THOMAS, first Baron Truro, was the son of a respectable solicitor in London, and was born in 1782. He became an attorney in 1805, and in 1817 he was called to the bar, and went the Western Circuit, where he speedily rose to be leading advocate. Having been made king's serjeant in 1827, he was engaged as junior counsel in the defence of Queen Caroline; and subsequently, in 1834, he conducted the trial of Daniel O'Connell before the House of Commons. In 1831 he sat in parliament for Newark, and again he was re-elected in 1835, and retained his seat, along with W. E. Gladstone, till 1841, when he was chosen member for Worcester. Wilde was made attorney-general in 1841, was raised to the bench as chief-justice in 1846, and was finally elevated to the woolsack and made a peer in 1850. He resigned his chancellorship on the retirement of his party from office in 1832. Lord Truro was a patient, painstaking lawyer, and an upright and just judge. He might have dwelt with less minuteness on many of the unimportant details of a case, but few could surpass him in faithfulness or in the judicious summing up of a question, where so many points are involved as there ordinarily are in all legal disputes. Lord Truro likewise stands eminent as a legal reformer. He died at his seat, Bowes Manor, Southgate, Middlesex, on the 11th November 1855.