f
the three Chartist leaders who attacked the town of Newport, all of whom
were found guilty of high treason. We may also mention, as matter of
historical interest, the case before the high steward and the House of
Lords which arose out of the duel fought on Wimbledon Common between the
earl of Cardigan and Captain Harvey Tuckett. The law of course was clear
that the "punctilio which swordsmen falsely do call honour" was no
excuse for wilful murder. To the astonishment of everybody, Lord
Cardigan escaped from a capital charge of felony because the full name
of his antagonist (Harvey Garnett Phipps Tuckett) was not legally
proved. It is difficult to suppose that such a blunder was not
preconcerted. Campbell himself made the extraordinary declaration that
to engage in a duel which could not be declined without infamy (i.e.
social disgrace) was "an act free from moral turpitude," although the
law properly held it to be wilful murder. Next year, as the Melbourne
administration was near its close, Plunkett, the venerable chancellor of
Ireland, was forced by discreditable pressure to resign, and the Whig
attorney-general, who had never practised in equity, became chancellor
of Ireland, and was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron
Campbell of St Andrews, in the county of Fife. His wife, Mary Elizabeth
Campbell, the eldest daughter of the first Baron Abinger by one of the
Campbells of Kilmorey, Argyllshire, whom he had married in 1821, had in
1836 been created Baroness Stratheden in recognition of the withdrawal
of his claim to the mastership of the rolls. The post of chancellor
Campbell held for only sixteen days, and then resigned it to his
successor Sir Edward Sugden (Lord St Leonards). The circumstances of his
appointment and the erroneous belief that he was receiving a pension of
L4000 per annum for his few days' court work brought Campbell much
unmerited obloquy.[4] It was during the period 1841-1849, when he had no
legal duty, except the self-imposed one of occasionally hearing Scottish
appeals in the House of Lords, that the unlucky dream of literary fame
troubled Lord Campbell's leisure.[5]

Following in the path struck out by Miss Strickland in her _Lives of the
Queens of England_, and by Lord Brougham's _Lives of Eminent Statesmen_,
he at last produced, in 1849, _The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and
Keepers of the Great Seal of England, from the earliest times till the
reign of King George IV._, 7 vols. 8vo