Alexander Maconochie, Lord Meadowbank
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Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
judge.
The son of Allan Maconochie, Lord Meadowbank
Allan Maconochie, Lord Meadowbank
Allan Maconochie, Lord Meadowbank FRSE FSA was a Scottish advocate, academic jurist, judge and agriculturalist.-Life:The only son of Alexander Maconochie of Meadowbank, Midlothian, by his wife Isabella, daughter of the Rev. Walter Allan, minister of Colinton in the same county, was born on 26...
, he was admitted as an advocate
Faculty of Advocates
The Faculty of Advocates is an independent body of lawyers who have been admitted to practise as advocates before the courts of Scotland, especially the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary...
in 1799. He served as Solicitor General for Scotland
Solicitor General for Scotland
Her Majesty's Solicitor General for Scotland is one of the Law Officers of the Crown, and the deputy of the Lord Advocate, whose duty is to advise the Crown and the Scottish Government on Scots Law...
from 1813, and as Lord Advocate
Lord Advocate
Her Majesty's Advocate , known as the Lord Advocate , is the chief legal officer of the Scottish Government and the Crown in Scotland for both civil and criminal matters that fall within the devolved powers of the Scottish Parliament...
from 1816 to 1819.
In keeping with his appointment as Lord Advocate, he was Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Yarmouth
Yarmouth (Isle of Wight) (UK Parliament constituency)
Yarmouth was a borough constituency of the House of Commons of England then of the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832...
, Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, from 1817–1818, for the Kilrenny
Kilrenny
Kilrenny is a village in Fife, Scotland. Part of the East Neuk, it lies immediately to the north of Anstruther on the south Fife coast....
district of Anstruther Burghs from 1818 to 1819. He made his Parliamentary debut during a period of considerable unrest in both Scotland and England in 1817, choosing to mark it by announcing the existence of a seditious conspiracy of weavers in the suburbs of Glasgow. The ensuing prosecutions were spectacularly unsuccessful, however, and caused considerable embarrassment, both to the government and to Maconochie himself, who, as Lord Advocate, was directly responsible.
In part because of his rather indifferent record, especially after further embarrassment in the Court of Session in 1819, he was raised to the Scottish bench as Lord Meadowbank 1819, and resigned in 1843. With the same title as his father, he was subject of one of Scots law's better puns. When he quizzed one advocate as to the difference between 'likewise and also', he received the reply that just as his father had been Lord Meadowbank, so was he, 'also but not likewise'. He assumed the additional surname of Welwood on succeeding to his cousin's estates in 1854.