COTTENHAM, CHARLES CHRISTOPHER PEPYS

This article appears in Volume V07, Page 253 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: COR-CRE

COTTENHAM, CHARLES CHRISTOPHER PEPYS , 1st

EARL

EARL

OF (1781-1851), lord chancellor of England, was born in London on the 29th of April 1781. He was the second son of Sir William W. Pepys, a master in chancery, who was descended from John Pepys, of

Cottenham

COTTENHAM, CHARLES CHRISTOPHER PEPYS

, Cambridgeshire, a

great

GREAT

-uncle of Samuel Pepys, the diarist. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College,

Cambridge

, Pepys was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1804. Practising at the chancery bar, his progress was extremely slow, and it was not till twenty-two years after his

call

CALL (from Anglo-Saxon ceallian, a common Teutonic word, cf. Dutch kallen, to talk or chatter)

that he was made a king's counsel. He sat in

parliament

PARLIAMENT (Anglo-Lat. parliamentum, Fr. parlement, from parler, to speak)

, successively, for Higham Ferrara and Malton, was appointed solicitor-general in 1834, and in the same year became master of the rolls. On the formation of Lord Melbourne's second administration in April 1835, the

great

GREAT

seal was for a time in commission, but eventually Pepys, who had been one of the commissioners, was appointed lord chancellor (January 1836) with the title of Baron

Cottenham

COTTENHAM, CHARLES CHRISTOPHER PEPYS

. He held office until the defeat of the ministry in 1841. In 1846 he again became lord chancellor in Lord John Russell's administration. His health, however, had been gradually failing, and he resigned in 185o. Shortly before his retirement he had been created Viscount Crowhurst and

earl

EARL

of Cottenham. He died at Pietra Santa, in the duchy of Lucca, on the 29th of April 1851.
Both as a lawyer and as a judge, Lord Cottenham was remark-able for his mastery of the principles of

equity

EQUITY (Lat. aequitas)

. An indifferent speaker, he nevertheless adorned the bench by the soundness of his law and the excellence of his judgments. As a politician he was somewhat of a failure, while his only important contribution to the

statute

STATUTE

-book was the Judgments Act 1838, which amended the law for the relief of insolvent debtors.
The title of earl of Cottenham descended in turn to two of the earl's sons, Charles

Edward

EDWARD

(18241863), and William John (18251881), and then to the Tatter's son, Kenelm Charles

Edward

EDWARD

(b. 1874).
AuTHOxtTIEs.Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors (1869) ; E. Foss, The Judges of England (18481864) ; E. Manson, Builders of our Law (1904); J. B. Atlay, The Victorian Chancellors (1906).

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