Campbell John

Campbell, John, Baron, Lord Chancellor of England, was born in 1779 at Cupar, Fifeshire, where his father was a minister. He himself was destined for the Church, but in 1798, coming to London as tutor to the son of a West India merchant, he in 1800 was entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn, and in 1806 was called to the bar. In the meantime he had been theatrical critic to the Morning Chronicle, and in 1808 published the first volume of his nisi prius Reports. These Reports comprise four volumes altogether, and cover the period 1807-1816. In 1810 he joined the Oxford circuit, of which he became leader in 1824. In 1821, having married the daughter of Lord Abinger, afterwards Baroness Stratheden, he rose rapidly, becoming King's Counsel in 1827, M.P. for Stafford in 1830, Solicitor-General in 1832, Attorney-General in 1834, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1841, being at the same time raised to the peerage as Baron Campbell of St. Andrews. In 1846 he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and in 1859 was raised to the woolsack as Lord Chancellor. In politics he was a Whig. He is known as the author of the Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, from the Earliest Times to the Reign of George IV, and Lives of the Chief Justices of England, from the Norman Conquest till the Death of Lord Mansfield. He died in 1861.