325

No. XX.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

SIR CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON, D. C. L.,

JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT OF ADMIRALTY.

SIR CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON was born in the year 1766. His father, the Rev. Christopher Robinson, D. D., held the livings of Abbury in Oxfordshire, and of Witham, Berkshire, to which he had been presented by the Earl of Abingdon, upwards of forty years, and died in 1802, at the age of eighty-four, having lived long enough to see his son in the possession of wealth and eminence.

Young Christopher was matriculated at Magdalen, Oxford, of which college Dr. Robinson had been a fellow in 1782, with the intention of graduating and entering into deacon's orders. To the displeasure of his father, however, he preferred Doctors' Commons to the church, and was admitted advocate in Michaelmas term, 1793. As one of nine children, he was launched into the profession with no larger patrimony than a good library and a gift of twenty pounds. But his course was smoothed by the zealous patronage of Sir William Ashurst, one of the Puisne Judges of the King's Bench, an old friend of the family, who commended him to the notice of Sir William Scott. By the shrewd advice of that eminent lawyer, he commenced a series of Reports in the High Court of Admiralty, in 1797, and continued them with laudable. diligence till 1808. Strange to say, though the judges of those courts were the highest authorities on subjects of international law in Europe, there had previously existed no record of their decisions. In the preface to a more recent work,

containing Reports of Decisions during the times of Sir George Hay and Sir James Marriott, the civilians are compared to the Talmudists among the Jews, who dealt only in oral traditions or secret writings; and great praise is ascribed to Dr. Robinson for having "drawn back the veil of the temple." But the six volumes of Reports which he published have high intrinsic merits of their own, and contain the ipsissima verba of Sir William Scott. It is reported that he was most fastidious in the correction of his judgments, extending his revising care to the substitution of colons for semicolons, and to the nice poising of particles. The reader, however, who is too often compelled to read much bad reasoning in much bad language, is a considerable gainer by this particularity. He meets in these judgments with perfect models of judicial eloquence, and reads the most elaborate arguments conveyed in the most rich and classical diction, like apples of gold in a net-work of silver. This publication, which elicited the encomium of Lord Grenville in the House of Lords, is also illustrated with classical notes by the editor on the consequences of captivity among the Romans, and the practice of ransoming prisoners of war, &c.

Though unproductive in a pecuniary sense, and in some years attended with positive loss to the editor, they were of exceeding value to him in extending his connections. He had, the year before (1796), advanced his fortune by a very happy marriage with Catharine, daughter of Ralph Nicholson, Esq., a gentleman of independent property at Liverpool, and descended from an old family in Berkshire. In February, 1805, nine years after his admission, he was promoted to the lucrative office of King's Advocate, and knighted. Many of the prize causes and captures, of which he had the management by virtue of his office, were of great importance to the public, and attended with considerable private emolument, several of them realising to him more than 1000l. In 1812, he is said to have acquitted himself exceedingly well in the conduct of a prosecution against the Marquis of Sligo, for enticing seamen and persuading them to desert from the King's service. It

appeared that two of them had been intoxicated by the Marquis's servants at Malta, and inveigled on board his yacht; and, when the vessel was searched, the Marquis of Sligo pledged his honour that they were not on board. The King's Advocate warmed into an orator (he was not one by nature) at this unworthy cheat, and the peer, being found guilty, was sentenced to pay a fine of 5000l., and to be imprisoned four months in Newgate.

In 1818, at the request of Ministers, but contrary to his own inclination, he obtained a seat in Parliament for the close borough of Callington. His entrance into that arena, so fatal to legal fame, was made too late in life to offer much chance of escaping from the common lot of his tribe; and on two occasions only, and then with no signal success, did he break through his prudent rule, "de pedibus ire in sententiam." On the dissolution of Parliament, in 1820, he was again returned for Callington, at the instance of Government; but, a petition being presented against the return, and bribery having been proved against his agents (he had not himself visited the borough), he was unseated, and saddled with an expense of 5000l. The Premier had, indeed, promised to reimburse him, but he was too high-minded to stand like an importunate suitor at the door of the Treasury, and the promise was never redeemed.

Sir Christopher Robinson succeeded Lord Stowell in the offices of Chancellor of the Diocese of London, and Judge of the Prerogative Court and Court of Peculiars, on the presentation of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London. He trod in the path of his predecessor, it will readily be admitted, "haud passibus æquis," but emulated with success his patient diligence and ever-watchful accuracy in determining the grave and delicate questions of marriage and divorce. Owing to the increasing infirmities of Lord Stowell, he undertook, for several years, to transcribe and read in court the decrees of that venerable judge, and at length, on his retirement, in 1827, was called upon, with the unanimous approval of the civilians, to fill the vacant seat in the Court of Admiralty.

It would be unfair to contrast the talents and acquirements which he displayed in this situation with those of his distinguished friend. The most illustrious judges of that court, Sir Julius Cæsar, Sir Harry Vane, and Sir Leoline Jenkins, must one and all vail the head to Lord Stowell. The panegyric pronounced on Jenkins may be applied to him with at least equal truth. "He had most, if not all, the qualities and ornaments that are desirable in those who sit in the seat of justice. No man could acquit himself better, and but few so well. If he received any credit from his station, his station received as much from him, and, as it were, only reflected back again the lustre it received from him." Sir Christopher presided over the Admiralty Court in a period of profound peace, when there were no cases of momentous interest involving the credit of the flag of England and the polity of nations, such as are wont to present themselves in a time of war. They consisted chiefly of claims of salvage, and mariners' wages, and construction of the Pilot Act, and to what officer properly belong the royal fish described by charter, to wit, "sturgeons, grampuses, whales, porpoises, dolphins, riggs, and graspes, and generally whatever other fish, having in themselves great and immense size, or fat!” Such topics do not require much research or legal acumen, but all that was requisite they obtained at the hands of this pains-taking judge.

His mental energies were of late, in some degree, dulled by a disease, which proved to be an effusion of water on the brain, and terminated fatally on the night of Sunday, April 21. 1833. He had complained of indisposition, which was attributed to the prevailing influenza, and retired to rest a few hours before his death, in the full expectation of being able on the morrow to resume the duties of his office. He had attained his sixty-seventh year. His remains were interred in the churchyard of St. Benedict, Doctors' Commons.

The conduct of Sir Christopher Robinson, in his public capacity, may be summed up in the short sentence that he was "par negotiis neque supra." It would be idle to dilate

on his unbending integrity and unwearied diligence, for these are the attributes of an English judge; but a short notice of his domestic virtues must not be omitted. A thorough English gentleman, in mind and in manners, endowed with a graceful presence and a pleasing address, though slightly shaded by reserve, he carried into private life the same mild and conciliating demeanour which characterised him on the bench. Those who have made an excursion to his seat at Beddington, near Croydon, or have seen him in the company of such friends as the Bishop of Exeter and Sir John Nicholl, will bear witness to the cheerfulness and playful activity of his social hours. They will recall with subdued pleasure the

"Morum dulce melos et agendi semita simplex;"

and review with memory's eye what once endeared him to them, the

"Os placidum, moresque benigni ;

Et venit ante oculos, et pectore vivit imago."

Ardently attached to the Church of England by conviction, independently of hereditary and parental prepossessions, he lived up to the doctrines of her communion; nor could the solemn form of words with which the sentence of the Admiralty Judge is prefaced, proceed from any lips with more peculiar fitness than from his:-"Thrice calling on the name of Christ, and having the fear of God alone before his eyes, the Judge pronounces and decrees." His politics were of that old Tory school, which, exiled from the court and city, finds yet a safe asylum in the penetralia of Doctor's Com

mons.

Notwithstanding that he filled the office of King's Advocate (a lucrative office in war time) for the period of twelve years, and lived in comparative seclusion, he has died far from rich; a strong proof that, in the courts of civil law, at least (if in any court), the judge is not overpaid. The fluctuating nature of his income was commented on with deserved severity by the present Lord Chancellor, then Mr. Brougham, in his