An Affluent Conveyancer
While he was still an undergraduate, Senior decided to follow in his grandfather's footsteps and take up the law as a profession; as part of this, he was admitted as a member of Lincoln's Inn in 1810.
After graduation in 1812, Senior moved into lodgings in Bedford Square, London, although he was required to reside for part of the time in Oxford in order to meet MA requirements. Planning to practice in the Court of Chancery, Senior began to study the law of conveyancing and property. Conveyancers were principally concerned with the drawing up of deeds and mortgages, and in the conveyancing of estates. This was a very profitable branch of the law which usually involved searching for estates to purchase and the organisation and management of any related transactions. Senior's father arranged a pupillage with an eminent conveyancer, Edward Sugden of Lincoln's Inn (later Lord Chancellor), and at the end of 1813, Senior became embroiled with the laws and practices of his planned profession. In the same year, he also won an Oxford scholarship in Law founded by Charles Viner in the middle of the eighteenth century. As a Vinerian Scholar, Senior was entitled to receive an income of £30 per annum for ten years and was obliged to attend the lectures on common law given by the Vinerian Professor William Blackstone, son of Sir William Blackstone, author of the famous book Commentaries on the Laws of England (see Levy 1943: 78).As Senior's period of pupillage was drawing to a close in the middle of 1816, Sugden announced that he was planning to give up a substantial part of his conveyancing business to concentrate on chancery practice. Senior realised that an opportunity presented itself to take over some of Sugden's business. He had not yet been called to the Bar but was able to become a certified conveyancer allowing him to practice.
Much of Sugden's work was then divided between another pupil and Senior, who thereafter worked separately. Senior's business prospered and after two years provided him with £400 per year and links with three dozen attorneys. In June 1819, he was called to the Bar and in April 1821 felt prosperous enough to marry Mary Charlotte Mair. For the sake of his bride who disliked the sooty air in London the couple took a house in the then more countrified area and air of Kensington Square. From its windows, they could see William Cobbett working in his nursery gardens and James Mill was also a near neighbour.Their son Nassau John was born in 1822 and their daughter Mary Charlotte Mair, nicknamed Minnie, was born in 1825. A few years later, Senior built a larger house at 13 Hyde Park Gate where they entertained a variety of friends and colleagues from home and abroad from 1827 until 1863. Mary was moved by the later destruction of the house to ‘write down some recollections of the society once gathered within its walls' (Simpson 1898: vii). Malthus was ‘a great deal in the house' and she recalled John Stuart Mill striding up and down the dining room ‘talking energetically in his calm, measured tones' (ibid.: 8-10).
In 1833, a young man arrived at Senior's chambers unexpectedly and introduced himself as Alexis de Tocqueville, declaring that he would like to make his acquaintance. Despite the fact that they had never met before and that Tocqueville was at that time unknown, Senior took to the young man and they began a long friendship, with mutual visits and an extensive correspondence on economics, politics, international relations and a wide range of other topics which lasted for twenty-five years.
In 1836, Senior reached the height of his profession by being made a Master in Chancery by the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne. The post carried an annual salary of £2,500 (over £300,000 in today's terms). There were a dozen or so masters and one of their tasks, taken in turn, was to assist the Lord Chancellor who presided over the House of Lords.
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