chief justice by spreading reports that he was incapacitated from continuing at his post. Brougham, however, told Campbell that the real danger was of a third stroke incapacitating Denman from resigning, in which case an act of parliament would have to be passed. At length, on 28 Feb. 1850, the resignation was sent in and was accepted next day (Lord Campbell's Life, ii. 267, 12 and 29 Jan.) Addresses of condolence now poured in upon him from his colleagues of the queen's bench, from the bars of Westminster Hall and the home and midland circuits, from the corporations of London and Nottingham, and from the grand juries of nearly all the midland counties. With rest his health improved, and he resumed his activity. He contributed an important letter on the reform of the law of evidence to the ‘Law Review,’ 1851, and revised the draft bill, which Brougham took charge of and passed (14 & 15 Vict. c. 99). In 1852 he published a pamphlet in favour of legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and also nine letters to the lord chancellor on various points connected with the Common Law Procedure Bill, upon the third reading of which he made his last speech, 27 May 1852. In the following autumn ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’ came out, and he was prevailed on to write in the ‘Standard’ in September and October, and afterwards to republish seven articles, in which he bitterly attacked Dickens, long his intimate friend, for the character of Mrs. Jellyby in ‘Bleak House.’ He looked on it as retarding the completion of negro emancipation. This excitement overcame him. His final stroke occurred at Nice, 2 Dec. 1852, and though his brain remained clear and he could copy letters placed before him, he could never speak or originate any writing again. In April 1853 he returned to England, and lingered on until 22 Sept. 1854, when he died and was buried in Stoke Albany churchyard.
Never a great lawyer, he was ardent in the cause of law reform, even making private suggestions to the home office when points struck him in the course of his practice. By comparison with his four great predecessors in the chief justiceship he appeared a weak judge, yet by his judgment he did much to secure individual liberties, notably in Stockdale's and O'Connell's cases. As a politician he was, though occasionally violent, honourable and completely consistent; as a philanthropist he was ardent and untiring. He was witty and agreeable; a good French and an excellent classical scholar. His eloquence is of a rather stilted and artificial character, and his delivery, though imposing, was histrionic. But it was for his high moral character and his attractive personality that he was most esteemed. Sir Francis Doyle (Reminiscences 221) says he was ‘beloved by every one who knew him.’ His lifelong friend Rogers in 1853, seeing some of the verses Denman still could copy and send to his friends as a remembrance of himself, kissed the handwriting. ‘To have seen him on the bench,’ wrote his friend, Charles Sumner, ‘in the administration of justice, was to have a new idea of the elevation of the judicial character.’ His family was large: Thomas, who succeeded him; George, the fourth son, a judge of the queen's bench division, and three others, and six daughters. A portrait of him by E. V. Eddis is prefixed to vol. ii. of his life; a painting by Mrs. Charles Pearson is in the possession of the corporation of London; two other portraits, one by J. J. Halls and the other by Sir Martin Shee, P.R.A., are in the National Portrait Gallery; a bust belongs to the London Incorporated Law Society.
[Arnould's Life of Denman; Greville Memoirs, 1st ser.; Moore's Memoirs; Nightingale's Report of Queen Caroline's Trial; O'Connell v. The Queen, House of Lords Appeal, D. Leahy, 1844; Trevelyan's Macaulay; Foss's Lives of the Judges; A. V. Dicey in New York Nation, xix. 27; London's Roll of Fame, 136; Ballantyne's Experiences, i. 73; Henry Cockburn's Journal, ii. 43; McCullagh Torrens's Melbourne, ii. 87.]
DENMARK, Prince of. [See George.]
DENNE, HENRY (d. 1600?), puritan divine, was educated at Cambridge and in 1630 was ordained by the Bishop of St. David's (Reg. Dio. St. David's), and soon afterwards was presented to the living of Pyrton in Hertfordshire, which he held for more than ten years, ‘and, being a more frequent and lively preacher than most of the clergy in his neighbourhood, was greatly beloved and respected by his parishioners’ (Crosby, Hist. Baptists, i. 221). In 1641 he was one of the ministers selected by the committee of the House of Commons for preferment, and had to give a bond in 200l. to appear before them at twenty-four hours' notice whenever required, and the same year was selected to preach at Baldock at the visitation then being held there, in which sermon ‘he freely exposed the sin of persecution and took occasion to lash the vices of the clergy with so much freedom as gave great offence and occasioned many false reports; from this time he was taken great notice of as a man of extraordinary parts and a proper person to help forward the designed reformation’ (ib.) This sermon was subsequently published as ‘The Doctrine and
