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, and held it until 1855. In that year he succeeded Joseph Phillimore [q. v.] at Oxford in the regius professorship of civil law. That professorship he retained until 1870. His work as regius professor bore fruit in ‘Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law’ (London, 1856, 8vo) and ‘The Law of Nations considered as Independent Political Communities,’ a systematic treatise on the entire science (Oxford, 1861–3, 2 vols. 8vo; 2nd edit. 1875; new edit. revised and enlarged, vol. i. only, 1884). An early member of the Social Science Association, he presided in 1862 over the department of international law, and afterwards served on the standing committee for the same subject.

Notwithstanding the wealth of his academic distinctions, few men had less of the academic spirit than Twiss. Keenly alive to the problems of the hour, he issued in 1846 ‘The Oregon Question examined with respect to Facts and the Law of Nations.’ An American issue of the same date was entitled ‘The Oregon Territory: its History and Discovery.’ In 1848 Twiss published ‘The Relations of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to the Crown of Denmark and the Germanic Confederation,’ London, 1848, 8vo (German translation among the ‘Beiträge zur Schleswig-Holsteinischen Frage,’ Leipzig, 1849, 8vo). ‘Hungary: its Constitution and its Catastrophe,’ followed in 1850, and on the occasion of the creation of the Roman catholic bishoprics in England in 1851, Twiss wrote ‘The Letters Apostolic of the Pope Pius IX considered with reference to the Law of England and the Law of Europe,’ London, 1851, 8vo [see, (1811–1883)]. He was selected by government on 20 Nov. 1850 as one of the commissioners for the delimitation of the frontier between New Brunswick and Canada (Parl. Pap. 1851, c. 1394). He was also a member of the royal commission appointed on 19 Sept. 1853 to inquire into the management and government of Maynooth College (ib. 1854–6, c. 1896), and of several subsequent royal commissions—viz. that of 22 March 1865 for the comparison of the various marriage laws in force throughout the queen's dominions, that of 3 June 1867 on rituals and rubrics, and those of 30 Jan. 1867 and 21 May 1868 on the laws of neutrality, naturalisation, and allegiance (ib. 1867 c. 3951, 1867–8 cc. 4016, 4027, 4057).

Meanwhile Twiss had secured much practice in the ecclesiastical courts. He was appointed in June 1849 commissary-general of the city and diocese; and in March 1852, in succession to Sir John Dodson [q. v.], vicar-general of the province of Canterbury and commissary of the archdeaconry of Suffolk. On the transference (1857) of the testamentary and matrimonial jurisdiction from the ecclesiastical courts to the new civil court of probate and divorce, he took silk (January 1858). On 17 July 1858 he succeeded Dr. Stephen Lushington [q. v.] as chancellor of the diocese of London. He practised with no less distinction in the admiralty court, was engaged in most of the prize cases which arose from captures made during the Crimean war, and was appointed in September 1862 to the office of admiralty advocate-general in succession to Sir Robert Joseph Phillimore [q. v.], whom he again succeeded as queen's advocate-general on 23 Aug. 1867. He was knighted on 4 Nov. following.

This brilliant professional career was suddenly arrested. Twiss had married at Dresden, on 29 Aug. 1862, Marie Pharialdé Rosalind Van Lynseele, who was stated to be the orphan daughter of a general officer of the Polish army. She was understood to have moved in good society both at Dresden and at Brussels, and was twice presented at the court of St. James's—once in 1863 and again in 1869. Her married life was irreproachable. But in March 1872 Twiss and his wife prosecuted in the Southwark police-court for malicious libel, with intent to extort, a solicitor who had circulated statements imputing immorality to Lady Twiss before her marriage. The ordeal of cross-examination proved to be too severe for Lady Twiss's powers of endurance, and her sudden departure from London caused the collapse of the prosecution (14 March 1872). Twiss thereupon resigned his offices (21 March) and ceased to practise. On 19 April the lord chamberlain announced in the ‘London Gazette’ that Lady Twiss's presentation at court had been cancelled.

Thenceforth Twiss devoted himself exclusively to juridical science and scholarship. He had already edited (Rolls Ser. 1871, 8vo) ‘The Black Book of the Admiralty,’ a reconstruction from various manuscript fragments of the substance of that unique source of mediæval maritime law then supposed to be irretrievably lost, of which his researches led to the recovery. In three subsequent volumes (1873, 1874, 1876) he collected as appendices under the same title the original texts of the Domesday of Ipswich, the Customaries of Oleron and Rouen, the Charter of Oleron, the Consulate of the Sea, the Laws of Amalfi and Gotland (with the summary of the latter known as the Laws of Wisby), the Codes of the Teutonic Order of Livonia, of Danzig, Lübeck, Flanders, Valencia, the