Nicholas Conyngham Tindal

Sir Nicolas Conyngham Tindal, PC (12 December 1776 – 6 July 1846) was a celebrated English lawyer who successfully defended the then Queen of the United Kingdom, Caroline of Brunswick, at her trial for adultery in 1820. As Chief Justice of Common Pleas, an office he held with distinction from 1829 to 1846, he was responsible for the inception of the special verdict "Not Guilty by reason of insanity" at the trial of Daniel M'Naghten. Judge Tindal was born in the Moulsham area of Chelmsford, where 199 Moulsham Street is today, and the site is marked with a commemorative plaque. Background Tindal's father, Robert Tindal, was an attorney in Chelmsford, where his family had lived at Coval Hall for three generations. His great-grandfather, Nicolas Tindal, was the translator and continuer of the History of England by Paul de Rapin – a seminal work in its day – and he was also the great great grandnephew of Matthew Tindal, the deist and author of Christianity as Old as the Creation (known as the 'deist's bible') and descendant of Thomas Clifford, 1st Baron Clifford of Chudleigh.