Lord Cranworth
(1790-1868)

Robert Monsey Rolfe, 1st Baron Cranworth was a British lawyer and Liberal politician. He twice served as Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.

The elder son of the Reverend Edward Rolfe, he was born at Cranworth in Norfolk on 18 December 1790 and educated at the grammar school in Bury St Edmunds, Winchester College, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1816, and attached himself to the chancery courts. He represented Penryn and Falmouth in Parliament from 1832 till his promotion to the bench as Baron of the Exchequer in 1839. In 1850 he was appointed a Vice-Chancellor and created Baron Cranworth of Cranworth in Norfolk, and in 1852 he became Lord Chancellor in Aberdeen's ministry. He continued to hold the chancellorship in the administration of Palmerston until the latter's resignation in 1858. He was not reappointed when Palmerston returned to office in 1859, but on the retirement of Lord Westbury in 1865 he accepted the great seal for a second time, and held it till the fall of the Russell administration in 1866.

Lord Cranworth died at 40 Upper Brook Street in London on 26 July 1868 and was buried in the churchyard at Keston.

‘Never a very zealous law reformer, Cranworth's name is associated in the statute book with only one small measure on conveyancing. But as a judge he will continue to hold first rank. His judgments were marked by sound common sense, while he himself was remarkably free from the prejudices of his profession. Few men of his day enjoyed greater personal popularity than Cranworth. He left no issue and the title became extinct on his death.’ [Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911.]