Patrick Colquhoun (lawyer)

Sir Patrick (Macchombaich de) Colquhoun QC (13 April 1815 – 18 May 1891) was a British diplomat, legal writer and sculler who was considered the father of Cambridge rowing.

Colquhoun was the son of James Colquhoun and the grandson of the Patrick Colquhoun who was Lord Provost of Glasgow.[1][2][3] He was educated at Westminster and St John's College, Cambridge.[4] In 1837 he won the Wingfield Sculls [5] and in the same year instituted the Colquhoun Sculls at the University of Cambridge.[6]

From 1840 to 1844, Colquhoun was Plenipotentiary of the Hanse Towns at Constantinople, Persia and Greece, through his father's connections. [7] In Constantinople he was close friends with James Redhouse. He encountered the author George Borrow on his travels and was not impressed.[8] He then returned to England and joined the Home Circuit. He was well respected in the literary world and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1845. Charles Leland wrote Who that knows London knoweth not Sir Patrick Colquhoun? I made his acquaintance in 1848, when, coming over from student-life in Paris.[9] He was also a noted linguist. From 1857 to 1866, he was Aulic Counsellor to the King of Saxony and standing Counsel to the Saxon Legation. He was then member of the Supreme Court of Justice in Corfu from 1858 to 1861. In 1861, when he was Chief Justice of the Ionian Islands, he was knighted on 14 November.[10] Colquhoun became Queen's Counsel in 1868 and a bencher of the Inner Temple in 1869.

Colquhoun died at 2 King's Bench Walk at the age of 76. He was a member of the Order of the Temple and associated with fringe Freemasonry.[11]

Colquhoun married Katherine de St Vitalis. Their daughter married Sir James Redhouse.[12]

Publications

References

  1. ^  Foster, Joseph (1885). "Colquhoun, Patrick". Men-at-the-Bar (second ed.). London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney. p. 95. 
  2. ^  Pollard, Albert Frederick (1901). "Colquhoun, Patrick Macchombaich". In Sidney Lee. Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement​. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 50–51. 
  3. ^ The Dictionary of National Biography erroneously calls him the great-grandson of the other Patrick Colquhoun rather than his grandson (see the Men-at-the-Bar citation here which says so, and also the Alumni Cantabrigienses (Venn) and Gentleman's magazine citations in the James Colquhoun article, which concur; also note the dates of birth are 35 years apart in each case: 1745, 1780, 1815, which leaves little room for an additional intervening generation).
  4. ^ Colquhoun, Patrick [Macchombaich] in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
  5. ^ Sport, ancient and modern: Pastimes, A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 2: General; Ashford, East Bedfont with Hatton, Feltham, Hampton with Hampton Wick, Hanworth, Laleham, Littleton (1911), pp. 283-292. Date accessed: 08 October 2008
  6. ^ Sport, A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 5 (1973), pp. 279-303 Date accessed: 09 October 2008
  7. ^ William Schaw Lindsay History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce 1874 by Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, London"
  8. ^ Elizabeth Robins Pennell Charles Godfrey Leland a Biography Part Two Kessinger Publishing, 2004 ISBN 1417941847, 9781417941841
  9. ^ Charles Godfrey Leland The Gypsies.
  10. ^ William Arthur Shaw The Knights of England
  11. ^ Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon Fringe masonry in England 1870-1885
  12. ^  Harris, Charles Alexander (1896). "Redhouse, James William". In Sidney Lee. Dictionary of National Biography. 47. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 381.