of the case, and the prisoner's comment when convicted after a
twelve days' trial was, alluding to the attorney-general's advocacy, "It
was the riding that did it." In 1854 Cockburn was made recorder of
Bristol. In 1856 he became chief justice of the common pleas. He
inherited the baronetcy in 1858. In 1859 Lord Campbell became
chancellor, and Cockburn became chief justice of the Queen's Bench,
continuing as a judge for twenty-four years and dying in harness. On
Friday, the 19th of November 1880, he tried causes with special juries
at Westminster; on Saturday, the 20th, he presided over a court for the
consideration of crown cases reserved; he walked home, and on that night
he died of _angina pectoris_ at his house in Hertford Street.

Sir Alexander Cockburn earned and deserved a high reputation as a judge.
He was a man of brilliant cleverness and rapid intuition rather than of
profound and laboriously cultivated intellect. He had been a great
advocate at the bar, with a charm of voice and manner, fluent and
persuasive rather than learned; but before he died he was considered a
good lawyer, some assigning his unquestioned improvement in this respect
to his frequent association on the bench with Blackburn. He had
notoriously little sympathy with the Judicature Acts. Many were of
opinion that he was inclined to take an advocate's view of the cases
before him, making up his mind as to their merits prematurely and, in
consequence, wrongly, as well as giving undue prominence to the views
which he so formed; but he was beyond doubt always in intention, and
generally in fact, scrupulously fair. It is not necessary to enumerate
the many _causes celebres_ at which Sir Alexander Cockburn presided as a
judge. It was thought that he went out of his way to arrange that they
should come before him, and his successor, Lord Coleridge, writing in
1881 to Lord Bramwell, to make the offer that he should try the murderer
Lefroy as a last judicial act before retiring, added, "Poor dear
Cockburn would hardly have given you such a chance." Be this as it may,
Cockburn tried all cases which came before him, whether great or small,
with the same thoroughness, courtesy and dignity, so that no counsel or
suitor could complain that he had not been fully heard in a matter in
which the issues were seemingly trivial; while he certainly gave great
attention to the elaboration of his judgments and charges to juries. He
presided at the Tichborne trial at