Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Porter, Andrew Marshall
PORTER, Sir ANDREW MARSHALL, first baronet (1837–1919), judge, was born in Belfast 27 June 1837, the eldest son of the Rev. John Scott Porter, Unitarian minister [q.v.], by his wife, Margaret, daughter of Andrew Marshall, M.D., a surgeon in the royal navy, who had served with Nelson. Educated at the Belfast Academic Institution, Andrew Porter graduated with distinction at Queen's College, Belfast, in 1856. He was called to the Irish bar (King's Inns, Dublin), in 1860, and joined the North-East circuit. His sound legal knowledge and exceptional aptitude for commercial cases gained early recognition, and secured him a fine practice as a junior. He became Q.C. in 1872, and a bencher in 1878, and soon established his position as a leader, proving himself a great advocate among the many great advocates, his contemporaries, at the bar of Ireland. Natural gifts enhanced his legal attainments: his fine presence, good voice, and lucid, attractive style made him a most effective orator.
Porter's political affinities were with the liberal party, which possessed a great and growing influence in Ulster until its disruption as the result of Gladstone's adoption of the policy of Home Rule. He represented county Londonderry in parliament from 1881 to 1883, and was appointed solicitor-general for Ireland in 1881, and attorney-general and privy councillor in 1883. When he entered parliament the ferocious and elusive audacity of the Land League agitation was paralysing Ireland, while at Westminster Charles Stewart Parnell [q.v.] was directing the nationalists in a policy of turbulence and obstruction. Porter's sagacity and firmness in administration and his imperturbability in debate greatly impressed his colleagues, and Gladstone more than once urged him to adopt a political career, offering him in 1882 the Irish chief secretaryship with the prospect of further advancement.
Porter's ambitions, however, were essentially forensic, and he declined to deviate from the path of his profession. As attorney-general he prosecuted, under circumstances of no little personal peril, the Phoenix Park murderers, as well as the ringleaders of the ‘Invincibles’ and other secret societies which were then terrorizing the community; his conduct of these remarkable trials further advanced his reputation at the bar. In December 1883, when Sir Edward Sullivan, the master of the Rolls in Ireland, became lord chancellor, Porter was raised to the bench as his successor. Although his practice had been mainly on the common law side, he proved himself a great chancery judge, and many of his judgments embody illuminating expositions of doctrines of equity. Few of his decisions were ever successfully challenged on appeal. He took great care, also, to expedite the administrative progress in chambers of the causes in his court. He was in temperament sensitive and retiring, and a reserved demeanour coupled with a commendable impatience of irrelevancy sometimes led to his judicial attitude being misinterpreted as austere. But the bar regarded him with affectionate admiration, and his retirement in 1906, after he had held the mastership of the Rolls during the unprecedented period of twenty-three years, was regretted as a public loss.
Porter was created a baronet in 1902. He married in 1869 Agnes Adinston, daughter of Colonel Alexander Horsbrugh, of Horsbrugh, Peeblesshire, and had four sons and two daughters. His second son, Andrew Marshall, a promising scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, was killed on active service in the Boer War. Porter died in Dublin 9 January 1919, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, John Scott Porter (born 1871), who assumed the additional name of Horsbrugh.
[Private information; personal and professional knowledge.]