John Singleton Copley 

John Singleton Copley, Baron Lyndhurst (1772-1863), was a British politician who served for a time as Lord Chancellor. Copley was born to the painter, John Singleton Copley (1738—1815), and Susannah Farnham in Boston, Massachusetts. Just two years after his birth, Copley’s family would move to London due to the growing colonial unrest in America. He would be educated privately until he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1790, where he would have a distinguished academic career. Copley decided early in his life that he wanted to become a barrister and was called to bar by Lincoln’s inn in 1804. He would not achieve prominence in his work until his successful defense of John Ingham, a leading Luddite accused of rioting. The very next year he was appointed a sergeant at law. After his defense of Dr. J. Watson for his involvement in the Spa Fields riots, Copley attracted the attention of Tory leaders such as Lord Castlereagh. This led to his eventual parliamentary positions for Yarmouth, Ashburton, and Cambridge University. In 1818 he became King’s Serjeant and Chief Justice of Chester, and in the year after he was made Solicitor General. Due to his growing reputation he played a significant role in the trial of Queen Caroline in 1819. Upon the resignation of Lord Eldon in 1827 he was appointed Lord Chancellor, raising his peerage to Baron Lyndhurst of Lyndhurst. After the fall of the Tory government in 1830, Lyndhurst was offered the position of chief baron of the exchequer, a position he would hold for four years. He was regarded highly in the House of Lords for his masterful arguments. He was made lord chancellor twice more before his retirement from politics. In 1854 his speech on the war with Russia made him known throughout Europe as an advocate for the prosecution of hostilities. Lyndhurst married Sarah Brunsden in 1819 and, after her death in 1834, Georgiana Goldsmith. He died in 1863 in London, without any male heirs.