Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/342

 A Century of English Judicature. nelly (1831-46), and the first volumes of Clark's House of Lords cases (1846-65). During the period from the resignation of Eldon in 1827 to 1850 there were only three Chancellors,—Lyndhurst, Brougham;' and Cottenham. Lord Lyndhurst's judicial ser-

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aside from occasional assistance from Lord Langdale, the Master of the Rolls, he was the only competent equity judge in the court. The Irish Chancellors, Manners and Plunkett, sat occasionally, but their service was inconspicuous. But Cottenham, a pure law-

LORD WYNFORD.

vices in the House were comparatively unim portant. His experience had been in com mon law; moreover, an orator of great em inence, his great abilities were political rather than judicial, and when in office his attend ance on judicial business was brief and ir regular. Lord Cottenham, on the other hand, was an eminent lawyer. During the whole period of Brougham's supremacy, and until the chancellorship of St. Leonard's,

yer, profoundly versed within the narrow sphere of equity, but knowing little besides, was not constituted by mental temperament to take the same view of things as the versa tile Brougham. In common law authority, on the other hand, the court was somewhat better, owing to the elevation to the peerage of several common law judges. Justice Best, whose service as a legal peer under the title of Lord