Sir Francis Buller

Buller (1746–1800) was a guardian of Anna Eliza Brydges, later the first Duchess, along with Lady Caroline Leigh. He was a trustee to the 1796 settlement between Anna Eliza and Richard Temple. 

Francis Buller was born at Downes on 17 March 1746. In 1763, at the age of 17, he married Susanna, daughter and heiress of Francis Yarde of Churston Court, Devonshire. In February 1763, he was entered at the Inner Temple as a pupil of the celebrated special pleader William Henry Ashurst. He took out his own certificate has special pleader in 1765. In Easter term 1772, he was called to the bar. His rise at the bar was rapid. On 24 November 1777, he was created a king’s council. On 6 May 1778, when only 32 years old, he was made a puisne [subordinate] Judge of the king’s bench.

His conduct on the judicial bench was often the subject of severe criticism. He was considered hasty and prejudiced. His unfortunate assertion in 1782 that a husband could thrash his wife with impunity provided that the stick was no bigger than his thumb, led satirical cartoonist Gillray to caricature him as a Judge Thumb.

He was always the second Judge in his Court, and when Lord Mansfield was absent through illness Buller took the lead. For the last two years of Mansfield’s life he was really the Chief Justice. On the death of Mansfield, William Pitt eventually appointed Kenyon instead of Buller, although he was the inferior lawyer. Pitt, however, made Buller a baronet on 13 January 1790. On 19 June 1794, he resigned from the king’s bench and took his place in the common pleas.

Buller was short in stature but of handsome features, with a piercing eye and a commanding forehead. His love of hard-playing was notorious, and he was exclaimed at “his idea of heaven was to sit at nisi prius [the court at Westminster] all day and play at whist all night.”

His health in the late 1790s was undermined by frequent attacks of gout and by a slight stroke of paralysis. He had arranged to resign in a few days time, when, during a game of piquet at his house in Bedford Square, he was seized with his fatal illness. He died late on the night of the 4th or early on the 5th of June 1800.

Based on the Dictionary of National Biography.