ROMILLY, SIR SAMUEL English legal reformer, was the second son of Peter Romilly, and came of a Huguenot family that migrated to England. Samuel Romilly was born in Frith street, Soho, on March f, 1757. He entered at Gray's Inn in 1778 and was called to the bar in 1783 ; his prac tice was mainly on the chancery side. In 1784 he became friendly with Mirabeau, and later supplied him with an account of House of Commons procedure for use in France. As a result of a visit to France he published in 1790 Thoughts on the Probable Influ ence of the Late Revolution. He married in 1798. In 180o he became a K.C., and in 1806 he was solicitor-general in the Ministry of All the Talents, sitting as M.P.for Queenborough. It was now that Sir Samuel Romilly commenced the greatest labour of his life, his attempt to reform the criminal law of England, then at once cruel and illogical. He had already published Observa tions on the subject. By statute law innumerable offences were punishable by death, but, as wholesale executions would be impossible, the larger number of those convicted and sentenced to death at every assizes were respited, after having heard the sen tence of death solemnly passed upon them. This led to many acts of injustice, as the lives of the convicts depended on the caprice of the judges, while at the same time it made the whole system of punishments and of the criminal law ridiculous. In 1808 Rom
illy managed to repeal the Elizabethan statute, which made it a capital offence to steal from the person. This success, however, raised opposition, and in the following year three bills repealing equally sanguinary statutes were thrown out by the House of Lords under the influence of Lord Ellenborough. Year of ter year the same influence prevailed, and Romilly saw his bills rejected; but his patient efforts and his eloquence ensured victory eventu ally for his cause by opening the eyes of Englishmen to the bar barity of their criminal law. The only success he had was m securing the repeal, in 1812, of a statute of Elizabeth making it a capital offence for a soldier or a mariner to beg without a pass from a magistrate or his commanding officer. Lady Romilly died on Oct. 29, 1818, and Sir Samuel committed suicide on Nov. 2, See the Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly written by him self, with a selection from his Correspondence, edited by his Sons (3 vols., 1840) ; The Speeches of Sir Samuel Romilly in the House of Commons (2 vols., 1820) "Life and Work of Sir Samuel Romilly," by Sir W. J. Collins, in Trans. of the Huguenot Society (1908).