Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/74

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Francis Grant, afterwards president of the Royal Academy, for the East India Company, and is now in the India office. Pollock also sat for his likeness at the request of the committee of the United Service Club; and a marble bust, by Joseph Durham, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Pollock's second wife presented a portrait of her husband, in the uniform of a field-marshal, to the mess of the officers of the royal artillery at Woolwich.

Pollock was twice married—first, in 1810, to Frances Webbe, daughter of J. Barclay, sheriff of Tain. She died in 1848. By her he had five children: Annabella Homeria, married, first, to J. Harcourt of the Indian medical service, who was killed in the retreat from Kábul, and, secondly, to John Binney Key. Frederick, the eldest son, entered the royal engineers, and succeeded to the baronetcy; he married Laura Caroline, daughter of Henry Seymour Montagu of Westleton Grange, Suffolk, and in 1873 assumed the name of Montagu-Pollock; he died in 1874, and was succeeded by his son Sir Montagu, who has male issue. Sir George's second son, George David, F.R.C.S., of Early Wood, Surrey, was surgeon to St. George's Hospital, and surgeon-in-ordinary to King Edward VII, when Prince of Wales. Robert, a lieutenant in the Bengal horse artillery, died from the effects of a wound received at the battle of Mudki on 18 Dec. 1845 (he was aide-de-camp to his father in Afghanistan); and Archibald Reid Swiney of the Indian civil service. Pollock married, secondly, in 1852, Henrietta, daughter of George Hyde Wollaston of Clapham Common. She died on 14 Feb. 1872. Pollock's fame rests chiefly on his Afghanistan campaign. Although not a brilliant commander, he was a very efficient one. He took the greatest trouble in looking after his men, and made all his arrangements with great care and precision. Cautious and prudent, he husbanded his resources; but when he was ready to strike he was bold and determined. The Afghan campaign was a model of mountain warfare, and is a standing example in all textbooks on the subject.

[Despatches; Low's Life of Field-marshal Sir George Pollock, London, 1873; Stocqueler's Memorials of Afghanistan, Calcutta, 1843; Broadfoot's Career of Major George Broadfoot, London, 1888; Kaye's Hist. of the War in Afghanistan in 1838 to 1842, 3 vols.; Ann. Reg. 1842; Stocqueler's Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir William Nott, 2 vols. 1854.]

R. H. V.

POLLOCK, Sir JONATHAN FREDERICK (1783–1870), judge, third son of David Pollock, saddler, of Charing Cross, by his wife Sarah Homera, daughter of Richard Parsons, receiver-general of customs, and brother of Sir David Pollock [q. v.], and also of Field-marshal Sir George Pollock [q. v.], was born in the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on 23 Sept. 1783. He was educated at private schools, at St. Paul's School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a scholarship in 1804, but was nevertheless so poor that, but for the help afforded him by his tutor, the ‘unlucky Tavel’ of Byron's ‘Hints from Horace,’ he must have left the university without a degree. He graduated B.A. in 1806, being senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman, was elected fellow of his college in 1807, proceeded M.A. in 1809, and on 27 Nov. of the same year was called to the bar at the Middle Temple.

Uniting a retentive memory, great natural acumen, and tact in the management of juries, with a profound knowledge theoretical and practical of the common law, and a perfect mastery of accounts and mercantile usages, Pollock rapidly acquired an extensive practice both at Westminster and on the northern circuit, though among his rivals were Brougham and Scarlett. He took silk in Easter vacation 1827, and on 2 May 1831 was returned to parliament in the tory interest for the close borough of Huntingdon, which he continued to represent throughout his parliamentary career. He was knighted, 29 Dec. 1834, on accepting the office of attorney-general in Sir Robert Peel's first administration, which terminated on 9 April 1835; resumed the same office on the formation of Peel's second administration, 6 Sept. 1841, and held it until he was appointed lord chief baron of the exchequer, in succession to Lord Abinger [see Scarlett, Sir James], 15 April 1844.

In the court of exchequer Pollock presided with distinction for nearly a quarter of a century, during which the practice of the courts was materially modified by the Common Law Procedure Acts of 1852 and 1854. He loyally accepted these reforms, and carried them into practical effect. His learned and luminous judgments are contained in the ‘Reports’ of Meeson and Welsby (vol. xii. et seq.), the ‘Exchequer Reports,’ and the ‘Reports’ of Hurlstone and Norman, and Hurlstone and Coltman. In the great case of Egerton v. Brownlow, in the House of Lords, he was almost alone among the judges in the opinion which the lords ultimately adopted. Though place cannot be claimed for him among the most illustrious of the sages of the law, he yields to none in the second rank. On his retirement in 1866 he received, on 24 July, a baronetcy. In later life Pollock resumed the studies of his youth. To the Royal So-