Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/198

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4. ‘A Letter from Lord Viscount Melville to the Right Hon. Spencer Perceval on the subject of Naval Timber,’ London, 1810, 8vo. 5. ‘A Letter from the Right Hon. Lord Viscount Melville to the Earl of Aberdeen relative to the Management of the Civil Service of the Navy,’ London [1810], 4to. 6. ‘Letters from the Right Hon. Henry Dundas to the Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company upon an Open Trade to India,’ London, 1813, 8vo.

[Omond's Lord Advocates of Scotland (1883), ii. 83–162; Omond's Arniston Memoirs (1887); Anderson's Scottish Nation (1863), ii. 97–9; Chalmers's Biog. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen (1868), i. 513–19; Stanhope's Life of Pitt (1861–2); Mahon's Hist. of England (1851–4), vols. vi–viii.; Donne's Correspondence of King George the Third with Lord North (1867), ii. 139, 245; Mill's Hist. of British India (1858), vols. iv. v. vi.; Brougham's Statesmen of the Time of George III, 1st ser. (1839), pp. 227–35, Foster's Peerage (1883), p. 483; Annual Register, 1811, chron. pp. 190–1; Graduates in the University of Edinburgh (1858), p. 258; Scots Mag. 1765, xxvii. 391, 1793, lv. 205, 1811, lxxiii. 479–80; Official Return of Members of Parliament.]

DUNDAS, HENRY, third Viscount Melville (1801–1876), general, eldest son of Robert Saunders Dundas, second viscount Melville [q. v.], was born on 25 Feb. 1801. He entered the army as an ensign and lieutenant in the 3rd or Scots guards on 18 Nov. 1819, was promoted captain into the 83rd regiment in April 1824, and major and lieutenant-colonel on 11 July 1826 and 3 Dec. 1829. He was M.P. for Rochester from 1826 to 1830, and for Winchelsea in 1830–1. His regiment was in Canada when the rebellion of 1837 broke out, and Dundas showed such vigour in its suppression, and more particularly in repelling a body of American brigands who landed near Prescott in Upper Canada in 1838, that he was made a C.B. and promoted colonel and appointed an aide-de-camp to the queen on 28 Nov. 1841. He exchanged into the 60th Rifles in 1844, and accompanied his battalion to India, and was appointed a brigadier-general on the Bombay staff in 1847. He was chosen to command the column sent from Bombay to co-operate with Lord Gough's army in the second Sikh war, and was present at the siege and capture of Multán as second in command to General Whish, and joined the main army just before the battle of Goojerat. In that battle his division played a leading part; he was mentioned in despatches, received the thanks of parliament and of the directors of the East India Company, and was made a K.C.B. He returned to England in 1850, and succeeded his father as third viscount in 1851. He was promoted major-general on 20 June 1854, and commanded the forces in Scotland from 1856 to 1860, in which year he was made governor of Edinburgh Castle. He was promoted lieutenant-general on 5 May 1860, was colonel of the 100th foot 1858–62, of the 32nd foot 1862–3, and became colonel-commandant of the 60th rifles on 1 April 1863, general on 1 Jan. 1868, and G.C.B. in 1870. Lord Melville, who was vice-president of the council of the Royal Archers, the Royal Body Guard for Scotland, died unmarried at Melville Castle, near Edinburgh, on 1 Feb. 1876.

[Times, 4 Feb. 1876.]

DUNDAS, Sir JAMES, first Lord Arniston (d. 1679), son of Sir James Dundas of Arniston, Midlothian, governor of Berwick under James I, by Marie, daughter of George Home of Wedderburn, was educated at the university of St. Andrews. In 1639 he signed the ‘national covenant;’ in 1640 he was appointed an elder of the church, and on 16 Nov. 1641 he was knighted by Charles I. He represented Edinburgh in parliament in 1648, and was commissioner for war within the sheriffdom of that city between 1643 and 1648, sat on a commission composed partly of lawyers and partly of laymen, to which the liquidation of the insolvent estates of the Earl of Stirling and Lord Alexander was referred in 1644; on a parliamentary committee of eighteen appointed to consider of dangers threatening religion, the covenant, and the monarchy, and how to meet them; on another ‘close and secret’ committee of six empowered to take steps rendered necessary by the presence of garrisons of ‘malignants and sectaries’ in Berwick and Carlisle in March 1648; and on 11 May was appointed one of the ‘committee of estates’ in which supreme power was vested during the adjournment of parliament. The same year he was also a member of a committee for considering of ecclesiastical matters in conference with the commissioners of the kirk, and was added to the ‘commission for the plantation of the kirks.’ He signed the solemn league and covenant, apparently with some reluctance, in 1650. From that date his history is a blank until we find him again a member of the commission for the plantation of kirks in 1661, and also one of the commissioners for raising the sum of 40,000l. granted to the king in that year. Though not a trained lawyer he was nominated an ordinary lord of session, and assumed the title of Lord Arniston, on 16 May 1662; and having satisfied the court of his knowledge of law was admitted to the College of Justice on 4 June. His tenure of office, however, was brief. In