A catalogue of notable Middle Templars, with brief biographical notices/Arden, Richard Pepper
Master of the Rolls.
Admitted 7 June, 1762.
Second son of John Arden of Pepper Hall, near Richmond (Yorks.), born in 1745. He was educated at the Grammar School of Manchester, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was Twelfth Wrangler in 1766, and was called to the Bar 10 Feb. 1769.
By family influence he obtained the Recordership of Macclesfield before he was much known at the Bar. In 1776 he was made a Welsh Judge, and in 1780 obtained a silk gown. In 1783 he became Solicitor-General, and entered Parliament as member for Newtown in the Isle of Wight. In 1784 he was raised to the Attorney-Generalship, which he held for five years. He was Reader at the Middle Temple in 1787, and Treasurer of the Inn in 1791.
In 1788, chiefly through the influence of Mr. Pitt, he became Master of the Rolls, and in 1801 succeeded Lord Eldon (q.v.) as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, being at the same time raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Alvanley of Alvanley in Cheshire.
Lord Alvanley's judgments whilst Master of the Rolls are found recorded in Brown's Chancery Cases, and Vesey Jun.'s Reports; whilst Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in Bosanquet and Puller's Reports.