but which proved to be groundless. In April 1779 he was appointed hydrographer to the East India Company; and in 1795, on the establishment of a hydrographic office at the admiralty, the appointment of hydrographer to the admiralty was offered to him. He accepted the offer, and held the appointment till 28 May 1808, when he was summarily dismissed in consequence, it is stated, of some offence caused by excess of zeal. Whatever this may have been, the dismissal preyed on Dalrymple's mind, and he died broken-hearted,’ just three weeks afterwards, on 19 June.
As the first to hold the post of hydrographer to the admiralty, Dalrymple's work was especially onerous and important, involving not only the collecting, collating, and publishing a large number of charts, but also the organising a department till then non-existent. This work he performed with industry and zeal, not always, perhaps, tempered by discretion. His services were unquestionably good, but he seems to have himself placed a higher value on them than his superiors for the time being did; and he was thus involved in frequent unpleasantnesses, and experienced frequent disappointments and mortifications, both at the admiralty and from the court of directors.
[European Magazine (November 1802), xlii. 323, with an engraved portrait, and a lengthy list of his publications, great and small; for which see also Catalogue of the British Museum; Naval Chronicle, xxxv. 177.]
DALRYMPLE, Sir DAVID (d. 1721), of Hailes, Haddington, was the fifth son of James, first Viscount Stair, by Margaret, eldest daughter of James Ross of Balniel, Wigton. He became a member of the Faculty of Advocates 3 Nov. 1688, was made a baronet 8 May 1700, represented Culross in the Scotch parliament in 1703, and was solicitor-general to Queen Anne. Having been in 1706 a commissioner to arrange the treaty of union, he was elected to the first parliament of Great Britain in February 1707, and represented the Haddington burghs from 1708 till his death. He was appointed queen's advocate in Scotland in 1709 at a salary of 1,000l. a year, and auditor to the Scotch exchequer in 1720. He married on 4 April 1691 Janet, daughter of Sir James Rochead of Inverleith, and widow of Alexander Murray of Melgund, and had three sons and three daughters, of whom James succeeded him in the baronetcy, and the second, Hugh, took, with the Melgund estates, the name of Murray of Kynnymond. Dalrymple died on 3 Dec. 1721.
[Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, ii. 525; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Rivington's Treasury Papers, 4 July 1709.]
DALRYMPLE, Sir DAVID, Lord Hailes (1726–1792), Scottish judge, was the eldest of sixteen children of Sir James Dalrymple, bart., of Hailes, in the county of Haddington, auditor of the exchequer of Scotland, and Lady Christian Hamilton. Alexander Dalrymple [q. v.] was a brother. David was born at Edinburgh on 28 Oct. 1726, and was descended on both sides from the nobility of the Scottish bar. His paternal grandfather, Sir David Dalrymple, was the youngest son of the first Viscount Stair, president of the court of session, and held the office of lord advocate for twelve years. His mother was a daughter of Thomas, sixth earl of Haddington, the lineal descendant of the first earl, who was secretary for Scotland from 1612 to 1616, and president of the court of session from 1616 till his death in 1637.
Dalrymple was sent to Eton to be educated, no doubt on account of the English leanings of a family who were steadfast supporters of the union and the house of Hanover. From Eton, where he acquired a high character for diligence and good conduct, and laid the foundation of his friendship with many of the English clergy, he went to Utrecht to study the civil law. The Dutch school of law had then a great reputation, due to the learning of Vinnius, Huber, Voet, Noodt, Bynkershoeck, Van Eck, and Schulting, and though these eminent civilians were all dead before Dalrymple studied at Utrecht, the influence of their works, especially Voet's, survived. Returning to Scotland at the close of the rebellion in 1746, Dalrymple was admitted to the bar on 23 Feb. 1748. The death of his father two years later put him in possession of a sufficient fortune to enable him to indulge his literary tastes. But he did not neglect professional studies. As an oral pleader he was not successful. A defect in articulation prevented him from speaking fluently, and he was naturally an impartial critic rather than a zealous advocate. Much of the business of litigation in Scotland at this time was conducted, however, by written pleadings, and he gained a solid reputation as a learned and accurate lawyer. There is no better specimen of such pleadings than the case for the Countess of Sutherland in her claim for that peerage in the House of Lords, which was drawn by Hailes as her guardian after he became judge. It won the cause, and is still appealed to by peerage lawyers for the demonstration of the descent of the older Scottish titles to and through females.
