Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Murray, Alexander (1736-1795)

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Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 39

Murray, Alexander (1736-1795) by George Fisher Russell Barker

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1341060Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 39 — Murray, Alexander (1736-1795)1894George Fisher Russell Barker

MURRAY, ALEXANDER, Lord Henderland (1736–1795), Scottish judge, born in Edinburgh in 1736, was the son of Archibald Murray of Murrayfield, near Edinburgh, advocate. He was called to the Scottish bar on 7 March 1758, and succeeded his father as sheriff-depute of the shire of Peebles in 1761, and as one of the commissaries of Edinburgh in 1765. On 24 May 1775 he was appointed solicitor-general for Scotland, and at the general election in September 1780 was returned to the House of Commons for Peeblesshire. The only speech he is recorded to have made in parliament was in opposition to Sir George Savile's motion relating to the petition of the delegated counties for a redress of grievances (Parl. Hist. xxii. 161-164). He succeeded Henry Home, lord Kames [q. v.], as an ordinary lord of session and a commissioner of the court of justiciary, and took his seat on the bench with the title of Lord Henderland on 6 March 1783. He took part in the trials for sedition at Edinburgh in 1793 (see Howell, State Trials, 1817, xxiii. 11 et seq.), and died of cholera at Murrayfield on 16 March 1795.

He married, on 15 March 1773, Katherine, daughter of Sir Alexander Lindsay of Evelick, Perthshire, bart., by whom he had, with other issue, Sir John Archibald Murray, lord Murray [q. v.] Henderland was joint clerk of the pipe in the court of exchequer, an office which, through the influence of Lord Melville, was subsequently conferred on his two sons. His 'Disputatio Juridica . . . de Divortiis et Repudiis,' &c., was published in 1758 (Edinburgh, 4to).

There is a small etching of Henderland in Kay's ' Original Portraits,' vol. i. (No. 99).

[Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice, 1832, p. 537; Kay's Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings, 1877, i. 243-4, 302, 307, 418, ii. 90, 346; Grant's Old and New Edinburgh, ii. 81, 255, 270, iii. 103-4; Foster's Members of Parliament, Scotland, 1882, p. 262; Burke's Landed Gentry; Scots Mag. xxiii. 224, xxvii. 448, xxxv. 222, lvii. 206.]