the reform of the court of chancery. On 28 March 1851 he was, on Lord John Russell's recommendation, appointed master of the rolls, on the death of Lord Langdale, and was sworn of the privy council. The right of the master of the rolls to hold a seat in parliament had not yet been taken away by the Judicature Act (36 & 37 Vict. c. 66, § 9), and he continued to represent Devonport in the House of Commons till the general election of 1852; but, having lost his seat there, he sought no other, and was in fact the last master of the rolls who sat in the House of Commons. In addition to the discharge of his judicial duties, he was active in facilitating access to the public records under his care, continuing in this respect the work begun by his predecessor, Lord Langdale. In particular, he relaxed the rules as to fees enforced by Lord Langdale, and permitted gratuitous access to the records for literary and historical purposes, and promoted the preparation and publication of calendars. On 19 Dec. 1865 he was raised to the peerage, taking the title of Lord Romilly of Barry in Glamorganshire, and in 1873 he resigned the mastership of the rolls, being succeeded by Sir George Jessel [q. v.]
He died in London on 23 Dec. 1874, after a short illness. He was to the last actively engaged in the duties of arbitrator in connection with the European Assurance Company, a task which he undertook when Lord Westbury, the previous arbitrator, died; but it may be doubted whether his judicial powers were equal to this work. At any rate he declined to follow the rules of law already laid down in the case by Lord Westbury, and thereby greatly unsettled matters that were thought to have been finally disposed of. The characteristic of his mind was indeed rather industry than breadth or grasp. As a judge he was unusually conscientious and painstaking. His decisions were extremely numerous, and in a very large number of cases were reported, but they were somewhat often reversed on appeal. He was prone to decide causes without sufficiently considering the principles they involved and the precedents by which they were governed; but perhaps, as the court of chancery then was, his example of rapid decision was worth more than the cost of the errors into which haste sometimes betrayed him.
In October 1833 he married Caroline Charlotte, second daughter of William Otter [q. v.], bishop of Chichester, who died on 30 Dec. 1856, and by her he had four sons and four daughters.
[Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vii. 322; Life of Lord Hatherley; Foss's Judges of England; Foster's Gray's Inn Reg. pp. x, 421; Times, 24 Dec. 1874; Law Times, Law Journal, and Solicitors' Journal for 2 Jan. 1875.]
ROMILLY, JOSEPH (1791–1864), registrary of the university of Cambridge, born in 1791, was son of Thomas Peter Romilly of London, by his cousin Jane Anne, second daughter of Isaac Romilly. Sir Samuel Romilly [q. v.] was his uncle. He entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1809, became a scholar of the college, and graduated B.A. in 1813 as fourth wrangler. He was elected fellow in 1815, and proceeded M.A. in 1816. He took holy orders, but he never held any preferment, excepting that he was chaplain to Thomas Musgrave [q. v.], archbishop of York, who had been a friend at Trinity. From the first he belonged to the liberal party in the university, led by Peacock and Adam Sedgwick [q. v.], Romilly's intimate friend. In 1821 he joined the committee for promoting a subscription in the university to aid the Greeks in their war of independence. He was one of the party who successfully opposed the petition which it was designed should be presented in 1829 against catholic emancipation. He opposed Christopher Wordsworth, then master of Trinity, on the question of Thirlwall's dismissal in 1834. On 23 March 1832 he was elected registrary after a competition with Temple Chevallier [q. v.], and remained in this office until 1861, when he retired, and was presented with a testimonial. His great work as registrar was the proper arrangement and cataloguing of all the university papers. From 1832 till his death he kept a diary, which has been largely used by the authors of the ‘Life of Adam Sedgwick,’ inasmuch as it contains nearly as much about Sedgwick as about himself. The closeness of their intimacy can be gathered from Sedgwick's letters. On 10 Nov. 1861 he writes: ‘Romilly comes every morning before breakfast to help me with my letters. He is the oldest friend I have in Cambridge, and the kindest. He has a great deal of French blood in his veins, which makes him a merry, genial man; and to such gifts he has added a vast store of literature.’ Again, just before his death on 20 March 1864, Sedgwick wrote: ‘Romilly is still here, but he lives in a house on the outskirts of Cambridge, and never dines in hall. I now and then go and drink tea with him.’ He died very suddenly at Yarmouth, of heart disease, on Sunday 7 Aug. 1864, and was buried in a vault in Christ Church, Barnwell. He edited the ‘Graduati Canta-
