Lord Cullen had, as his companions on the bench, Cockburn of Ormistou, M'Kenzie of Royston, Erskine of Dun, and Pringle of Newhall, under the presidency of Sir Hew Dalrymple, son to the celebrated viscount Stair. In the course of seventeen years, during which he filled the responsible station of a judge, and the more than ordinarily responsible situation of a Scottish judge, he is asserted by his friends to have been impartial in the interpretation of the laws, vigilant in their application, and a protector of the poor and persecuted, and, what is more conducive to the credit of the assertion, no enemy has contradicted it. A character of his manner and qualifications is thus given in rather obscure terms by Wodrow: "His style is dark and intricate, and so were his pleadings at the bar, and his discourses on the bench. One of his fellow senators tells me he was a living library, and the most ready in citation. When the lords wanted any thing in the civil or canon law to be cast up, or acts of parliament, he never failed them, but turned to the place. He seemed a little ambulatory in
his judgment as to church government, but was a man of great piety and devotion, wonderfully serious in prayer, and learning the word." It is not improbable, that by the terms "dark and intricate," the historian means, what would
now be expressed by "profound and subtle." The confidence which his friends,
and the country in general, reposed in his generosity and justice, is said to have
been so deeply felt, that on his intimating an intention to dispose of his paternal
estate, and invest the proceeds, along with his professional gains, in some other
mariner, many decayed families offered their shattered estates for his purchase,
in the hope that his legal skill, and undeviating equity, might be the means of
securing to them some small remnant of the price the condition of incumbrance
to which they had been long subjected, and the improbability of their being
enabled, by the intricate courses of the feudal law, to adjust the various securities,
forbidding them to expect such a result by any other measure. On this occasion
he purchased the estate of Monymusk, still the property of his descendants, and
it is nobly recorded of him, that he used his legal acuteness in classing the various
demands against the estate, and compromising with the creditors, so as to be
enabled to secure a considerable surplus sum to the vender of a property which
was burdened to an amount considerably above its value.
Although acute, however, in his management of the business of others, lord Cullen has borne the reputation of having been a most remiss and careless manager of his own affairs ; a defect which seems to have been perceived and rectified by his more prudent and calculating spouse, who bore on her own shoulders the whole burden of the family matters. It is narrated that this sagacious lady, finding that the ordinary care which most men bestow on their own business was ineffectual in drawing her husband's attention to the proper legal security of his property, was in the habit, in any case where her mind misgave her as to the probable effect of any measure she wished to adopt, of getting the matter represented to him in the form of a "case," on which his opinion was requested as a lawyer.
This excellent and useful man died at Edinburgh on the 23d of March, 1720, of an illness which lasted only two days, but which, from its commencement, was considered mortal, and thus prepared him to meet a speedy death. His friend, Wodrow, stating that the physician had given information of his mortal illness to lord Cullen's brother-in law, Mr Fordyce, thus records the closing scene:—"Mr Fordyce went to him, and signified so much. My lord, after he had told him, smiled and put forth his hand and took my informer by the hand, and said, Brother, you have brought me the best news ever I heard, End signified he was desirous for death, and how welcome a message this was. He had no great pain, and spoke to the edification of all who came to see him.
