A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices/Amos, Andrew
Admitted 29 June, 1832.
Youngest son of James Amos, of Devonshire Square. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated Fifth Wrangler in 1813. He was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1818, and migrated to the Middle Temple. He was successively Recorder of Oxford, Nottingham, and Banbury. He sat on various Criminal Law Commissions between 1834 and 1843, and took part in the compilation of their important reports. On the foundation of the London University he became the first Professor of English Law there, with Mr. Austin (q.v.) as his colleague in the department of jurisprudence, and his lectures attracted great attention. In 1837 he was made a member of the Council of the Governor-General of India. On his return to England in 1843 he was nominated one of the first of the new County Court Judges, sitting for Marylebone. In 1848 he became Downing Professor at Cambridge, an appointment he held till his death in 1860. He left behind him many books on legal and constitutional and literary subjects, the chief of which are—The Great Oyer of Poisoning: an Account of the Trial of the Earl of Somerset (1846); Ruins of Time exemplified in Sir Matthew Hale's Pleas of the Crown (1856); The English Constitution in the Reign of Charles II. (1857); On the Reformation Statutes of Henry VIII. (1859); Gems of Latin Poetry (1851); Martial and the Moderns (1858); and a Law Treatise on Fixtures, in conjunction with Mr. Ferard. Besides these he published many lectures and pamphlets, and in 1825 he edited for the University of Cambridge Fortescue's De Laudibus Legum Angliæ, with a translation and notes.