became, more conspicuously than at some previous periods of legal history, characteristic of the judges of the high court. With the assistance of his colleague, Mr. Justice Gorell Barnes, now Lord Gorell, he made his small division a model of efficiency and despatch. The lists in probate, divorce, and admiralty were increasingly full at the beginning of each year, and arrears were practically unknown. In each of the three classes of work Jeune was an efficient and capable judge. Of admiralty work he had little or no special knowledge at the time of his appointment as a judge, but fortifying himself with much reading be speedily became sufficiently master of the necessary technical knowledge. He was naturally best known to the general public as the judge in divorce cases. In these delicate and sometimes difficult litigations he did much to restore to his court the decorum and gravity which had been most marked in the time of Hannen, and had somewhat declined during the presidency of Sir Charles Butt. In all three branches Jeune secured the confidence of those who practised before him.
When the liberal government came into office in 1892 a difficulty arose as to the payment of the judge-advocate-general, and Gladstone, acting on the precedent of the appointment to that office of Sir Robert Joseph Phillimore, first baronet [q. v.], when judge of the court of admiralty, eventually requested Jeune to add these duties to his own. Jeune accordingly held the office until 1904. He received no salary, but his services in this respect were recognised by his creation as K.C.B. in 1897 and as G.C.B. at the close of the South African war in 1902. During these ten years, as previously, the daily work of the office was performed by two deputies, one legal and the other military, but the finding of every 'general court-martial' had to be confirmed or quashed by the judge-advocate-general himself, who was also required to advise the sovereign personally in many cases, for which reason it was necessary that the office should be held by a privy councillor. Jeune was the last holder, as the post was practically abolished by statute in 1904, the title and some of the duties being transferred to a legal official of the war office. Jeune found that his tenure of the office occupied him for several hours weekly in time of peace, and during the South African war the addition to his public duties which it involved was considerable.
In 1898 and 1902 Jeune was chairman of board of committees respectively on the load line regulations as to winter North Atlantic freeboard, and on the effect of employment of lascars and other foreigners upon the reserve of British seamen available for naval purposes. In 1904 he was a member of Sir Michael Hicks Beach's commission on ecclesiastical discipline.
In January 1905, upon medical advice, he resigned the presidency of the probate, etc., division, and was created a peer by the title of Baron St. Helier. His failing health, which had been gravely affected by grief for the death of his only son in 1904, did not permit of his taking his seat in the House of Lords, and he died at his house in Harley Street on 9 April 1905. He was buried in the churchyard at Chieveley, Bucks.
Jeune married in 1881 Susan Mary Elizabeth, elder daughter of the Hon. Keith William Stewart-Mackenzie, and widow of Lieut.-colonel the Hon. John Constantine Stanley, second son of the second Lord Stanley of Alderley. His domestic happiness was complete and unbroken. His manifold activities and hospitable disposition brought him a large circle of friends, whom he entertained both in London and at his country house, Arlington Manor, Newbury, Berkshire. His only son, Christian Francis Seaforth (b. 1882), of the Grenadier guards, A.D.C. to Lord Lamington, the governor of Bombay, died in 1904, of enteric fever, at Poona.
In person Jeune was tall and of distinguished appearance. He was one of the first of the judges to wear a full beard and moustache, his forensic wig notwithstanding. An oil painting by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, representing him seated, without a wig, but otherwise in the state dress of a lord justice of appeal, belongs to Lady St. Helier, and is an admirable likeness. A cartoon by 'Stuff' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1891.
[Private documents and personal recollection; The Times, 11 April 1905; Lady St. Heher's Memories of Fifty Years, 1909.]
JOHNSON, LIONEL PIGOT (1867–1902), critic and poet, born at Broadstairs, Kent, on 15 March 1867, was third son of Captain William Victor Johnson of the 90th regiment light infantry (1822–91) by his wife Catherine Delicia Walters. The father was second son of Sir Henry Allen Johnson, second baronet (1785–1860), and grandson of General Sir Henry
