John Dalrymple, 1830; and The Whole Proceedings of the Court of Enquiry upon the conduct of Sir Hew Dalrymple relative to the Convention of Cintra, 1808.]
DALRYMPLE, Sir JAMES, first Viscount Stair (1619–1695), Scottish lawyer and statesman, was the son of James Dalrymple, laird of Stair, a small estate in Kyle, Ayrshire, and Janet, daughter of Kennedy of Knockdaw, by Helen Cathcart of Carleton. His ancestors on both sides were adherents of the Reformation, and are to be found among the Lollards of Kyle who were persecuted for their acceptance of Wycliffe's tenets by Blackadder, archbishop of Glasgow, in the end of the fifteenth century. Ayr and the south-west of Scotland was the country in which the seed of the reformed doctrines was first sown, and it continued during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to be the part of Scotland most firmly attached to them. James Dalrymple was born in May 1619 at his father's farm of Drummurchie in Carrick, and appears to have been an only child. His father died in 1625, and his mother, ‘a woman of excellent spirit, took care to have him well educated,’ first from 1629 to 1633 at the grammar school of Mauchline, and afterwards in the university of Glasgow, where his name appears in 1635 as a student, and on 26 July 1637 as the first in the list of arts graduates. After taking his degree he went to Edinburgh, having intended to follow the profession of law, but the civil war interrupted his studies, and he commanded a troop in the regiment of William earl of Glencairn, which probably took part in the battle of Duns Law, where David Leslie defeated Charles I. He continued to serve in the army till March 1641, when he was recalled to Glasgow to compete for the office of regent in the university, to which he was elected. Though he retained his company for some time, he had now chosen a civil career. Logic, morals, and politics, with the elements of mathematics, were the subjects he taught. The notes of his logic lectures by Thomas Law have been preserved. He remained as regent in Glasgow for six years, and proved an active teacher as well as diligent in the conduct of college business. Among his colleagues as regents were David Forsyth, David Dickson, David Mure, Robert Semple, Robert Maine, first professor of medicine, and Robert Baillie, who was elected to the newly instituted professorship of theology. In September 1643 he resigned his office, as the statutes required, in order to obtain leave to marry, but was re-elected the same day. His wife, Margaret Ross, coheiress of Balneil in the parish of Old Luce, Wigtownshire, brought him an estate of 300l. a year. He resigned his office as regent in October 1647, and on 17 Feb. following was admitted to the Scottish bar, and removed to Edinburgh.
The year after his call to the bar Dalrymple went as secretary to the commission appointed by parliament to treat with Charles II as to the terms on which he was to return to Scotland. Along with the Earl of Cassilis, Brodie, laird of Brodie, Winram, laird of Libberton, and Alexander Jaffray, provost of Aberdeen, the commissioners sent by parliament and a commission from the general assembly headed by Robert Baillie, whose letters gave a graphic account of the events of the time, he sailed from Kirkcaldy on 17 March 1649, and, landing at Rotterdam on the 22nd, reached the Hague on the 27th. The negotiations continued till 1 June, when the commission and Dalrymple returned to Scotland on 11 June. During his absence he had been appointed a commissioner for the revision of the law. The troubles of the times prevented this commission from acting, but it is possible his appointment directed the attention of the young lawyer to the work on which his fame rests, the institutions of the law of Scotland.
On 8 March 1650 he was again sent as secretary to a second commission appointed to meet Charles at Breda, which was accompanied, as the preceding one had been, by commissioners from the general assembly. The commissioners were divided in opinion. Dalrymple sided with the party disposed to exact less stringent pledges than those which Charles ultimately accepted. He was sent back to Scotland with the closed treaty, and on 20 May was despatched by the parliament to meet the king and the commissioners, who landed at the Bogue of Gicht in Aberdeenshire on 23 June.
From his return until 1657, when he was made a judge of the reformed court of session by Cromwell at the instance of Monck, he practised at the bar, gaining the character rather of a learned lawyer than a skilful pleader. In 1654 he refused, with most of the advocates, to subscribe the tender or oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth and abjuration of royalty, which the secession from practice of the leading advocates forced Cromwell to withdraw. Monck described him, in recommending his appointment as judge, as ‘a very honest man, a good lawyer, and one of considerable estate. There is scarce a Scotchman, or Englishman who hath been much in Scotland, but knows him, of whom your highness may inquire further concerning him.’
The pressure of business requiring an immediate filling up of the vacancy, Monck and
