Sir Samuel Romilly KC (1 March 1757 – 2 November 1818) was a British lawyer, Whig politician, abolitionist and legal reformer.

Born in London of French Huguenot descent, he was largely self-educated and escaped poverty through a fortuitous inheritance that allowed travel.

From a background in the commercial world, Romilly became well-connected, and rose to public office as Solicitor-General for England and Wales (1806–1807) and a prominent position in Parliament, where he sat for Horsham (1807–1808), Wareham (1808–1812), Arundel (1812–1818), and finally Westminster (July 1818 until his death).

After an early interest in radical politics, he built a career in chancery cases, and then turned to reform of British criminal law and abolition of the slave trade.

Yet few of his ambitions were achieved during his lifetime, which was cut short in 1818, when, despondent after the death of his wife, he died by suicide, leaving criminal law "in the same state as he had found it when he embarked upon his work of amelioration".

Romilly was born on Frith Street in Soho, London, into a French-speaking Huguenot family who had fled France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

However, when his father died in France, a Catholic relative inherited the estate and slashed his income to a paltry amount, and ultimately he was left bankrupt, unable to cover his expenses.

[10] His mother was in poor health, and Samuel and his siblings were largely raised by a maternal relative, Margaret Facquier, who educated the children mainly with the Bible, the 18th-century moralist periodical The Spectator, and an English translation of François Fénelon's Les Aventures de Télémaque.

[11] Every Sunday, his family attended the French Protestant Chapel in Soho, where his future brother-in-law, John (Jean) Roget from Geneva, was pastor.

[17][18] However, good fortune entered his life in a generous benefactor, his great-uncle Philip Delahaize (or de la Haize; brother of his grandmother Marguerite Alavoine Garnault).

Delahaize "was a gentleman of great wealth and benevolence, and by his judicious bequests to his circle of relations he set a number of refugee families upon their feet in a nation in which their ancestors had retired to voluntary poverty."

[19][20][21] Staying for a period with David Chauvet, one of the progressive group of local politicians, Romilly met the like-minded Etienne Clavière, among others.

Romilly was introduced in 1784 to Honoré Mirabeau, by the Genevan writer François d'Ivernois, as his Memoirs state; Halevy says it was through Thomas Brand Hollis.

[16] William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne (later the Marquess of Lansdown), Prime Minister in 1782–1783, invited Romilly to Bowood House, around 1784–5.

[43] In 1806, on the accession of the Ministry of All the Talents to office, Romilly was offered the post of Solicitor General, although he had never sat in the House of Commons.

His interest came early in life, by the time of his meeting in 1783 with the Abbé Raynal, whose Histoire des deux Indes he had read.

During the parliamentary debate on the Slave Trade Bill, Romilly paid tribute to Wilberforce, saying that his leadership had "preserved so many millions of his fellow creatures.

"[44] As he concluded his remarks, Romilly was greeted with a standing ovation by other Members of Parliament, a reaction that very rarely occurred in the House of Commons.

[47] The so-called Bloody Code of justice was, in his view, something that required reform, while, as he stated in his Memoirs, one effect of the French Revolution was to lessen the chances of Parliament passing the necessary legislation.

Romilly saw further bills rejected; but in March 1812 he had repealed a statute of Elizabeth I making it a capital offence for a soldier or a mariner to beg without a pass from a magistrate or his commanding officer.

[6] Romilly failed to pass a law which would have abolished corruption of blood for all crimes, but in the following year he tried again and succeeded, with the exception of treason and murder.

[51] Romilly was buried on 11 November 1818 at the parish church of St Michael and All Angels, Knill, Herefordshire, with his wife Ann.