Sir John Leach, KC (28 August 1760 – 14 September 1834) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 judge.

Life

The son of Richard Leach, a coppersmith of Bedford

Bedford

Bedford is the county town of Bedfordshire, in the East of England. It is a large town and the administrative centre for the wider Borough of Bedford. According to the former Bedfordshire County Council's estimates, the town had a population of 79,190 in mid 2005, with 19,720 in the adjacent town...

, he was born in that town on 28 Augusr 1760. After leaving Bedford grammar school he became a pupil of Sir Robert Taylor

Robert Taylor (architect)

Sir Robert Taylor was a notable English architect of the mid-late 18th century.Born at Woodford, Essex, Taylor followed in his father's footsteps and started working as a stonemason and sculptor, spending time as a pupil of Sir Henry Cheere...

 the architect. In his office he is said to have made the working drawings for the erection of Stone Buildings, which are still preserved at Lincoln's Inn

Lincoln's Inn

The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...

, and to have designed Howletts, in the parish of Bekesbourne

Bekesbourne

Bekesbourne is a village, within the civil parish of Bekesbourne-with-Patrixbourne, near Canterbury in Kent, South East England.Situated approximately three miles south-east of the city boundary, the village has a church, St Peter's Parish Church which has a Norman doorway, a 13th century chancel...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

. On the recommendation of his old fellow-pupil, Samuel Pepys Cockerell

Samuel Pepys Cockerell

Samuel Pepys Cockerell was an English architect. He was the son of John Cockerell, of Bishop's Hull, Somerset, and the brother of Sir Charles Cockerell, 1st Baronet, for whom he designed the house he is best known for, Sezincote House, Gloucestershire, where the uniquely Orientalizing features...

, and other friends, Leach abandoned architecture for the law, and was admitted a student of the Middle Temple

Middle Temple

The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...

 on 26 January 1785.

Having studied of conveyancing and equity drafting in the chambers of William Alexander, he was called to the bar in Hilary term 1790, and joined the home circuit and Surrey sessions. In 1792 he was engaged as counsel in the Seaford

Seaford (UK Parliament constituency)

The UK parliamentary constituency of Seaford was a Cinque Port constituency, similar to a parliamentary borough, in Seaford, East Sussex. A rotten borough, prone by size to undue influence by a patron, it was disenfranchised in the Reform Act of 1832...

 election petition, and in 1795 was elected recorder of that Cinque port. Having previously purchased the Pelham interest, he unsuccessfully contested the constituency against Charles Rose Ellis and Ellis's cousin, George Ellis, at the general election in May 1796. In 1800 Leach gave up all common law work, and confined himself to the equity courts, where his pleadings and terse style of speaking secured him an extensive business.

At a by-election in July 1806 he was returned for Seaford, but owing to the prorogation did not take his seat in that parliament. He was again returned at the general election in the following October, and continued to represent Seaford until his retirement from parliamentary life in 1816. In Hilary term 1807 Leach was made a king's counsel, and was subsequently elected a bencher of the Middle Temple. Leach spoke rarely in the House of Commons. In March 1809 he defended the conduct of the Duke of York

Duke of York

The Duke of York is a title of nobility in the British peerage. Since the 15th century, it has, when granted, usually been given to the second son of the British monarch. The title has been created a remarkable eleven times, eight as "Duke of York" and three as the double-barreled "Duke of York and...

, and on 31 December 1810 supported William Lamb

William Lamb

William Lamb may refer to:*William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne , Prime Minister of the United Kingdom*William Lamb , Scottish artist*William Lamb...

's amendment to the first regency resolution (ib. xviii. 532–45). In 1811 he carried through the House of Commons the Foreign Ministers' Pension Bill. On 15 Feb. 1813 he strongly protested against the bill for the creation of a vice-chancellor, the effect of which he maintained would be to make the lord chancellor a political rather than a judicial character; and on 31 May 1815 he strenuously opposed Lord Althorp's motion for an inquiry into the expenditure of £100,000 granted by parliament for the outfit of the Prince Regent

Prince Regent

A prince regent is a prince who rules a monarchy as regent instead of a monarch, e.g., due to the Sovereign's incapacity or absence ....

.

Early in February 1816 Leach vacated his seat in the House of Commons by accepting the Chiltern Hundreds

Chiltern Hundreds

Appointment to the office of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham is a sinecure appointment which is used as a device allowing a Member of the United Kingdom Parliament to resign his or her seat...

, and was immediately afterwards appointed by the Prince Regent as Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall. In August 1817 he became chief justice of Chester, in succession to Sir William Garrow. Resigning these posts, he succeeded Sir Thomas Plumer as vice-chancellor of England in January 1818, and having been sworn a member of the Privy Council on 30 December 1817, was knighted in the following month. On John Copley

John Copley, 1st Baron Lyndhurst

John Singleton Copley, 1st Baron Lyndhurst PC KS FRS , was a British lawyer and politician. He was three times Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.-Background and education:...

becoming lord chancellor Leach was appointed master of the rolls (3 May 1827), and, by a commission dated 5 May 1827, was made deputy-speaker of the House of Lords. By an act of parliament passed in August 1833 Leach became, by virtue of his office as master of the rolls, a member of the judicial committee of the privy council. He died at Simpson's Hotel in Edinburgh on 14 September 1834, aged 74, and was buried on the 20th of the same month in William Adam's mausoleum in Greyfriars churchyard.

Leach's decisions were lucid and brief, but as he often decided on his own judgment in preference to that of his predecessors, they were not infrequently overruled. His demeanour on the bench brought him into constant collision with members of the bar. While he was master of the rolls the customary evening sittings of the court were abandoned, and on 22 June 1829 the practice of sitting in the daytime began. Though Leach was professedly a Whig when he entered parliament, he adopted the politics of the Regent, whose confidential adviser he had become. At his instigation the Milan commission was instituted in 1818 to investigate the conduct of the Princess of Wales; he was strongly in favour of a divorce. Some of Leach's equity pleadings, signed ‘J. L.,’ were printed in F. M. Van Heythuysen's ‘Equity Draftsman’ (London, 1816, 8vo). His speech of 31 Dec. 1810 on the regency resolutions was published in 1811 (London, 8vo, second edition). He was created D.C.L. by the university of Oxford on 5 July 1810.

He never married. His nephew, Richard Howell Leach, a son of his youngest brother, Thomas Leach, was the senior chancery registrar from 1868 to 1882.

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