John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell
John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell, PC, FRSE (15 September 1779 – 23 June 1861) was a British Liberal politician, lawyer and man of letters.
For other people named John Campbell, see John Campbell (disambiguation).
The Lord Campbell
23 June 1861 (aged 81)
Stratheden House, Knightsbridge, London SW7
Background and education[edit]
The second son of the Reverend George Campbell, D.D., and Magdalene Hallyburton,[1] he was born a son of the manse at Cupar, Fife, Scotland, where his father was for fifty years parish minister. For seven years, from the age of 11, Campbell studied at the United College, St Andrews.[2]
When he was 18, he was offered the opportunity to leave home and see something of the world by becoming tutor to James Wedderburn-Webster. The family lived in Clapham, just south of London, with a summer house at Shenley, Hertfordshire. His employer was David Webster, London merchant of a sugar trading house, with family connections through the Wedderburn baronets to the slave plantations of Jamaica. Living in this wealthy household, the young Campbell saw a different world, and it didn't impress him: the commercial conversation and gossip of "West India merchants and East India captains" created an atmosphere "irksome" and "unbearable". His pupil James was about ten years old; one of Campbell's first tasks was to begin to teach him Latin.[3]
Campbell took advantage of being in London to attend a session of the House of Commons, hearing William Wilberforce speak against slavery, followed by Charles James Fox and William Pitt. He describes it vividly in his memoirs forty years later, concluding, "After hearing this debate, I could no longer have been content with being 'Moderator of the General Assembly [of the Church of Scotland]'.".[4]
In 1800 Campbell was entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn, and, after working briefly for the Morning Chronicle, was called to the bar in 1806.[2]
Literary endeavours[edit]
Following in the path struck out by Strickland in her Lives of the Queens of England, and by Lord Brougham's Lives of Eminent Statesmen, Campbell produced Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, from the earliest times till the reign of Queen Victoria, in ten volumes.[8] He followed it with Lives of the Chief Justices of England, in four volumes (two additional volumes were a "Continuation by Sir Joseph Arnould – Late Judge of the High Court of Bombay"). He also wrote Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements Reconsidered.
Family[edit]
In 1821 Campbell married the Hon. Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter of James Scarlett, 1st Baron Abinger; they had three sons and four daughters. In 1836 Lady Campbell was created (in her own right) Baroness Stratheden, of Cupar in the County of Fife, in recognition of her husband's withdrawal of his claim to the office of Master of the Rolls; she died in March 1860, aged 63. Lord Campbell survived her by just over a year and died in June 1861, aged 81. They were succeeded by their eldest son, William, who became Lord Stratheden and Campbell.