Edward Sugden, 1st Baron St Leonards

Edward Burtenshaw Sugden, 1st Baron St Leonards, was a British lawyer, judge and Conservative politician who lived from 1781 to 1875. Born in Westminster to a wig maker, he trained largely through self study, was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1807 and became a King's Counsel in 1822. He sat in Parliament and opposed the Reform Act of 1832, served as Solicitor General from 1829 to 1830, and was twice Lord Chancellor of Ireland under Robert Peel, in 1834 to 1835 and 1841 to 1846. In 1852 he became Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and was raised to the peerage as Baron St Leonards. He wrote influential treatises on property law and conveyancing that made him a leading authority on those subjects, and his judicial opinions, including his dissent in Jorden v Money in 1854, shaped later legal doctrine. He died in 1875 at the age of 93.