he was also knighted. He served during his legal career upon a great number of royal commissions, such as the Maynooth Commission in 1854, and others dealing with marriage law, neutrality, naturalisation and allegiance. His reputation abroad led to his being invited in 1884 by Leopold II, king of the Belgians, to draw up the constitution of the Congo Free State. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1838. Scandal In 1871, Twiss became involved in an unpleasant scandal, which brought his career to an end. In 1862 he had married the 22-year-old Marie van Lynnseele, who he presented as the daughter of a Polish aristocrat. A solicitor named Alexander Chaffers claimed that Marie was in reality a French former prostitute who went by the name "Marie Gelas", and had been Twiss's mistress before their marriage. Chaffers, who also claimed to have been one of her lovers, was allegedly blackmailing her, sending her bills for imaginary "services rendered", which she initially paid. When she refused to pay any more, Chaffers made a statutory declaration about her, which he sent to various bishops and to the Lord Chamberlain. Charges of libel were brought against Chaffers, but were dropped when Marie Twiss broke down under ruthless cross-examination by Chaffers and then fled the country. Twiss was humiliated. He resigned from all his appointments and lived in retirement in London until his death. He never again saw his wife. Chaffers' subsequent vexatious litigation led to the passing of the Vexatious Actions Act in 1896. Twiss continued to research and publish on aspects of international law and kindred topics. Among his more notable publications of this period were The Law of Nations in Peace and The Law of Nations in War. Bibliography Published works, written by Travers Twiss, include: 1846: The Oregon Territory : Its History and Discovery. New York : Appleton. 1847: View of the Progress of Political Economy in Europe since the Sixteenth Century. London : Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1871: Monumenta juridica : the black book of the admiralty. London : Longman & Co. 1879: On international conventions for the maintenance of sea-lights. Paper presented at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations. 1884: The law of nations considered as independent political communities : on the rights and duties of nations in time of peace. Oxford