Memoir of the Life of Daniel Sykes, M.A., Recorder of Hull, and late M.P. for Beverley. In 1838 he published “Jepthah and other Poems.” His “Autobiographical Recollections” were edited by his daughter after his death.
His country house was Wistow, in Huntingdonshire. He had married, in 1813, Jane Townley Thackeray, daughter of Thomas Thackeray, late surgeon in Cam bridge, and sister of Dr. Frederick Thackeray, physician in Cambridge. He had two children, Alicia (Mrs. Bayne), and Charles De la Pryme, Esq., of the Inner Temple, M.A. of Cambridge, barrister-at-law. It is to be regretted that Professor Pryme was not a more prolific author. He was a man of great natural powers and of varied learning, a successful barrister, and a competent professor. He had a strong veneration for his old Protestant ancestors, and revived the true spelling of their surname in the person of his son. He died at Wistow, being the senior member of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, on the 2d December 1868, aged eighty-seven.
The following verses appeared in print more than thirty years ago:—
I saw her first in beauty’s pride,
As from my gaze she turned aside;
I marked her brightly beaming eye,
As in the dance she glided by;
I heard her voice’s genial sound
That shed a joy on all around,
Nor thought, till then, there was on earth
A heart so full of love and mirth.
Again I saw her beauteous face,
But gone was all its cheerful grace;
And there was sorrow in her eye,
And more than sadness in her sigh.
She smiled less sweetly than before,
For a sister’s sombre veil she wore;
And in a convent’s dreary cell
Had bid the world and hope farewell.
And once again I met her gaze,
There was no smile of former days;
No sombre convent-veil was there
To mock the maniac’s vacant stare.
And on that priest I heard her call,
Who lured her from her father’s hall,
And that bright happy English home,
Before her thoughts had strayed to Rome.
Cambridge.
IX. Chief-Justice Lefroy, D.C.L.
Right Hon. Thomas Lefroy, M.P. (whose pedigree I have already detailed), was born in Ireland on 8th January 1776. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, on 2d November 1790, and after a brilliant University career, took his degree. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1797, but did not practise until he had completed a course of legal study at Lincoln’s Inn. He formed a friendship during his college life with a fellow-student, which ended in his engagement to be married to that student’s sister. The incident became unusually romantic. The Irish rebellion broke out in the County of Wexford in May 1798; the young lady and her mother took refuge in Wales, while the father, Jeffry Paul, Esq., of Silverspring, remained in Wexford to fight as an officer of yeomanry. Accordingly, Thomas Lefroy was married to Mary Paul (eventually her father’s heiress) at Abergavenny, on 16th March 1799. He practised at the Irish Bar with eminent ability and success; in 1816 he became a King’s Counsel; in November 1818 he was made His Majesty’s Third Serjeant-at-law; he rose to be First Serjeant, and was long known as Serjeant Lefroy. He was often styled Dr. Lefroy, his university having conferred on him tHe degree of D.C.L.
Mr. Lefroy became a very wealthy gentleman. As such, he devoted himself to the Tory or Conservative party. He also aimed at the highest seats on the Bench without serving as Solicitor-General and Attorney-General for Ireland. In those
Day. He has mixed up in his memory Sir Andrew’s Hill (which never reached the Committee stage), and another Hill brought in by Mr. J. S. Poulter, M.P. for Shaftesbury. The facts are these :— Having failed to get a second reading for his own Hill, which was intended to provide rest for all the working classes, Sir A. Agnew gave way to Mr. William Peter, M.P. for Bodmyn, and to Mr. Poulter, each of whom brought in a partial Bill against Sunday trading. Mr. Poulter’s Bill passed the second reading and got into Committee; but the House, by so-called amendments, put a fool’s cap upon it, so that Sir A. and his friends joined in throwing it out at the reporting stage. It was probably Mr. Poulter who said that he felt himself in bondage to the Lord’s Day Observance Society, although Mr. Pryme’s recollections attribute the saying and the sensation to Sir Andrew Agnew (erroneously, I am certain, because Sir A.’s views were rather in advance of that Society).
