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Thomas Pemberton Leigh, Baron Kingsdown

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Baron (1793-2867), the eldest son of Thomas Pemberton, a chancery barrister, was born in London on the 11th of February 1793. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1816, and at once acquired a lucrative equity practice. He sat in parliament for Rye (1831-1832) and for Ripon (1835-1843). He was made a king's counsel in 1829. Of a retiring disposition, he seldom took part in parliamentary debates, although in 1838 in the case of Stockdale v. Hansard he took a considerable part in upholding the privileges of parliament. In 1841 he accepted the post of attorney-general for the duchy of Cornwall. In 1842 a relative, Sir Robert H. Leigh, left him a life interest in his Wigan estates, amounting to some Li 5,000 a year; he then assumed the additional surname of Leigh. Having accepted the chancellorship of the duchy of Cornwall and a privy councillorship, he became a member of the judicial committee of the privy council, and for nearly twenty years devoted his energies and talents to the work of that body; his judgments, more particularly in prize cases, of which he took especial charge, are remarkable not only for legal precision and accuracy, but for their form and expression. In 1858, on the formation of Lord Derby's administration, he was offered the Great Seal, but declined; in the same year, however, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kingsdown. He died at his seat, Lorry Hill, near Sittingbourne, Kent, on the 7th of October 1867. Lord Kingsdown never married, and his title became extinct.

See Recollections of Life at the Bar and in Parliament, by Lord Kingsdown (privately printed for friends, 1868); The Times (8th of October 1867).