Men of Kent and Kentishmen/Charles Abbott
Charles Abbott
Lord Tenterden, Lawyer,
Was born in 1762 at Canterbury, where his father was a barber. He was educated at the King's School there and at Corpus Christi, Oxford, where he greatly distinguished himself. On leaving the University he entered himself at The Temple, where he studied law, and where, on being called to the Bar in 1795, he speedily acquired great business. He took part in most of the state trials of the time, and was standing counsel to the Bank of England. In 1816, he was appointed a Judge of the Common Pleas, but removed the same year to the King's Bench, and two years later succeeded Lord Ellenborough as Chief Justice of that Court. He was knighted in 1816, and raised to the peerage in 1827, by the title of Baron Tenterden. He was the author of a "Treatise on Merchant Shipping," which has ever since been the standard work on the subject. He died 4th November, 1832. He founded and endowed two annual prizes in the school of his native city, one for the best English Essay, and the other for the best Latin Verse, a composition in which he all his life took delight.
[See Campbell's "Lives of the Chief Justices," "Foss's Judges," "Gentleman's Magazine, 1832."]