Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/204

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following inscription: “This ground, restored to liberty by the valour of the Republicans, was polluted by the body of Thomas Dundas, major-general and governor of Guadaloupe for the bloody King George the Third.”’ A public monument to the memory of Dundas was voted by parliament the year after and placed in St. Paul's Cathedral. Dundas was returned as M.P. for the stewartry of Orkney and Shetland in 1771, in the room of his father, and was re-elected in 1774 and 1784. He married, 9 Jan. 1784, Lady Elizabeth Eleanora Home, daughter of Alexander, ninth earl Home, by whom he left a son, Lieutenant-colonel Thomas Dundas of Carron Hall, and other issue. His widow died on 10 April 1837.

[Burke's Landed Gentry, under ‘Dundas of Fingask.’ For particulars of Dundas's services may be consulted Colonel J. J. Graham's Life of General S. Graham (privately printed, 1862); Ross's Cornwallis Correspondence, vol. i. (London, 3 vols.); Rev. Cooper Willyams's Account of Campaign in West Indies, 1794 (London, 1795); and London Gazettes, 1794.]

H. M. C.

DUNDAS, WILLIAM (1762–1845), politician, third son of Robert Dundas (1713–1787) [q. v.], lord president of the court of session in 1760, by Jean, daughter of William Grant, lord Prestongrange, born in 1762, was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn on 31 Jan. 1788. He entered parliament as M.P. for the Crail boroughs in 1794, being elected for the united boroughs of Kirkwall, Wick, Dornoch, Dingwall, and Tain in 1796, for which he was re-elected in the following year on taking office as one of the commissioners on the affairs of India (board of control), of which his uncle, Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville [q. v.], was then president. He sat on the board until 1803. He was sworn of the privy council in 1800. In 1802 and 1806 he was returned to parliament for Sutherland, and in 1810 for Inverary, Elgin, Banff, Cullen, Kirton district of burghs. Between 1804 and 1806 he was secretary-at-war. He was a lord of the admiralty from 1812 to 1814. On 26 March 1812 he succeeded Sir Patrick Murray, who had accepted the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, as M.P. for the city of Edinburgh, which he continued to represent until 1831, when he retired from parliamentary life. On 10 Aug. 1814 he was appointed keeper of the signet, and in 1821 lord clerk register. He was also made clerk of the sasines in 1819. He died at St. Leonards-on-Sea on 14 Nov. 1845, in receipt of an official income of nearly 4,000l. Dundas married Mary, daughter of the Hon. James Stuart Wortley Mackenzie.

[Omond's Arniston Memoirs; Ann. Reg. 1845 (App. to Chron.), p. 313.]

J. M. R.

DUNDEE, Viscount (1643–1689). [See Graham, John.]

DUNDONALD, Earls of. [See Cochrane, Archibald, 1749–1831, ninth earl; Cochrane, Thomas, 1775–1860, tenth earl, admiral; Cochrane, Sir William, d. 1686, first earl.]

DUNDRENNAN, Lord (1792–1861). [See Maitland, Thomas.]

DUNFERMLINE, Baron (1776–1858). [See Abercromby, James.]

DUNFERMLINE, Earls of. [See Seton.]

DUNGAL (fl. 811–827), an Irish monk in deacon's orders, who was compelled by the Danish invasions to abandon Ireland for France, appears first in history as the writer of a letter to Charlemagne in 811. Charlemagne had asked for an explanation of two eclipses of the sun, said to have occurred in 810, and sought an explanation of it from the abbot of St. Denis, near Paris. He applied to Dungal, then known for his scientific attainments. Dungal accordingly wrote to the king, giving him such an explanation as he could of an event which had not really occurred. The rumour is supposed to have arisen from an erroneous calculation, predicting a double eclipse in 810. The letter, however, exhibits a considerable acquaintance with the astronomy of the day. Dungal was evidently not quite satisfied with the Ptolemaic system. ‘Some,’ he says, whose statement is nearer the truth, ‘affirm that these [the fixed stars] also have a proper motion, but on account of the immense time they take to accomplish their revolutions, and the shortness of human life, their movements cannot be discerned by observation.’ He seems, like his countryman Virgilius of Salzburg in the previous century, to have had more enlightened views on the subject than prevailed at the time. About 820 Dungal is generally said to have been in Pavia, at the head of the education of a large district. In a capitular of Lothair's published in 823, the youth from Milan and ten other towns are ordered to repair to Pavia and place themselves under Dungal's instruction. Some years after his settlement here Claudius, who had been appointed bishop of Turin by Lothair, attracted much attention in the north of Italy by his deprecation of pilgrimages to Rome and the veneration of images. He is said to