James Moncreiff, 1st Baron Moncreiff

James Moncreiff, 1st Baron Moncreiff FRSE (29 November 1811 – 27 April 1895) was a Scottish lawyer and politician.

Life

The son of Sir James Wellwood Moncreiff, 9th Baronet, a Scottish judge, and Ann, daughter of George Robertson, R. N., he was educated at Edinburgh University, and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1833. He was appointed Solicitor General for Scotland in 1850, and Lord Advocate from 1851 to 1852, from 1852 to 1858, from 1859 to 1866 and from 1868 to 1869. He was Dean of the Faculty of Advocates from 1858 to 1869. He was appointed Lord Justice Clerk from 1869 to 1888.

Moncrieff was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1869. He was Rector of the University of Glasgow from 1868 to 1871, and held the degrees of LLD from both Edinburgh and Glasgow universities.

Moncrieff was Member of Parliament for Leith Burghs from 1851 to 1859, for Edinburgh from 1859 to 1868 and for Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities in 1868. During a long career in parliament Moncreiff guided the passing of over a hundred acts of parliament, and his name is associated with the reform of legal procedure and mercantile law. As lord advocate he was engaged as public prosecutor in important cases, notably the trials of Madeline Smith, Wielobycki, and the directors of the Western bank. In 1856, he defended the Scotsman in the libel action raised by Duncan McLaren, one of the members for the city of Edinburgh.

In January 1857, Moncrieff was presented with the freedom of his native city for the part he took in regard to the Municipal Extension Act. In 1859, he became lieutenant-colonel of the first rifle volunteer corps in Scotland, that of the city of Edinburgh. In 1860, he helped pass the annuity tax bill, a subject in which, as a free churchman, he took close interest, and in the following year he carried the major bill relating to burgh and parochial schools. In 1861 he was engaged as leading counsel in the defence of Sir William Johnston, one of the directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow bank, and in 1863-4 he was counsel in the famous Yelverton case.

For nineteen years Lord Moncreiff occupied the judicial bench, presiding over the trials in the justiciary court of Chantrelle (1878), the City of Glasgow Bank directors (1878), the dynamitards (1883), and the crofters (1886).

Extrajudicially Moncreiff was occupied in many other matters. As a lecturer he was in great request, and delivered numerous orations in Edinburgh and Glasgow on subjects of literary, scientific, and political interest to the Philosophical Institution, Royal Society, Juridical Society, Scots Law Society, and other bodies. Moncreiff also published anonymously in 1871 a novel entitled A Visit to my Discontented Cousin, which was reprinted, with additions, from Fraser's Magazine. He was also a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review.

In 1858 Moncreiff received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh University; from 1868 to 1871 he was rector of Glasgow University, from which he received the degree of LL.D. in 1879, and in 1869 he was appointed a member of the privy council. On 17 May 1871 he was created a baronet; on 1 January 1874 he was made a baron of the United Kingdom ; in 1878 he was appointed a royal commissioner under the Endowed Institutions (Scotland) Act, and in 1883 he succeeded his brother as eleventh baronet of Tullibole.

In September 1888, Moncreiff resigned the position of lord justice-clerk, and took up the preparation of his Memorials. On these he was engaged till his death on 27 April 1895.

Family

Lord Moncreiff married, on 12 September 1834, Isabella Bell (d.1881), only daughter of Robert Bell, procurator of the Church of Scotland, and Sheriff of Berwickshire and Haddingtonshire. They lived at 47 Moray Place in the west end of Edinburgh.

They had five sons and two daughters. His eldest son Henry Moncreiff, 2nd Baron Moncreiff sat from 1888 under the title of Lord Wellwood, as a lord of session.

References

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stronach, George (1901). "Moncreiff, James (1811-1895)". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 184–186.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by James Moncreiff
• Portrait and family details