Copley’s professional rival and political opponent John Campbell II*, writing in the 1850s, asserted that ‘from his entrance into public life, he has shown himself to be devoid of public principle, and to be actuated too often by a sense of interest’.
On 1 Jan. 1820, Campbell told his brother:
I dined at Copley’s ... [and] rallied him about his conduct with former freedom, and he retains his former good humour. Copley told me in confidence that the only thing ministers are afraid of is the [regent’s] divorce ... All the ministers, and particularly the chancellor, resist it as much as possible.
Life of Campbell, i. 365.
Two days later Copley’s wife gave birth to a daughter, Sarah, who survived for less than a month. His mother informed his married sister that
your brother being greatly occupied with his business, and his wife having no near connections, you will naturally suppose that Mary and myself have been called to much attention ... You cannot form an idea of the occupations of his mind and time ... The diabolical [Cato Street] conspiracy ... occasions much business, which my son has his share of. This is the fourth time he has been called to renew his election, and, though there is no contest, expense accompanies the scene.
Amory, 336-7.
After being returned again unopposed for Ashburton on the Clinton interest at the general election, Copley appeared for the crown in the prosecutions of Thistlewood and others of the conspirators.
Copley briefly justified the omission of the queen’s name from the liturgy, 23 Jan., and spoke at greater length against its restoration, 26 Jan. 1821, when his assertion that ‘no person could agree with the present motion without being alike an enemy to the monarch and the monarchy itself’ earned him a rebuke from the Speaker. The young Whig George Howard*, a spectator in the gallery, thought his speech was ‘not very powerful’; and the radical Whig Member Grey Bennet wrote that Copley delivered
a very bad, stupid and ill argued speech with abuse of the queen ... We cheered and laughed and made such a noise as to completely disconcert him. He got into a great passion, bellowed like a bull and roared himself hoarse.
Castle Howard mss, Howard to Lady Morpeth, 28 [Jan. 1821]; HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 6.
Campbell recorded two encounters with Copley after the failure of the parliamentary campaign in support of the queen. On 25 Feb. he wrote:
Copley becomes very insolent in his triumph. He said to me the other day: ‘What chiefly delights me is that we remain in, not from being liked, but because you Whigs are hated - just as one has more pleasure in succeeding by a piece of roguery than upon the merits’. This is a very characteristic speech.
And on 10 Mar. 1821:
Copley swaggers now very much. He says that from the time the green bag was laid on the table till a short time before the meeting of Parliament, he had no notion that ministers could stand, but that now he considered them immortal. He boasts of the special favour vouchsafed to them by Providence, for, if the bill had either been lost on the second reading, or had been carried by so large a majority as to go down to the Commons, in either case they were ruined. He was yesterday laughing at the Whigs for being shy of the radicals, and trying by their moderation to preserve the good opinion of the king, observing that their only chance was to force themselves in on the shoulders of the people. Campbell. Had you come into the House on the popular side, what a firebrand you would have been! Scarlett. He would have retained his name of Jacobin Copley. Solicitor-General. That is a calumny lately invented. Scarlett. It is a name I well remember your being called by, before you went over.
Life of Campbell, i. 395-6.
Copley opposed reception of Davison’s petition against Justice Best† and became involved in a slanging match with Creevey, 23 Feb. 1821. The same day he obtained leave to introduce a bill to expedite the dispatch of business in the court of king’s bench, which he introduced, 26 Feb.
Early in 1822 Copley published a substantial review of The State of the Nation, a defence of government policy which concluded with the assertion that ‘ministers are fully entitled to the praise of a zealous performance of all their public duties’, their ‘effectual prosecution of business without pretension’ and their ‘sober, steady victory over the most appalling difficulties’ (pp. 205-6). In the House, 8 Feb., he gave assurances that Henry Hunt’s* complaints over his treatment in Ilchester gaol were under investigation, and defended a clause of the Irish insurrection bill. On 20 Feb. he deplored Hume’s ‘scandalous’ attack on the judges who had found against Hunt’s appeal, but he was required by the Speaker to swallow his words.
Copley, who produced a review of the Administration of the Affairs of Great Britain, Ireland and their Dependencies at the start of 1823, informed the House, 13 Mar., that government had no intention of abandoning the principle of the Act of the previous year dealing with insolvent debtors, though he did not entirely rule out the possibility of excluding from its scope those who secured for themselves collusive arrests. He persuaded Moore to withdraw his motion for a repeal bill with a promise to reconsider the subject, 18 Mar. Next day he defended the grant for the insolvent debtors court.
In October 1823 Sir Charles Abbott, chief justice of king’s bench, commented that while Copley had ‘less learning’ than Gifford, he possessed ‘a much better person, countenance, and manner; a good head, and a kind heart, and [was] not deficient in learning. I suppose he will soon fill one of our high offices’.
He opposed the production of papers on the criminal judicature of the Isle of Man and was a teller for the minority, 18 Feb. 1824. Next day he voted against a return of information on Catholic office-holders. He dismissed a charge of breach of privilege against lord chancellor Eldon, 1 Mar., and was a teller for the majority against it. He modified Hume’s motion for a return of committals by London, Middlesex and Surrey magistrates before acquiescing in it, 2 Mar. On Lord Althorp’s county courts bill, 4 Mar., he proposed an amendment to provide indemnity and compensation for displaced officials. He explained his proposals in detail, 26 Mar., and carried them against Althorp’s protests. On 5 Mar. he introduced his promised bill to amend the laws concerning insolvent debtors; it became law, 17 June 1824 (5 Geo. IV, c. 61). He seconded Hume’s wrecking amendment to Martin’s ‘vexatious and every way unnecessary’ cattle ill-treatment bill, 9 Mar., and was a teller for the majority for the Welsh judges bill, 11 Mar. He presented an Ashburton petition against the exportation of long wool, 25 Mar.
He denied the right of the Catholic Association, whose conduct was ‘a direct interference with the impartial administration of justice’, to be heard at the bar of the House against the bill to suppress it, 18 Feb. 1825. He voted silently against relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May, and the Irish franchise bill, 26 Apr. He opposed repeal of the Bubble Act and denied that any of Carlile’s property had been confiscated by government, 29 Mar. He presented a petition from two officials of king’s bench for compensation for losses sustained under the County Courts Act, 4 May.
Shortly before the end of the session John Hobhouse* met the Copleys at dinner and pronounced them
both singular in their way ... [Lady Copley] very much so, flighty and coquettish, but still with some talent ... She is handsome, and has intelligent black eyes. Her passion, as she says, leads her to the universe of clever men only. The attorney is a talking man, having been a Whig before he was a law officer of the crown. He looks with indifference at politics and politicians, and cares but little if that indifference should be manifest to all. He does not seem to me to have much information out of his profession ... He has a ‘tranchant’ decisive way of talking, without much regard to facts.
Eleanor Fazakerley told Henry Fox*, 29 Aug. 1825, that Copley, who was ‘called a pleasant man’, was in fact ‘vulgar’, and that his wife was ‘an affected, vulgar woman’.
Thomas Creevey*, noting a rumour that Eldon was on the verge of retirement and that Gifford was not considered fit to replace him (he was, in fact, Eldon’s personal choice to do so), thought Copley had his eye on the great seal: ‘but they say it is impossible, as he is not a chancery man’. Hudson Gurney*, for one, wished ‘most heartily Copley was chancellor’.
My brother is so entirely occupied with public and professional duties, that it is quite in vain to expect anything from him. He bears his hard work wonderfully, and is never so happy as when he can steal a few hours to run down to us [at Wimbledon], but he always brings his work with him.
Amory, 342.
At the general election of 1826 Copley led the poll for Cambridge University throughout and finished 140 ahead of Palmerston and 264 clear of Bankes.
Gifford died suddenly, 4 Sept. 1826. Almost immediately Canning, the foreign secretary, who was probably playing his own game, strongly advised Liverpool to make Copley master of the rolls, ‘with a distinct understanding that he is to succeed to the office of lord chancellor; but till that succession occurs, is to remain in the House of Commons’. He summarized his reasons as follows:
1. The master of the rolls ought to be restored to the House of Commons. 2. The chancery report is in Copley’s hands, and no other can manage it. 3. Copley is the only man fit to be lord chancellor as a politician; and the mastership of the rolls will prepare [him] for it as a judge. 4. He will be a tower of strength to the government, first in the House of Commons, and afterwards in the House of Lords.
Monypenny and Buckle, Disraeli, i. 386; Add. 38193, f. 252.
Liverpool told Eldon that Copley ‘should be made to accept the mastership of the rolls’; but the lord chancellor, whose plans to retire in favour of Gifford had been thrown into disarray, had reservations, as he explained to Peel:
I doubt extremely whether ... [Copley] will accept the office of master of the rolls even with the prospect of possessing the great seal. His professional emoluments must be very great. The object for him naturally to look to is the king’s bench, and report as to the state of health of the chief justice [Abbott] does not represent the prospect of obtaining that object as at a distance. I have stated to Lord Liverpool ... my apprehensions that he will decline the rolls. He ought not, perhaps, yet a man of his eminence in that part of the profession in which he has been engaged, he may probably feel unwilling to go into a court of equity as a judge, never having been in one as a counsel, and especially that equity court in which much business is rather business of form, than requiring the exercise of a powerful intellect.
Eldon suggested to Liverpool that if he were to retire, ‘a general arrangement as to the chancery offices should now be made, instead of that partial arrangement of filling up the rolls only for a time’:
He stated some weighty objections to this, and continues to object to it. He thinks that Copley would go better to the chancellorship with a little experience gained at the rolls, and I think he feels an unwillingness that my departure should precede what may come forward upon the Catholic question. There could be, too, no objection to Copley’s going from the rolls to the king’s bench ... Unfortunately he is out of town, so that it has been impossible, and the rather because it is not known where he is, to learn what his feelings are. The notion is that he should remain, if he takes the office, in the House of Commons at least till the chancery bill is got through there.
Twiss, Eldon, ii. 574-5; Add. 40315, f. 266.
When Copley was found the offer was made to him, and he accepted it ‘as a stepping stone’ and ‘without any doubt’, as Eldon told Peel:
Indeed, though I doubted whether he would accept ... yet recollecting that the chancellorship and the chief justiceship of the king’s bench may soon be open, and, on the other hand, a change of administration may not be so impossible a thing in the meantime, as to make the acceptance a foolish thing, of an office and house worth £8,000 a year for life, which may be accepted without prejudice to his moving to either of the above offices if they happen to be vacant in due time, I think he has acted very prudently, especially taking into the account that he goes to school in the lower form (the rolls) to qualify him to remove into the higher, if he takes the chancellorship.
Monypenny and Buckle, i. 386; Twiss, ii. 575-6; Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1249; Add. 40305, f. 217; 40315, f. 268.
Eldon agreed to remain in office for the time being, but it was clear that Copley was almost certain to succeed him ‘as a matter of course’ and ‘at no distant period’, especially as the anticipated death of the duke of York, the anti-Catholic heir to the throne, was expected to ‘be the break-up of a powerful party, and must eventually drive out Lord Eldon’.
Copley was re-elected for Cambridge University without difficulty and resumed his seat, 12 Feb. 1827.
This caused a great shout from both sides in which I joined, though I did not know what he had said, and the effect was that Copley was completely astounded and stopped for at least two minutes. I cheered him to give him courage. At last he proceeded, but the conclusion of his speech was very lame.
Add. 56550, f. 141; Broughton, iii. 173-4.
Copley, who took much of the material for his speech from a recent pamphlet by the Rev. Henry Phillpotts, insisted that he was ‘not one of the ministers of the crown’ and had ‘no connection with the government’. Later in the debate Canning, supposedly suspecting Eldon, whose niece was married to Phillpotts, of ‘encouraging Copley’, delivered what Hobhouse described as an ‘angry and contemptuous attack’ on him. The episode excited considerable interest, not least because the motion was defeated and, as more than one observer reckoned, Copley had openly admitted both before and after his speech that he ‘did not care which way the question went’, ‘not caring personally one farthing’ about it. Canning was generally thought to have gone too far.
I doubt whether ... [it] was the speech of the chancellor. It certainly was not that of the king. He found it necessary to make a speech for Cambridge, and like all insincere men who put themselves in a false position, wishing to show his zeal, and at the same time to leave himself a very wide door through which to retreat at a future and convenient opportunity, he blundered the matter, went ... further than he meant, and got a sad licking for his pains.
A little over a week later Canning sent Copley an apology for his ‘severity’; but, according to Lord Colchester, it was not received with much grace.
it furnishes topics on a question where his own opinions are directly at variance with all the argument of his speech. He is a man whose opinions, as far as he has any, are all liberal, perhaps even in the extreme, but he has no feeling or principle.
NLS Acc. 10655, Abercromby’s memorandum.
Copley very reluctantly agreed to postpone further consideration of the report on the chancery bill until after Easter, 23 Mar. 1827; the measure subsequently foundered. He was given a week’s leave to attend Bristol sessions, 5 Apr. When Eldon declined to remain in office under him Canning, with the king’s enthusiastic backing, offered the great seal to Copley, who accepted with little hesitation.
He talked to me a great deal about his acceptance of the great seal and the speculation it was. He had been master of [the] rolls with £7,000 a year for life ... He debated whether it was worth while to give this up to be chancellor perhaps only one year, with a peerage and the pension. He talked the matter over with his wife, and they agreed that if it only lasted one year (which he evidently thought probable) it was worth while, besides the contingency of a long chancellorship ... In talking of the speculation he had made, political opinions and political consistency seemed never to occur to him, and he considered the whole matter in a light so businesslike and professional as to be quite amusing.
Greville Mems. i. 213-14.
Lyndhurst himself apparently told Benjamin Disraeli† in 1836 that he had been
not very sanguine as to the success of the Canning cabinet; but the great seal and a peerage? ‘Who would refuse it?’ I thought I would not baulk fortune, and that a seat in the House of Lords would always keep me a career.
Monypenny and Buckle, i. 386.
His appointment ‘mortally offended’ many Whigs, notably Lord Grey, and enhanced his reputation as a self-interested careerist: ‘He is a shabby fellow and always follows le plus fort’, commented Mrs. Arbuthnot.
Lyndhurst stayed true to form by remaining in his office under Lord Goderich and Wellington. His vocal support for Catholic emancipation in 1829, which Mrs. Arbuthnot, who thought him ‘a sad fellow without an atom of character or dignity’, considered ‘very clever and ingenious [and] impudent to the last degree’, provoked derision in some quarters.
Lyndhurst disposed of the Wimbledon house early in 1831. His ‘wretched’ wife, ‘ill, lone and desolate’, died in ‘premature labour’ in Paris in January 1834. William Holmes* commented that ‘no person who takes an interest in Lord Lyndhurst’s fame or good character can regret the event’; but Lady Granville, who was in Paris when he went over to collect his daughter, noted that he ‘seemed to feel the shock very strongly’, and heard that ‘although one knew the sort of relationship they must have been upon, yet his manner when with her was that of kindness and even fondness’.
Greville condemned Lyndhurst in 1837 as ‘a lawyer of fortune ... without any fixed principles, disreputable in public and in private life and only conspicuous for his extraordinary capacity’, who had ‘no interest but what centres in himself’.
It was chaste and dignified; it might almost be termed cold, so correctly elegant was the structure of its sentences and so free was it from metaphor, exaggeration and ornament ... It was, nevertheless, eloquence, for it was high-reaching and sustained; but it was lucid rather than brilliant, and, though searching, it was not electrical.
The Times, 13 Oct. 1863.
The physician Sir Henry Holland, who knew him well, commented that his
intellect would have been more fruitful had it been less subtle and sceptical. He lost something of the real by his too keen perception of what was hollow or fantastic in human affairs. He was more amused than disquieted by the foibles or errors of those around him.
Sir H. Holland, Recollections of a Past Life, 201.
Disraeli, whose early career he promoted, wrote on hearing of his death:
He had a mind equally distinguished for its vigour and flexibility. He rarely originated, but his apprehension was very quick and he mastered the suggestions of others and made them clearer and more strong. He had a great grasp; thoroughly mastered a subject; deep and acute; and sometimes when you thought him slow, was only exhaustive. In his statements accurate, complete and singularly lucid; the clearest mind on affairs with equal power of conceiving and communicating his perspicacious views. His soul wanted ardour, for he was deficient in imagination, though by no means devoid of sensibility. He adapted himself to circumstances in a moment, though he could not create, or even considerably control them. His ambition active, not soaring ... His countenance was that of a high-bred falcon ... Nothing could be finer than the upper part ... [but] the lower ... betrayed the deficiencies of his character: a want of high purpose, and some sensual attributes.
Monypenny and Buckle, ii. 329-31.
Brougham, his long time political adversary, gave a generous verdict on ‘my excellent friend Lyndhurst’:
He was not gifted with very great tenacity of political opinions ... My opinion of him is, that he looked up to nobody, or rather ... he held all men very cheap. In truth, he was so immeasurably superior to his contemporaries, and indeed to almost all who had gone before him, that he might well be pardoned for looking down rather than praising. Nevertheless he was tolerably fair in the estimate he formed of character; and being perfectly free from all jealousy or petty spite, he was always ready to admit merit where it existed. Whatever he may have thought or said of his contemporaries ... I do not think his manners were ever offensive to anybody, for he was kind and genial. His good nature was perfect, and he had neither nonsense nor cant, any more than he had littleness or spite, in his composition.
Brougham, iii. 435-6.