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 inquired into the return of O'Connell and Ruthven for Dublin. After an unsuccessful contest in 1840 at Newark against Wilde, the solicitor-general, he was returned to parliament as conservative member for Woodstock on 20 March. In 1844, owing to differences of opinion with the Duke of Marlborough, he ceased to represent Woodstock, and was elected for Abingdon, and at the general election of 1852 he was returned for Stamford by the influence of Lord Exeter.

On 8 June 1842 Thesiger was created D.C.L. by the university of Oxford, and on 19 June 1845 was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. On 15 April 1844 he was appointed solicitor-general in succession to Sir William Webb Follett [q. v.] and was knighted. The breakdown of Follett's health threw upon him almost all the work of both law officers, and on Follett's death he became attorney-general on 29 June 1845. He retired on the fall of the Peel administration, 3 July 1846. Had the ministry lasted another fortnight, he would have succeeded to the chief-justiceship of the common pleas, which became vacant on 6 July by the death of Sir Nicholas Tindal, and was given to Wilde.

He returned to his private practice at the bar, and in parliament acted with Lord George Bentinck. He obtained office again as attorney-general in Lord Derby's first administration from February to December 1852; and when Lord Derby formed his second administration, and Lord St. Leonards refused, owing to his great age, to return to active life, Thesiger received the great seal, 26 Feb. 1858, and became Baron Chelmsford and a privy councillor. His chancellorship was short, for the ministry fell in June 1859. His chief speech while in office was an eloquent opposition to the removal of Jewish disabilities, on which subject he had repeatedly been the principal speaker on the conservative side in the House of Commons.

After his resignation he continued active in judicial work, both in the House of Lords and the privy council. He constantly found himself in collision with Westbury, for whom he had a profound antipathy, and in particular severely attacked him early in 1862 with regard to the hardship inflicted under the new Bankruptcy Act upon the officials of the former insolvent court. Lord Westbury, on the whole, had the best of the encounter (, Life of Westbury, ii. 38). Chelmsford resumed office again under Lord Derby in 1866, but was somewhat summarily set aside in 1868 by Disraeli when Lord Derby ceased to be prime minister. He died on 5 Oct. 1878 at his house in Eaton Square, London.

Thesiger married, in 1822, Anna Maria (d. 1875), youngest daughter of William Tinling of Southampton, and niece of Major Francis Peirson [q. v.], the defender of Jersey. By her he had seven surviving children, of whom Alfred Henry is noticed separately.

Thesiger had a fine presence and handsome features, a beautiful voice, a pleasant if too frequent wit, an imperturbable temper, and a gift of natural eloquence. He was, after the death of Follett, probably the most popular leading counsel of his day. As a lawyer he was ready and painstaking, and was a particularly sagacious cross-examiner; but his general reputation was that he was deficient in learning (see Life of Lord Campbell, ii. 357). It was perhaps a misfortune that he was never appointed to a common-law judgeship; but his judgments in the House of Lords show sound sense and grasp of principle. Throughout a laborious career, which politically was for long periods unlucky, though professionally immensely successful, he preserved an unbroken good humour, patience, and freedom from acerbity.

His portrait, painted by E. U. Eddis, is in the possession of the present Lord Chelmsford. It was mezzotinted by W. Walker.

[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Law Journal and Law Times, 12 Oct. 1878; Times, 7 Oct. 1878; J. B. Atlay's Victorian Chancellors, 1908, ii.] 

THEW, ROBERT (1758–1802), engraver, was born in 1758 at Patrington, Holderness, Yorkshire, where his father kept an inn. He received but little education, and for a time followed the trade of a cooper; but, possessing great natural abilities, he invented an ingenious camera obscura, and later took up engraving, in which art, although entirely self-taught, he attained to a high degree of excellence. In 1783 he went to Hull, where he resided for a few years, engraving at first shop-bills and tradesmen's cards. His earliest work of a higher class was a portrait of Harry Rowe [q. v.] the famous puppet-show man, and in 1786 he etched and published a pair of views of the new dock at Hull, which were aquatinted by Francis Jukes [q. v.] Having executed a good plate of a woman's head after Gerard Dou, he obtained from the Marquis of Carmarthen an introduction to John Boydell [q. v.], for whose large edition of Shakespeare he engraved in the dot manner twenty-two plates after Northcote, Westall, Opie,