Sir Elijah Impey (13 June 17321 October 1809) was a British
judge, the first
chief justice of the
Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William
The Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Calcutta, was founded in 1774 by the Regulating Act of 1773. It replaced the Mayor's Court of Calcutta and was British India's highest court from 1774 until 1862, when the High Court of Calcu ...
in
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
,
Chief Justice of the
Sadr Diwani Adalat
The Ṣadr Dīwānī ʿAdālat ( ur, , bn, সদর দেওয়ানি আদালত ) (English: Sudder Dewanny Adawlut) was the Supreme Court of Revenue in British India established at Calcutta by Warren Hastings in 1772. It was reforme ...
and MP for New Romney.
Life
He was born the youngest son of Elijah Impey and his wife Martha, daughter of James Fraser and was educated at
Westminster School
Westminster School is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school in Westminster, London, England, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. It derives from a charity school founded by Westminster Benedictines before the 1066 Norman Conquest, as d ...
with
Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-Genera ...
, who was his intimate friend throughout life. He proceeded to
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
in 1752, graduating in 1756 as the second Chancellor's classical medallist.
Impey was
called to the bar in 1756. He was appointed the first chief justice of the new supreme court at
Calcutta
Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comm ...
in March 1774 and knighted later that month.
En route to India he learned
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the ...
and
, and once there studied
Persian.
With his wife
Mary (née Reade), from 1777, he hired local artists to paint the various birds, animals and native plants, life-sized where possible, and in natural surrounds. The collection is often known as the ''
Impey Album '' Indian Roller on Sandalwood'' by Zain ud-Din, now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Impey Album was a collection of Company style paintings commissioned by Elijah Impey (1732–1809) and his wife Mary Impey, Mary, née ...
''.
In 1775 he presided at the trial of
Maharaja Nandakumar,
[ who was accused of forging a bond in an attempt to deprive a widow of more than half her inheritance. As a result of the trial he went down in history, because in 1787 he was subjected to ]impeachment
Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements.
I ...
, along with Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-Genera ...
, for their conduct of the case. He was accused by Macaulay of conspiring with Hastings to commit a judicial murder[ by having unjustly hanged Nandakumar; but the whole question of the trial of Nandakumar was examined in detail by Sir ]James Fitzjames Stephen
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 1st Baronet, KCSI (3 March 1829 – 11 March 1894) was an English lawyer, judge, writer, and philosopher. One of the most famous critics of John Stuart Mill, Stephen achieved prominence as a philosopher, law ...
, who stated that "no man ever had, or could have, a fairer trial than Nuncomar, and Impey in particular behaved with absolute fairness and as much indulgence as was compatible with his duty."[ According to Macaulay, Impey later applied English law so aggressively as to "throw a great country into the most dreadful confusion", until in effect bribed by Hastings to desist.
In 1790 Impey was returned to Parliament as the member for New Romney constituency and spent the next seven years as an MP before retiring to Newick Park near Brighton. He died there in 1809 and was buried in the family vault at St Paul's, Hammersmith, London. With his wife he is commemorated in the church with a wall monument by ]Peter Rouw
Peter Rouw II (17 April 1771– 9 December 1852) was a London-based sculptor specialising in bas-reliefs in marble, often in the form of mural church monuments, and in wax miniature portraits, often of a pink hue on black glass. He designed meda ...
. He had married on 18 January 1768 Mary, daughter of Sir John Reade, 5th Baronet
''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only a ...
, of Shipton Court, Oxfordshire; they had five sons.
In 1795 his application for a fellowship of the Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...
was rejected.
Legacy
A portrait of Impey, by Johan Zoffany
Johan Joseph Zoffany (born Johannes Josephus Zaufallij; 13 March 1733 – 11 November 1810) was a German neoclassical painter who was active mainly in England, Italy and India. His works appear in many prominent British collections, includin ...
hangs in Kolkata High Court. Tilly Kettle and Thomas Lawrence
Sir Thomas Lawrence (13 April 1769 – 7 January 1830) was an English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. A child prodigy, he was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper at t ...
also painted him.[Levey 2005: 49–59]
His wife, Mary Impey, is commemorated in the name of the Impeyan pheasant (''Lophophorus impejanus'').
Further reading
*James Fitzjames Stephen, ''The Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey'' (1885).
''Memoirs of Sir Elijah Impey, Knt ... with anecdotes of Warren Hastings, Sir Philip Francis, Nathaniel Brassey Hallhed, Esq., and other contemporaries;''
(1846)
Sources
References
External links
The story of Nuncomar and the impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey
Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection.
Cornell University Library Digital Collections
Exhibition of "Lady Impey’s Indian Bird Paintings"
at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (until 14 Apr 2013)
*"Memoirs of Sir Elijah Impey: Knt., First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature, at Fort William, Bengal; with Anecdotes of Warren Hastings, Sir Philip Francis, Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, Esq., and Other Contemporaries; Comp. from Authentic Documents, in Refutation of the Calumnies of the Right Hon. Thomas Babington Macaulay
(Google eBook)
Simpkin, Marshall, and Company, 1846
{{DEFAULTSORT:Impey, Elijah
1732 births
1809 deaths
British India judges
Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies
British MPs 1790–1796
18th-century British judges
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge