MEDALLIONS AND INSCRIPTIONS

Lord Mansfield (1705-1793)
Chief Justice of England

Lord Mansfield was born William Murray in 1705 at Scone in Perthshire, Scotland. He was educated at Perth grammar school and Westminster School, of which he was a king’s scholar. Entering Christ Church, Oxford, he graduated in 1727. Called to the bar in 1730, he was a good scholar and mixed with the best of literary society. His appearance in some important Scottish appeal cases brought him notoriety but it wasn’t until 1737, when a speech in a notable jury trial placed him at the head of the bar, that his English practice grew. His political career began in 1742 with his appointment as solicitor general. During the next fourteen years he was one the most conspicuous figures in parliamentary history of the time. By birth a Jacobite, by association a Tory, he was nevertheless a moderate, and his politics were really dominated by his legal interests. In 1754 he became attorney general, and for the next two years acted as the leader of the House of Commons. An unexpected vacancy occurred in the chief justiceship of the king’s bench in 1756 and he claimed the office, at the same time being raised to the peerage as Baron Mansfield. From this time on the chief interest of his career was in his judicial work. In 1776 he was created Earl of Mansfield. He continued to act as chief justice until his resignation 1788. After five years spent in retirement, Lord Mansfield died in March of 1793.

Lord Mansfield’s great reputation rests chiefly on his judicial career. The political trials over which he presided, although they gave rise to numerous accusations against him, were conducted with singular fairness and propriety. His view of the law was agreed with by the great majority of the judges and lawyers of that time and was supported by undoubted precedents. He suffered only six reversals in his 32-year career. Mansfield has always been recognized as the founder of commercial law. The common law as it existed before his time was wholly inadequate to cope with the new cases and customs that rose with the increasing development of commerce. He defined almost every principle that governed commercial transactions in such a manner that his successors had only to apply the rules he had laid down. His work in bringing the older law into harmony with the needs of modern society has long been fully recognized.

Additional Biographical Sources

Cecil Herbert Stuart Fitfoot, Lord Mansfield (1936).

Edmund Heward, Lord Mansfield (1979). [LOLA record for Biddle's copy]

John Holliday, The life of William the late earl of Mansfield (1797).

James Oldham, The Mansfield manuscripts and the growth of English law in the eighteenth century (1992). [LOLA record for Biddle's copy]

William Newland Welsby, Lives of eminent English judges of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1846). [LOLA record for Biddle's copy]