A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices/Anstey, Thomas Chisholm
Admitted 6 June, 1835.
Second son of Thomas Anstey, of Anstey Barton, Van Diemen's Land. He was born in London in 1816, and called to the Bar 25 Jan. 1839. Early in his legal career he was appointed Professor of Law and Jurisprudence in the Roman Catholic College in Bath, having become a convert to Romanism. In 1845 he published the lectures he there delivered, and about the same time, A Guide to the Laws affecting Roman Catholics, and many pamphlets on Roman Catholic questions. He became a strong supporter of Daniel O'Connell, and was elected to Parliament for Youghal in 1847. In Parliament he signalized himself by intemperate attacks on the Government, notwithstanding which he was nominated Attorney-General of Hong Kong in 1854. There he got into dispute with the Governor, and was suspended in 1858. After this he proceeded to India and practised in Bombay, where with some intervals in England, he spent the rest of his life, and died on 12 Aug. 1873.
His political tracts and pamphlets are mostly forgotten, but his papers read before the Juridical Society on Blackstone's Theory of the Omnipotence of Parliament; Judicial Oaths as administered to Heathen Witnesses, and The competence of Colonial Legislatures to enact Laws in derogation of Common Liability or Common Right, are still of interest.