David Dundas (solicitor)
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Sir David Dundas QC (1799-1877) was a Scottish lawyer and politician.
He was educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1823, and appointed Queen's Counsel in February 1840.
He was elected to represent Sutherland in Parliament as a Liberal in March 1840. In July 1846 he was appointed Solicitor General for England and Wales. At the time, it was the normal practice that accepting ministerial office caused a by-election; he was re-elected on July 28th. In February 1846 he was knighted, a traditional perquisite of the office, but he resigned the position in March 1848 due to ill-health and returned to the backbenches. In May 1849 he was appointed Judge Advocate General, again re-elected in a by-election on 5th June, and made a member of the Privy Council on June 29th.
He retired from politics in the 1852 general election, and was succeeded by George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, also a Liberal.
In retirement he lived and worked in his chambers at the Inner Temple; among other work, he served as a Trustee of the British Museum. His retirement from politics was not permanent; when Sutherland-Leveson-Gower was elevated to the House of Lords in March 1861 on becoming the 3rd Duke of Sutherland, Dundas returned to Parliament. He stood down again in May 1867, being succeeded by Ronald Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, the Duke's younger brother.
[edit] References
- Oliver & Boyd's new Edinburgh almanac and national repository for the year 1850. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh, 1850
- Gordon Goodwin, "Dundas, Sir David (1799–1877)", rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 11 July 2006
