TENTERDEN, CHARLES ABBOTT, Lord, a distinguished English lawyer, was born at Canterbury, on Oct. 7, 1762. He was the son of a hairdresser. Being admitted on the foundation of the king's school connected with the cathedral, he distinguished himself by perseverance and extreme accuracy. A small exhibition in the gift of the chapter enabled him to proceed to Oxford, where, in 1781, he was elected scholar of Corpus Christi college; and a few years later he obtained what were then the chief distinctions at the university, the chancellor's two gold medals, one being for English, and the other for Latin composition. In due time he became a fellow of his college. After being a student of the Inner Temple in 1795, he was called to the bar. He joined the Oxford cir cuit; and in spite of a husky voice, a leaden and unmeaning countenance, and painfully timid manners, his great activity of mind, good taste, scholarship, scientific and legal knowledge, were soon appreciated, so that he rapidly acquired a large business. He published, in 1802, his treatise On Merchant Ships and Seamen, in all respects the best written book which had till then appeared on one department of English law. It had
the effect of increasing his employment in the more lucrative mercantile causes; and in 1807, it appears from his income-tax return that his fees amounted to upward of £8,000. In 1816 he accepted a puisne judgeship in the court of common pleas; and in 1818 he was knighted, and chosen to succeed lord Ellenborougb as chief-justice of the king's bench. As a judge, his most marked characteristic was his evident impartiality and free dom from bias. The comparative leisure he enjoyed on the bench he spent in reading the classics and in the study of botany. He was, in 1827, raised to the peerage. In the house of lords he was the most influential speaker against the Catholic relief bill; and in his last speech he made a vow that if the reform bill, that " appalling bill," passed, he would never again take his seat as a peer. The success of the measure, it is believed, affected his health. He was seized with a violent attack of inflammation in Nov., 1832, when presiding at tile trial of the mayor of Bristol for misconduct during the riots, and he died there on the 4th of that month.