Edward Sugden, 1st Baron St Leonards

Sugden was the son of a high-class hairdresser and wig-maker in Westminster. After practicing for some years as a conveyancer, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1807, having already published his well-known 'Concise and Practical Treatise on the Law of Vendors and Purchasers of Estates'. In 1822 he was made King's Counsel He was returned at different times for various boroughs to the House of Commons, where he made himself prominent by his opposition to the Reform Bill of 1832. He was appointed Solicitor General in 1829. As Solicitor-General he took a narrow view of Jewish emancipation, arguing that "They had possessed nothing; they held nothing. They had no civil rights; they never had any."

In 1834 he was Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and again from 1841 to 1846. In 1849, Sir Edward Sugden published 'A Treatise on the Law of Property as administered in the House of Lords', in which he criticised the decisions given in the House of Lords when acting as a Court of Appeal. In Lord Derby's first government in 1852 be became Lord Chancellor and was raised to the peerage as Baron St Leonards, of Slaugham in the County of Sussex. In this position he devoted himseif with energy and vigour to the reform of the law; Lord Derby on his return to power in 1858 again offered him the same office, which from considerations of health he declined. He continued, however, to take an active interest especially in the legal matters that came before the House of Lords, and bestowed his particular attention on the reform of the law of property. He championed the fulfilment of the will of J.M.W.Turner with regard to his art bequests in 1857-70. His view on that was supported by Leolin Price QC in 2006. He died at Boyle Farm, Thames Ditton.

After his death his will was missing, but his daughter, Charlotte Sugden, was able to recollect the contents of a most intricate document, and in the action of Sugden v. Lord St Leonards (L.R. 1 P.D. 154) the court accepted her evidence and granted probate of a paper propounded as containing the provisions of the lost will. This decision established the proposition that the contents of a lost will may be proved by secondary evidence, even of a single witness. It is said that Lord St Leonards was in the habit of reading his will every night, that his daughter Charlotte had to listen to it and over some years memorised it and that this became a well known fact in legal circles.

Lord St Leonards was popular in Thames Ditton. In 1860 he entertained at Boyle Farm 250 children from the Wandsworth Asylum for female orphans of soldiers killed in the Crimea War. In the 1870s he also made a speech in the House of Lords against a proposal by the Chelsea Waterworks to buy 50 acres of meadow in Thames Ditton to build reservoirs. The village rejoiced when the House of Lords threw out the Bill. No doubt St Leonards was spurred on by the damage the Waterworks proposal would have done to his Boyle Farm estate.

Lord St Leonards was the author of various important legal publications, many of which have passed through several editions. Besides the treatise on purchasers already mentioned, they include Powers, Cases decided by the House of Lords, Gilbert on Uses, New Real Property Laws and Handybook of Property Law, Misrepresentations in Campbells Lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham, corrected by St Leonards.

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