He was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1808, and being a peer's son graduated MA without residence or examination in 1811, on the inauguration of the Duke of Gloucester as Chancellor.
IV, c. 56, established a Court of Review in Bankruptcy of four judges, and Lord Brougham appointed him to the chief judgeship on 20 Oct. 1831, a post which he filled with credit.
On the death of James Alan Park, he succeeded him, 9 January 1839, as a Justice of the Common Pleas, but continued to hold his bankruptcy judgeship until November 1842.
In his new capacity his chief act was presiding at the spring assizes at York in 1840, at the political trials, which he did so fairly as to receive the applause even of the Northern Star, Feargus O'Connor's paper.
From the summer of 1852 he lived at Fir Grove, Eversley, and was the intimate friend and valued supporter of the rector, Charles Kingsley, to whom his death was a great loss.