Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/262

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Maconochie
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Maconochie

1837, and died on 4 Oct. 1883; (3) William Maximilian George, formerly a captain in the Bengal light cavalry; (4) Henry Dundas; (5) Charles; (6) Isabella Cornelia Halket; (7) Elizabeth Browne; (8) Mary Anne, the wife of Steward Baillie Hare of Calder Hall; (9) Anne Boswell, who died on 9 April 1882; and (10) Harriet. His widow died on 28 Jan. 1866. A portrait of Maconochie, painted by Sir Henry Raeburn in 1816, was exhibited at the Raeburn Exhibition at Edinburgh in 1876 (Catalogue, No. 69).

Two etchings of Maconochie appear in the second volume of Kay's ' Series of Original Portraits' (Nos. 317 and 320). The 'substance' of his speech 'in the House of Commons on Thursday, 1 April 1819, on the motion of the Right Hon. Lord Archibald Hamilton for an Address to his Majesty, for production of the proceedings before His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council respecting the Burgh of Aberdeen,' was published m 1819 (Edinburgh, 8vo). He reprinted Lord Brougham's 'Memoir of the late Hon. Allan Maconochie of Meadowbank,' &c. (Edinburgh, 1815, 8vo, privately printed), which originally appeared in the third number of the 'Law Review' (art. v.)

[Kay's Series of Original Portraits, &c, 1877, i. 316, 351, ii. 21, 353, 432-4, 444, 450, 451; Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice, 1832, p. 550; Omond's Lord Advocates of Scotland, 1883, ii. 225, 231-55; Cockburn's Circuit Journeys, 1889; Anderson's Scottish Nation, 1863, iii. 60, 634; Grant's Old and New Edinburgh, i. 350, ii. 199, 227; Burke's Landed Gentry, 1886, ii. 1203; History of the Society of Writers to the Signet, 1890, p. 138; Ann. Reg. 1861, pp. 467-8; Scots Mag. 1805 p. 406, 1862 pp. 228-30; Gent. Mag. 1813 pt. i. p. 281, 1816 pt. ii. p. 79, 1843 pt. ii. p. 645; Return of Members of Parliament, pt. ii. pp. 264, 269, 281.]

G. F. R. B.


MACONOCHIE, ALLAN, Lord Meadowbank (1748–1816), Scottish judge, only son of Alexander Maconochie of Meadowbank, Midlothian, by his wife Isabella, daughter of the Rev. Walter Allan, minister of Colin ton in the same county, was born on 26 Jan. 1748. He was educated privately by Dr. Alexander Adam [q. v.], afterwards rector of the high school of Edinburgh. He subsequently entered the university of Edinburgh, where he attended the law classes, and was apprenticed to Thomas Tod, a well-known writer to the signet. In 1764 Maconochie, with William Creech [q.v.], John Bruce (1745–1826) [q. v.], Henry Mackenzie, and two other fellow-students, founded the Speculative Society, 'an institution which has trained more young men to public speaking, talent, and liberal thought than all the other private institutions in Scotland' (Cockburn, Memorials of his Time, 1856, pp. 73-4). Having completed his university course in 1768, Maconochie went to reside at Paris for a short time. He passed advocate on 8 Dec. 1770, and was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn (16 April 1771), but was never called to the English bar. He subsequently returned to France, where he remained till 1773. In 1774 he was elected to the general assembly as lay representative of the burgh of Dunfermline. Maconochie was appointed professor of public law and law of nature and nations in the university of Edinburgh on 16 July 1779 (Laing, Catalogue of Edinburgh Graduates, 1858, p. xix), and on 18 Dec. following was elected treasurer of the Faculty of Advocates. In 1788 he became sheriff-depute of Renfrewshire. He was one of the eight advocates who took an active part in procuring the rejection of Henry Erskine (1746-1817) [q. v.] as dean of the faculty in January 1796 (Omond, Lord Advocates, ii. 168). tie succeeded Alexander Abercromby [q. v.] as an ordinary lord of session, and took his seat on the bench as Lord Meadowbank on 11 March 1796. In the same year he resigned his professorship. Maconochie was appointed a lord of justiciary in the place of David Smy the of Methven on 4 Sept. 1804, and was constituted one of the three lords commissioners of the newly appointed jury court on 9 May 1815. His health, however, had already begun to fail, and he took little part in the proceedings of the new court, which was opened for the first time on 22 Jan. 1816. lie died at Coates House, near Edinburgh, on 14 June 1816, aged 68, and was buried in the private burial-ground on the Meadowbank estate, in the parish of Kirknewton, where there is a monument to his memory.

Maconochie was a very able judge, of singular ingenuity and much eccentricity. Brougham, m the case of Inglis v. Mansfield, referred to him as i one of the best lawyers — one of the most acute men — a man of large general capacity and of great experience and, with hardly any exception, certainly with very few exceptions, the most diligent and attentive judge one can remember in the practice of the Scotch law' (Shaw and {sc|Maclean}}, Cases decided in the House of Lords, 1836, i. 325). Jeffrey, too, had a very high opinion of him, and 'the prospect of meeting with this powerful and entertaining intellect was always a temptation to Jeffrey to take a case on the criminal circuit' (Cockburn, Life of Lord Jeffrey, 1852, i. 178-9). According to Cockbum, Maconochie ' took great