chester, was born at Gredington on 5 Oct. 1732. He was educated under Dr. Hughes—whom in after-life he appointed preacher at the Rolls Chapel—at first at his day-school in the neighbouring village of Hanmer, and afterwards at Ruthin grammar school, of which Hughes became head-master. He learnt a little Latin—though his bad Latin was always jeered at when he was a judge—and enough French to be subsequently improved into tolerable French scholarship, but no Greek. Being a younger son, he was at seventeen years of age articled to a solicitor of Nantwich, Cheshire, named Tomkinson, in whose office he remained even after his elder brother had died, and he had been entered as a student of the Middle Temple on 7 Nov. 1750. His mental alertness soon showed itself, and he made great progress, so that, upon Tomkinson's refusal to take him into partnership, he left Nantwich in February 1755 a rapid and accurate conveyancer. He proceeded to London, and was called to the bar on 10 Feb. 1756. (Lord Campbell, however, rightly points out that his reports of cases begin with Easter term 1753, and thence infers, with some probability, that he must have been resident in London from that time.). For some years he had no practice. He lived on the 80l. a year furnished by his father, lodged frugally near the Temple in Bell Yard, by day took notes of Lord Mansfield's judgments (from 1753 to 1759) in the king's bench, which were published posthumously by J. W. Hanmer in 1819, and read law sedulously by night. At last he obtained a little conveyancing, and contrived to pay the expenses of going the North Wales circuit and the Stafford, Oxford, and Shrewsbury sessions by the briefs procured for him by friends. The friendship of John Dunning (afterwards Lord Ashburton), which he obtained in 1759 and kept till Dunning's death in 1782, first brought him regular employment, and while acting as Dunning's ‘devil’ he obtained a junior practice of his own. He was retained for the Duke of Portland in election contests in Cumberland, was introduced to Thurlow, and supplied by his industry the defects of Thurlow's indolence, and in his turn became the patron and helper of John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon). His fee-book shows both his rise and the gains of lawyers in his day. Till 1764 he made nothing. In that year he received 80l.; in 1770 1,124l.; in 1771 2,487l.; in 1772 3,134l.; in 1775 4,225l.; in 1776 5,008l.; in 1780, the year in which he became a king's counsel, 6,359l.; in 1781 7,437l.; and in 1782, having become attorney-general, 11,038l. He made 80,000l. in sixteen years; his fees for opinions on cases alone were in 1780 2,578 guineas, in 1781 2,936 guineas, and in 1782 3,020 guineas. On the death of his father in 1775 he succeeded to the family estates at Gredington, and, marrying his cousin Mary, daughter of George Kenyon of Peel Hall, Bolton, Lancashire, went to live in Lincoln's Inn Fields. On the death of Sir R. Aston in 1778 he was sounded by Thurlow and Wedderburn about taking the vacant judgeship, but on the advice of Thurlow refused it; and he again declined a similar offer in 1780, on the death of Sir William Black-