Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/758

This page needs to be proofread.

752 LYNDHUEST LYNN sent to America to suppress piracy ; but as the laws were not administered with much vigor in the colonies, owing to the difficulty of ad- hering to the usual forms of law in the newly established territories, it is presumed that this Judge Lynch was empowered to proceed sum- marily against pirates, and thus gave rise to the term." Still another account, which seems to rest upon no good authority, connects the term with Mr. Lynch, the founder of Lynchburg, Va. But it can be traced to a much earlier date in Ireland. In 1493 James Fitzstephens Lynch was mayor and warden of Gal way. He traded largely to Spain, and sent his son thither to purchase a cargo of wine. The young man squandered the money intrusted to him for this purpose, but succeeded in running in debt for a cargo to a Spaniard, by whose nephew he was accompanied on the return voyage to Ireland, where the money was to be paid. Young Lynch, to conceal his defalcation, caused the Spaniard to be thrown overboard, and was received at home with great honor, as having conducted a most successful business operation. But a sailor on his deathbed revealed to the mayor of Galway the crime which his son had committed. The young man was tried before his own father, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. His family and others undertook to prevent the execution ; and the father, finding that the sentence could not be carried into effect in the usual way, conducted his son up a winding stairway to a window overlooking the public street, with his own hands fastened the halter attached to his neck to a staple in the wall, and acted as executioner. In the council books of Galway there is said to be a minute that "James Lynch, mayor of Gal- way, hanged his own son out of the window for defrauding and killing strangers, without martial or common law, to show a good ex- ample to posterity." LYNDHURST, John Singleton Copley, baron, a British statesman, born in Boston, Mass., May 21, 1772, died Oct. 12, 1863. He was a son of the artist Copley, went with his mother and sisters to England in his third year, and was educated under a private tutor and at Trinity college, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1794. He visited the United States and Can- ada, returned to England in 1798, was called to the bar in 1804, went on the Midland cir- cuit, and rose slowly to eminence in his pro- fession. He had obtained the leadership of the circuit, when in 1817 he attracted general attention by his part in the defence of Watson, charged with high treason as one of the rioters at Spa Fields. He was also in that year coun- sel for the crown in the prosecution of Bran- dreth, who was executed for high treason as a ringleader of the Derby tumults. Though his politics had originally been liberal, he entered parliament in 1818 under tory auspices, was soon after knighted, and was solicitor general in the Liverpool administration from 1819 to 1823. In 1820 he assisted in managing the trial of Queen Caroline by the house of lords. He became attorney general in 1824, was re- turned in 1826 with Viscount Palmerston as member for the university of Cambridge, and a few months later was made master of the rolls. In 1827 he opposed the bill for Roman Catholic emancipation; but under Mr. Can- ning, who immediately after formed a cabinet on liberal principles, he accepted the chancel- lorship on the retirement of Lord Eldon, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Lyndhurst of Lyndhurst (April 27). He retained the great seal through the Canning, Goderich, and Wellington administrations, favoring the re- formatory views of the first and the conces- sions of the last, advocating in 1828 the repeal of the test and corporation acts in opposition to Lord Eldon, and in 1829 supporting the scheme of Catholic emancipation. He resigned his office on the accession of Earl Grey to power in 1830, but this ministry gave him in 1831 the judicial station of lord chief baron of the exchequer, which he held till 1834. He was one of the most strenuous opponents of the reform bill, and was prominent in effecting the defeat and consequent resignation of Earl Grey's ministry on May 7, 1832. On the for- mation of the first Peel ministry in 1834 he was restored to the chancellorship, but relin- quished it after the resignation of this minis- try. He efficiently resisted the claims urged by the Eoman Catholics of Ireland, and was especially formidable from his custom of re- viewing annually the measures of each parlia- mentary session in speeches remarkable for their sarcasm and brilliancy. When Sir Robert Peel returned to power in 1841, the great seal was for the third time given to Lord Lynd- hurst. The fall of the Peel ministry in 1846 he regarded as the termination of his public life ; but he afterward occasionally took a prominent part in the debates in the house of lords. He was twice married, but all his issue being daughters, his title expired with him. LYNN, a city of Essex co., Massachusetts, bordering S. on Lynn harbor, an arm of Massa- chusetts bay, and S. E. on Nahant bay, sepa- rated from the harbor by the peninsula of Na- hant, which juts out in a S. direction from the city, at the junction of the Eastern railroad with its Saugus branch, 10 m. N. E. of Boston ; pop. in 1850, 14,257; in 1860, 19,083 ; in 1870, 28,233, of whom 4,935 were foreigners. Its limits include a large plain in the south and west, raised but a few feet from the water level ; a range of hills in the rear ; a number of ponds known as the lakes of Lynn, beyond these ; and in the northeast an elevated plain, the most pleasant and healthy portion of the city. The N. and W. parts are not thickly settled; in the remaining portions the streets are well paved and lighted with gas. There are a number of public squares, the principal of which is the common, in the S. part of the city. Pine Grove cemetery, N. of the popu- lous section, is under the control of the city,