Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Lindley, Nathaniel
LINDLEY, NATHANIEL, Baron Lindley (1828–1921), lord of appeal, born at Chiswick 29 November 1828, was the younger son of John Lindley, F.R.S. [q.v.], professor of botany at University College, London, by his wife, Sarah, daughter of Anthony George Freestone, of South Elmham, Suffolk, and a descendant in the female line of the great chief justice, Sir Edward Coke. The only brother of Lord Lindley died in childhood, but his two sisters survived, like himself, to a great age. He was educated at University College School in Gower Street, and for about two years at University College. His career at school and college was uneventful. When about eighteen years of age he was sent by his father to France, without a degree, to learn French with a view to entering the Foreign Office. But the tastes which he had formed in the scientific society of his father's house soon dispelled all thoughts of a diplomatic career. On the advice of an uncle who was a solicitor, he entered at the Middle Temple in 1847. From November 1848 he read in various chambers, and finally (after a few months spent in studying Roman law at Bonn) in those of the future lord justice of appeal, Charles Jasper Selwyn [q.v.]. His pupillage lasted four and a half years. So deliberate a preparation for practice is unheard of now. He records the study of fifty-seven different books of learning, from which he made careful notes on sheets collected in large covers labelled with their subjects.
In May 1854 Lindley, who had been called to the bar in 1850, painted up his name at 16 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn. Early in 1855 he published a translation with notes of the first part of Thibaut's System des Pandektenrechts, under the title of An Introduction to the Study of Jurisprudence. This work made Lindley favourably known as a student of legal principles and not merely of English law reports. During this year he began to concentrate his attention upon the law of partnership and commenced a book upon that subject which took him nearly five years to write. His first clients were the solicitors to the Horticultural Society. His first ‘fighting’ case came in 1856, when his leader, the future Vice-Chancellor Bacon, left him alone in the Court of Appeal before Lords Justices Knight-Bruce and Turner. He had been engaged for some years to Sarah, daughter of Edward John Teale, solicitor, of Leeds, and they decided to marry on his income of £300 a year. The marriage, which led to many decades of happiness, took place in 1858. During the next year or two practice continued to be slack and the young couple lived in lodgings, but in February 1860 Lindley's work was published under the title, A Treatise on the Law of Partnership, including its application to Companies. The publishers paid £150 clear for an edition of a thousand copies and the author retained the copyright. The book was at once noticed publicly by the judges. In this year his first pupil came to him. Others followed, including (Sir) Frederick Pollock, the well-known jurist, and (Sir) Francis Maclean, afterwards chief justice of Bengal. It is characteristic that Lindley never took more than two pupils at a time, and went through their drafts with them sitting by his side.
In 1866, when the failure of the old-established house of Overend, Gurney & Co. produced a financial crisis in the City, Lindley was the junior for the partners of the firm throughout the subsequent litigation. The year marked the change from a safe to a great practice, and Lindley, with his unfailing good judgement, consolidated his Chancery work by refusing to take briefs in the countless great arbitrations which followed the 1866 debacle. In the same year he received from the lord chief justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn, the office of revising barrister for Middlesex. He only held the appointment for one turn, but, when he became a judge of the common pleas, this experience had prepared him for the appeals in election cases which went to that court. In 1871 the well-known case of Knox v. Gye enhanced his reputation greatly. He appeared for Gye, the manager of the Covent Garden opera. Vice-Chancellor Page Wood had decided against his client, but the decision was reversed by the Court of Appeal and not restored by the House of Lords. This brought further work from theatrical people, including the defendants in an action concerning Frou-frou, in which the owners of the copyright in the novel endeavoured to prevent the performance of the English play which had been based upon it. The defence was that the play was an adaptation and not a translation, and was moreover altered to suit English tastes. In arguing this case Lindley read many pages of French, contrasting them with the English version. The court was crowded and many French and Belgian theatrical performers were present. When it was explained to the foreigners at the close that the defendants had succeeded, the tall Belgian actress who played ‘Frou-frou’ threw her arms around Lindley, exclaiming ‘Mon sauveur! mon sauveur!’ In 1872 Lindley was making £4,500 a year and was ‘terribly overworked’. He took silk on the advice of Sir George Jessel, then solicitor-general, and attached himself to the court of Vice-Chancellor Wickens. At this time one of Wickens's leaders, James Dickinson, Q.C., was seriously ill, and this helped the new silk, who in his first year as a Q.C. made a larger income than in his last year in stuff. In each subsequent year of his practice the position continued to improve. In the autumn of 1874 died the uncle who had been so valued a friend to Lindley throughout his life. He left to his nephew a small house and about sixty acres of land in East Carleton, near Norwich, and also a considerable sum of money. This house became the country home of Lindley and his family. He enlarged it substantially and lived there, at first in vacations and then altogether, until his death.
In May 1875 Lord Chancellor Cairns, to the astonishment of Lindley and of the profession, offered him a judgeship in the common pleas. The Judicature Acts (1872–1875) which were to fuse common law and equity, with the provision that where they differed equity ‘should prevail’, were to come into operation in the following November. The extension of this ‘prevalence’ to appointments caused some perturbation; for neither Lord Cairns nor Lord Selborne had ever given a chancery judgeship to a common law man. While Lindley was naturally hesitating, Mr. Justice Denman, then a stranger, offered to go the coming summer circuit for him, thus giving him time to prepare for criminal work. This encouraged Lindley to accept the post and, as Denman later advised, go the circuit himself and get the novelty over. In less than a week he was sworn in and knighted, was made a serjeant-at-law, and took his seat in the Exchequer Chamber. He was the last person to put the serjeant's black patch upon his wig, and finally the last survivor of that ancient order. He had been twenty-one years at the bar and was forty-six years of age.
Lindley's judicial career lasted for thirty years. Appointed judge of the common pleas in 1875, he was a lord justice of appeal from 1881 to 1897, master of the Rolls from 1897 to 1900, and a lord of of appeal in ordinary from 1900 to 1905. On his first journey he was characteristically careful to take a marshal with knowledge of sessions, an experienced common law clerk, and a butler who knew circuit. Since his appointment he had been working every day from 6 a.m., and in all spare moments, at the criminal law. On his second circuit the former chief justice of the common pleas, Sir William Erle, came into court at York and subsequently wrote Lindley's praises in a letter to one of the barristers. No doubt his pupillage with special pleaders assisted Lindley, but this rapid success in criminal work could only have come to one who was a judge by nature. From the first it was obvious that, whether in civil or criminal work, Lindley would hold his own with any common law judge in England. After six years as a puisne judge Lindley commenced his twenty years' work in the Court of Appeal. For half this time he presided usually in one court or the other. His spare time seemed to be given to drafting rules, orders, and consolidating statutes, which were sometimes used by the chancellors who had asked for them, and sometimes pigeon-holed without explanation. In 1897 he succeeded Lord Esher as master of the Rolls, and became an F.R.S. and an honorary LL.D. of Cambridge. In return for his settlement of a dispute between the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society Captain Robert Falcon Scott [q.v.] named after him Mount Lindley, ‘very far south in the map’.
In 1900 Lindley succeeded Lord Morris as lord of appeal and was created a life peer. Had he wished he could have received a heritable title. In 1905 he fell on the steps by the Duke of York's column and suffered from concussion of the brain. Soon afterwards, on his seventy-seventh birthday, he resigned and thereafter lived a life of unostentatious usefulness at his country home in Norfolk. He died at his home, near Norwich, 9 December 1921, two days before Lord Chancellor Halsbury. They had been called in the same year (1850) and had lived to the ages of ninety-three and ninety-eight respectively. Of his nine children, four sons and two daughters survived him.
Lord Lindley's reputation stands very high among lawyers, though he was little known to the world. The record of such a man is found in his work. To sit in court, term in and term out, for thirty years, and decide numberless cases with satisfaction to litigants and improvement to their counsel, implies great gifts of intellect and disposition. He brought to his task a quick and logical intellect, an unwillingness to talk, and a disposition which could not be soured. He had none of the picturesqueness of Lord Justice James or the brilliance of Lord Bowen or the refulgent rhetoric of Lord Macnaghten. In manner he was unostentatious and unpretentious. A remarkable characteristic was his versatility. He appeared to have no speciality. Whether dealing with a one-man company, or the right of houses to support, or stock-exchange gambling, or the eccentricities of the river Ouse, or peaceful pickets, he was at home with his subject. Nothing seemed simpler. He merely stated the facts correctly and applied to them the proper principles of law; and impartiality was his foible.
A bust portrait of Lord Lindley in a wig was painted by W. W. Ouless, R.A., in 1897 (Royal Academy Pictures, 1897).
[The Times, 12 December 1921; unpublished Autobiography of Lord Lindley; personal knowledge.]