Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/160

 offence to the nationalist party; but his action was sustained in parliament by Wellington and Lyndhurst (14 July 1843). Sugden moved at a county meeting held at Epsom on 17 Dec. 1850 a resolution protesting against the so-called papal aggression; but otherwise took little part in public life during the administration of Lord John Russell. On Lord Derby's accession to power, he succeeded Lord Truro on the woolsack (4 March 1852), having been appointed lord chancellor 27 Feb., and raised to the peerage (1 March) as Baron St. Leonards of Slaugham, Sussex. His tenure of office, which was marked by the passing of measures in amendment of the law of wills, trusts, lunacy, and chancery and common-law procedure (15 and 16 Vict. cc. 24, 48, 55, 76, 80, 87), was cut short within the year by the fall of the government (20 Dec. 1852).

St. Leonards declined office on the return of his party to power, in February 1858, but continued for many years to take an active part in the judicial deliberations of the House of Lords and privy council. Within his limits he as nearly as possible realised the ideal of an infallible oracle of law. His judgments, always delivered with remarkable readiness, were very rarely reversed, and the opinions expressed in his textbooks were hardly less authoritative. As a law reformer he did excellent work in the cautious and tentative spirit dictated by his nature and training. He would deserve to be had in grateful remembrance were it only for the abolition of the absurd rule which, before 1852, annually defeated a host of wills for no better reason than that the testator had not placed his signature precisely at the foot of the document. His last legislative achievement was the measure in further amendment of the law of trusts passed in 1859, and commonly known as Lord St. Leonards' Act (22 and 23 Vict. c. 35).

His last years were divided between his country seat, Tilgate Forest Lodge, Slaugham, Sussex, and his villa, Boyle Farm, Thames Ditton, where he died on 29 Jan. 1875. The mysterious disappearance of his will, which he had made some years before his death, occasioned a lawsuit which established the admissibility of secondary evidence of the contents of such a document in the absence of a presumption that the testator had destroyed it animo revocandi (Jarman on Wills, i. 124).

St. Leonards was LL.D. (Cambridge, 1835) and D.C.L. (Oxford, 1853), high steward of Kingston-on-Thames, and deputy-lieutenant of Sussex. An engraved portrait of his singularly refined features, from a drawing by his daughter, Charlotte Sugden, is at Lincoln's Inn.

He married, on 23 Dec. 1808, Winifred (d. 19 May 1861), only child of John Knapp, by whom he had seven sons and seven daughters. He was succeeded in the title by his grandson, Edward Burtenshaw Sugden, the present Lord St. Leonards.

Besides the works mentioned above, St. Leonards was author of the following treatises and minor pieces, all of which were published at London: 1. ‘A Series of Letters to a Man of Property on the Sale, Purchase, Lease, Settlement, and Devise of Estates,’ 1809, 2nd edit. 8vo; 3rd edit. 1815. 2. ‘A Cursory Inquiry into the Expediency of repealing the Annuity Act and raising the Legal Rate of Interest,’ 1812, 8vo. 3. ‘A Letter to Sir Samuel Romilly on the late Decisions upon the Omission of the word “Signed” in the Attestation to Instruments executing Powers, and on the Act for amending the Laws in that respect,’ 1814, 8vo. 4. ‘Considerations on the Rate of Interest and on Redeemable Annuities,’ 1816, 8vo; 3rd edit. 1817. 5. ‘A Letter to Charles Butler, Esq., on the Doctrine of presuming a Surrender of Terms assigned to attend the Inheritance,’ 1819, 8vo. 6. ‘A Letter to John Williams, Esq., M.P., in reply to his Observations upon the Abuses of the Court of Chancery,’ 1825, 8vo. 7. ‘A Letter to James Humphreys, Esq., on his Proposal to repeal the Laws of Real Property and substitute a New Code,’ 1826, 8vo. 8. ‘Extracts from the Acts of Parliament relating to the Oaths to be taken by the Members of the Imperial Parliament,’ 1829, 8vo. 9. ‘Speech delivered in the House of Commons, 16th December 1830, upon the Court of Chancery,’ 1831, 8vo. 10. ‘Observations on a General Register,’ 1834, 8vo. 11. ‘A Letter to the Right Hon. Viscount Melbourne on the Present State of the Appellate Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery and House of Lords,’ 1835, 8vo. 12. ‘Treatise on the Law of Property as administered by the House of Lords,’ 1849, 8vo. 13. ‘Essay on the New Statutes relating to Limitations of Time, Estates Tail, Dower, Descent, Operation of Deeds,’ &c., 1852, 8vo; 2nd edit. (enlarged, with title ‘A Practical Treatise on the New Statutes relating to Property’), 1862, 8vo. 14. ‘Shall we Register our Deeds?’ 1852, 8vo. 15. ‘Improvements in the Administration of the Law,’ 1852, 8vo. 16. ‘Life Peerages: substance of Speech in the House of Lords on 7 Feb. 1856.’ 17. ‘New Law Courts and the Funds of the Suitors of the Court of Chancery,’ 1861, 8vo. 18. ‘A Handy Book on Property Law, in a series