# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Twiss, Travers

1904 Errata appended.
​TWISS, Sir TRAVERS (1809–1897), civilian, eldest son of the Rev. Robert Twiss by his wife, Fanny Walker, was born in Gloucester Place, Marylebone, on 19 March 1809. From his mother, Anne Travers, Robert Twiss inherited an estate at Hoseley, Flint. He died unbeneficed at his town residence, 35 Hamilton Terrace, on 23 Nov. 1857.
Travers matriculated on 5 April 1826 from University College, Oxford, where he gained a scholarship next year. He graduated B.A. (first class in mathematics, second class in classics) in 1830, M.A. in 1832, B.C.L. by commutation in 1835, and D.C.L. in 1841. From 1830 until his marriage in 1863 he was a fellow of University College, and he acted as bursar in 1835, dean in 1837, and tutor from 1836 to 1843. In 1864 he was elected an honorary fellow. He thrice served—a very unusual distinction—the offices of public examiner in both the arts schools, in literis humanioribus in 1835 and the two following years, and in disciplinis mathematicis 1838–1840. Twiss was one of the few Oxford men of his day who possessed a competent knowledge of German, and his ‘Epitome of Niebuhr's History of Rome’ (1836, 2 vols. 8vo) helped to redeem the university from the reproach of obscurantism. A dissertation by him ‘On the Amphitheatre of Pola in Istria’ appeared in the transactions of the Ashmolean Society in 1836. He condensed the principal results of the Niebuhrian criticism in an annotated edition of Livy—‘Livii Patavini Historiarum Libri … animadversiones Niebuhrii, Wachsmuthii, et suas addidit Travers Twiss,’ Oxford, 1840–1, 4 vols. 8vo.
Meanwhile Twiss was devoting himself to a study of law, political economy, and international politics. On 19 Feb. 1835, he was admitted a student at Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar on 28 Jan. 1840, and elected a bencher on 19 Jan. 1858. On 2 Nov. 1841 he was admitted a member of the college of advocates. In succession to John Herman Merivale [q. v.] he held at Oxford for the quinquennial term 1842–7 the Drummond chair of political economy. His contributions to economic science were merely perfunctory, a few professorial lectures: ‘On Money;’ ‘On Machinery’ (two); and ‘On Certain Tests of a Thriving Population’ (four), Oxford, 1843–5. The bent of his mind, concrete, cautious, inductive, was indeed entirely alien to the Ricardian dogmatism then in vogue, while he lacked the originative faculty necessary for striking out a path for himself. His concluding course, however, entitled ‘View of the Progress of Political Economy in Europe since the Sixteenth Century’ (London, 1847, 8vo), is not without historic value.
It was on questions of international law that he was gradually concentrating his attention. In 1852 he was elected to the chair of international law at King's College, ​London, and held it until 1855. In that year he succeeded Joseph Phillimore [q. v.] at Oxford in the regius professorship of civil law. That professorship he retained until 1870. His work as regius professor bore fruit in ‘Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law’ (London, 1856, 8vo) and ‘The Law of Nations considered as Independent Political Communities,’ a systematic treatise on the entire science (Oxford, 1861–3, 2 vols. 8vo; 2nd edit. 1875; new edit. revised and enlarged, vol. i. only, 1884). An early member of the Social Science Association, he presided in 1862 over the department of international law, and afterwards served on the standing committee for the same subject.
Notwithstanding the wealth of his academic distinctions, few men had less of the academic spirit than Twiss. Keenly alive to the problems of the hour, he issued in 1846 ‘The Oregon Question examined with respect to Facts and the Law of Nations.’ An American issue of the same date was entitled ‘The Oregon Territory: its History and Discovery.’ In 1848 Twiss published ‘The Relations of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to the Crown of Denmark and the Germanic Confederation,’ London, 1848, 8vo (German translation among the ‘Beiträge zur Schleswig-Holsteinischen Frage,’ Leipzig, 1849, 8vo). ‘Hungary: its Constitution and its Catastrophe,’ followed in 1850, and on the occasion of the creation of the Roman catholic bishoprics in England in 1851, Twiss wrote ‘The Letters Apostolic of the Pope Pius IX considered with reference to the Law of England and the Law of Europe,’ London, 1851, 8vo [see Bowyer, Sir George, (1811–1883)]. He was selected by government on 20 Nov. 1850 as one of the commissioners for the delimitation of the frontier between New Brunswick and Canada (Parl. Pap. 1851, c. 1394). He was also a member of the royal commission appointed on 19 Sept. 1853 to inquire into the management and government of Maynooth College (ib. 1854–6, c. 1896), and of several subsequent royal commissions—viz. that of 22 March 1865 for the comparison of the various marriage laws in force throughout the queen's dominions, that of 3 June 1867 on rituals and rubrics, and those of 30 Jan. 1867 and 21 May 1868 on the laws of neutrality, naturalisation, and allegiance (ib. 1867 c. 3951, 1867–8 cc. 4016, 4027, 4057).
Meanwhile Twiss had secured much practice in the ecclesiastical courts. He was appointed in June 1849 commissary-general of the city and diocese; and in March 1852, in succession to Sir John Dodson [q. v.], vicar-general of the province of Canterbury and commissary of the archdeaconry of Suffolk. On the transference (1857) of the testamentary and matrimonial jurisdiction from the ecclesiastical courts to the new civil court of probate and divorce, he took silk (January 1858). On 17 July 1858 he succeeded Dr. Stephen Lushington [q. v.] as chancellor of the diocese of London. He practised with no less distinction in the admiralty court, was engaged in most of the prize cases which arose from captures made during the Crimean war, and was appointed in September 1862 to the office of admiralty advocate-general in succession to Sir Robert Joseph Phillimore [q. v.], whom he again succeeded as queen's advocate-general on 23 Aug. 1867. He was knighted on 4 Nov. following.
This brilliant professional career was suddenly arrested. Twiss had married at Dresden, on 29 Aug. 1862, Marie Pharialdé Rosalind Van Lynseele, who was stated to be the orphan daughter of a general officer of the Polish army. She was understood to have moved in good society both at Dresden and at Brussels, and was twice presented at the court of St. James's—once in 1863 and again in 1869. Her married life was irreproachable. But in March 1872 Twiss and his wife prosecuted in the Southwark police-court for malicious libel, with intent to extort, a solicitor who had circulated statements imputing immorality to Lady Twiss before her marriage. The ordeal of cross-examination proved to be too severe for Lady Twiss's powers of endurance, and her sudden departure from London caused the collapse of the prosecution (14 March 1872). Twiss thereupon resigned his offices (21 March) and ceased to practise. On 19 April the lord chamberlain announced in the ‘London Gazette’ that Lady Twiss's presentation at court had been cancelled.
Thenceforth Twiss devoted himself exclusively to juridical science and scholarship. He had already edited (Rolls Ser. 1871, 8vo) ‘The Black Book of the Admiralty,’ a reconstruction from various manuscript fragments of the substance of that unique source of mediæval maritime law then supposed to be irretrievably lost, of which his researches led to the recovery. In three subsequent volumes (1873, 1874, 1876) he collected as appendices under the same title the original texts of the Domesday of Ipswich, the Customaries of Oleron and Rouen, the Charter of Oleron, the Consulate of the Sea, the Laws of Amalfi and Gotland (with the summary of the latter known as the Laws of Wisby), the Codes of the Teutonic Order of Livonia, of Danzig, Lübeck, Flanders, Valencia, the ​Kingdom of Jerusalem, and Trani, the whole forming a singularly rich mine of material for the legal archæologist.
On the other hand in the recension of Bracton, contributed by him to the same series, ‘Henricus de Bracton de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ,’ 1878–83, 6 vols. 8vo, he essayed a task to which his patience, if not his powers, proved unequal; and a satisfactory text of that sadly corrupted and interpolated legal classic remains a desideratum (cf. Vinogradoff on ‘The Text of Bracton’ in Law Quarterly Review, i. 189 et seq.). An edition by him of the earlier treatise of Ranulf de Glanville [q. v.] was sanctioned in 1884, and announced as in the press in 1890, but has not appeared.
Twiss assisted at the inauguration at Brussels on 10 Oct. 1873 of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, of which he was vice-president for England, and was for many years one of the most active members. From 1874 he was also a member of the cognate Institute of International Law founded at Ghent on 8 Sept. 1873, and acted vice-president in 1878, 1879, and 1885. He assisted the king of the Belgians in shaping the constitution of the Independent Congo State, and as counsel extraordinary to the British embassy at Berlin took part in the labours of the congress held in that capital, November 1884 to February 1885, at which the new polity received European recognition. Unique value thus attaches to the chapter on this unusually important congress which concludes the first volume of the French version (revised by Professor Rivier of Brussels) of Twiss's great treatise on ‘The Law of Nations’ (‘Le Droit des Gens ou des Nations,’ Paris, vol. i. 1887, vol. ii. 1889, 8vo).
Twiss died on 14 Jan. 1897 at his residence, 6 Whittingstall Road, Fulham; his remains were interred in Fulham cemetery on 20 Jan. As a jurist his fame chiefly rests on the ‘Law of Nations,’ which, in the French edition, is a standard work. Though an acute and ingenious he was hardly an original thinker; and his scholarship was as inaccurate as his style was diffuse.
Among Twiss's uncollected dissertations may be specified the following: 1. ‘La Neutralisation du Canal de Suez’ (‘Rev. de Droit Internat.’ tome vii. 682 et seq.). 2. ‘The Exterritoriality of Public Ships of War in Foreign Waters’ (‘Law Mag. and Rev.’ 1876). 3. ‘The Applicability of the European Law of Nations to African Slave States’ (ib. May 1876). 4. ‘The Criminal Jurisdiction of the Admiralty: the Case of the Franconia’ (ib. February 1877). 5. ‘On the International Jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court in Civil Matters’ (ib. May 1877). 6. ‘The Doctrine of Continuous Voyages as applied to Contraband of War and Blockade’ (ib. November 1877); reprinted the same year in pamphlet form, London, 8vo. 7. ‘Albericus Gentilis on the Right of War’ (ib. February 1878). 8. ‘Collisions at Sea: a Scheme of International Tribunals’ (ib. November 1878). 9. ‘On the Treaty-making Power of the Crown: Le Parlement Belge’ (ib. May 1879). 10. ‘On Jurisprudence and the Amendment of the Law’ (ib. November 1879). 11. ‘The Alleged Discovery of the Remains of Columbus’ (‘Naut. Mag.’ June 1879; reprinted the same year as ‘Columbus: his Last Resting Place’). 12. ‘Cyprus: its Mediæval Jurisprudence and Modern Legislation’ (‘Law Mag. and Rev.’ May 1880). 12. ‘The Conflict of Marriage Laws’ (ib. November 1882). 13. ‘The Freedom of the Navigation of the Suez Canal’ (ib. February 1883). 14. Leibnitz's ‘Memoir upon Egypt’ (ib. May 1883). 15. ‘An International Protectorate of the Congo River’ (ib. November 1883). 16. ‘De la Sécurité de la Navigation dans le Canal de Suez’ (‘Rev. de Droit Internat.’ xiv. 572 et seq.). 17. ‘La Libre Navigation du Congo’ (ib. xv. 467 et seq. and 547 et seq., xvi. 237 et seq.). 18. ‘Des Droits de Belligérants sur Mer depuis la Déclaration de Paris’ (ib. xvi. 113 et seq.); also in English (pamphlet form) with title ‘Belligerent Right on the High Seas since the Declaration of Paris,’ London, 1884, 8vo. 19. ‘Le Congrès de Vienne et la Conférence de Berlin’ (ib. xvii. 201 et seq.). 20. ‘Le Canal Maritime de Suez et la Commission Internationale de Paris’ (ib. xvii. 615 et seq.). 21. ‘On International Conventions for the Neutralisation of Territory and their Application to the Suez Canal’ (‘Law Mag. and Law Rev.’ November 1887). 22. ‘La Juridiction Consulaire dans les Pays de l'Orient et spécialement au Japon’ (‘Rev. de Droit Internat.’ xxv. 213 et seq.). 23. ‘The Twelfth Century, the Age of Scientific Judicial Procedure. i. Magister Ricardus Anglicus, the Pioneer of Scientific Judicial Procedure in the Twelfth Century. ii. The Pseudo-Ulpian (Ulpianus de Edendo). The Latter Days of Ricardus Anglicus’ (‘Law Mag. and Law Rev.’ May 1894). 24. ‘Ricardus Anglicus and the Thirteenth Century, the Age of Scientific Law Amendment’ (ib. November 1894). 25. Review of Professors Pollock and Maitland's ‘History of English Law before the Time of Edward I’ (ib. November 1895). 26. ‘An International Arbitration in the Middle Ages’ (ib. November 1896). ​Twiss also contributed to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ (9th edit.) the articles Archbishop, Archdeacon, Bishop, Convocation, and Sea Laws.
J. M. R.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.268 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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