LEFROY, Thomas. Memoir of Chief Justice Lefroy. By his son. Portrait frontispiece, one folding plate and one lithograph.

THE REAL MR DARCY

Dublin: Hodges Foster, 1871. pp. vii, 424. Mauve cloth, evenly faded. Spine expertly rebacked. Very good. Scarce.

Thomas Langlois Lefroy (1776-1869), Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, was born in County Limerick, and descended from an old Huguenot family. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was a member of the Historical Society and won four gold medals for oratory. Called to the Bar in 1797, he married at Abergavenny a Miss Paul, a member of one of the many Wexford families that moved to Wales after the Rebellion. He rose to high office, became MP for Dublin University, and sat as judge during the political trials of 1848, and passed sentence on John Mitchel and other leaders of the Young Ireland movement.
Richard Lalor Sheil said of him ""As a judge, he was remarkable for the quickness with which he apprehended the essential features of the cases submitted to him, while his comprehensive grasp of legal principles, and his skill in the application of them, have rarely, if ever, been surpassed.

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