prerogatives of a County Palatine and that although the Duke of Cornwall was not granted Royal Jurisdiction, was considered to be quasi-sovereign within his Duchy of Cornwall. The arbitration, as instructed by the Crown, was based on legal argument and documentation which led to the Cornwall Submarine Mines Act of 1858. In 1858, on the formation of Lord Derby's second administration, he was offered the office of Lord Chancellor, but declined. He was raised to the peerage as Baron Kingsdown, of Kingsdown in the County of Kent, the same year. In 1861 he was instrumental in the passing of the Wills Act 1861 (later known as Lord Kingsdown's Act), by which a will made out of the United Kingdom by a British subject is, as far as regards personal estate, good if made according to the forms required by the law of the place where it was made, or by the law of the testator's domicil at the time of making it, or by the law of the place of his domicil of origin. Primarily this had ramifications for members of the British armed forces (see also Legal history of wills). Personal life Lord Kingsdown funded the Kingsdown Church. A small booklet from the Redundant Churches Fund tells us that the population in 1865 was only 96 so a benefactor was essential. He supported the building of a new church on the site of the tumbledown mediaeval church that stood where today's nave stands. The church is a rare example of the work of Edward Welby Pugin, a noted ecclesiastical architect in Britain. Lord Kingsdown died at his seat, Torry Hill, near Sittingbourne, Kent, on 7 October 1867, aged 74. He never married, and his title died with him. Torry Hill stayed in the family, later known as the Leigh-Pembertons. Torry Hill was rebuilt to a Georgian design in the 1960s and only a Victorian gate-house remains on the estate. Lord Kingsdown's nephew Sir Edward Leigh Pemberton was the ancestor of Robin Leigh-Pemberton, who was created a life peer as Baron Kingsdown in 1993. He wrote Recollections of Life at the Bar and in Parliament (privately printed for friends, 1868); The Times (8 October 1867). See also Kingsdown, Swale Cornish Foreshore Case Barnhart v Greenshields (1853) 14 ER 204, on equitable interests of leases binding purchasers References External links 1793 births 1867 deaths Lawyers from London English barristers Tory MPs