ABERCROMBY, James, Loud Dunfermline, third son of the celebrated Sir Ralph Abercromby, was born on the 7th Nov. 1776. Educated for the profession of the law, he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1801, but he was prevented from engaging to any considerable extent in general practice by accepting appointments, first as commissioner in bankruptcy, and subsequently, as steward of the estates of the Duke of Devonshire. He commenced his political career in 1807, when he was elected member of Parliament for the borough of Midhurst. His sympathies with the small and struggling Opposition had already been declared, and he at once attached himself to the Whig party, with which he consistently acted throughout life. In 1812 he was returned for Calne, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the Scotch bench in 1830. During this lengthened period he rendered conspicuous and valuable services to his party and the country. In Scotch affairs he took, as was natural, a deep interest; and, by introducing, on two separate occasions, a motion for the redress of a special glaring abuse, he undoubtedly gave a strong impulse to the growing desire for a general reform. In 1824, and again in 1826, he presented a petition from the inhabitants of Edinburgh, and followed it up by a motion “for leave to bring in a Bill for the more effectual representation of the city of Edinburgh in the Commons House of Parliament.” The motion was twice rejected, but by such narrow majorities as showed that the monopoly of the self-elected Council of thirty-three was doomed. In 1827, on the accession of the Whigs to power under Mr Canning, Abercromby received the appointment of Judge-Advocate-General and Privy Counsellor. In 1830 he was raised to the judicial bench as Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Scotland. The office was abolished in 1832; and almost contemporaneously, Edinburgh, newly enfranchised, was called to return two members to the first reformed Parliament. As the election marked the commencement of a new political era, the honour to be conferred possessed a peculiar value, and the choice. of the citizens fell most appropriately on Francis Jeffrey and James Abercromby, two of the foremost of those to whom they were indebted for their hard-won privileges. In 1834 Mr Abercromby obtained a seat in the cabinet of Lord Grey as Master of the Mint. On the assembling of the new Parliament in 1835, the election of a speaker gave occasion for the first trial of strength between the Reform party and the followers of Sir Robert Peel. After a memorable division, in which more members voted than had ever before been known, Abercromby was elected by 316 votes, to 310 recorded for Manners-Sutton. The choice was amply justified, not only by the urbanity, impartiality, and firmness with which Abercromby discharged the public duties of the chair, but also by the important reforms he introduced in regard to the conduct of private business. In 1839 he resigned the office, and received the customary honour of a peerage, with the title of Lord Dunfermline. The evening of his life was passed in retirement at Colinton, near Edinburgh, where he died on the 17th April 1858. The courage and sagacity which marked his entire conduct as a Liberal were never more conspicuous than when, towards the close of his life, he availed himself of an opportunity of practically asserting his cherished doctrine of absolute religious equality. The important part he took in originating and supporting the United Industrial School in Edinburgh for ragged children, irrespective of their religious belief, deserves to be gratefully acknowledged and remembered, even by those who took the opposite side in the controversy which arose with regard to it.

ABERCROMBY, Patrick, M.D., was the third son of Alexander Abercromby of Fetterneir in Aberdeenshire, and brother of Francis Abercromby, who was created by James II. Lord Glasford. He was born at Forfar in 1656. As throughout Scotland, he could have had there the benefits of a good parish school; but it would seem from after events that his family was Roman Catholic, and hence, in all probability, his education was private. This, and not the unproved charge of perversion from Protestantism in subserviency to James II., explains his Roman Catholicism and adhesion to the fortunes of that king. But, intending to become a doctor of medicine, he entered the University of St Andrews, where he took his degree of M.D. in 1685, From a statement in one of his preface-epistles to his magnum opus, the Martial Achievements of the Scots Nation, he must have spent most of his youthful years abroad. It has been stated that he attended the University of Paris. The Discourse of Wit (1685), assigned to him, belongs to Dr David Abercromby, a contemporary. On his return to Scotland, he is found practising as a physician in Edinburgh, where, besides his professional duties, he gave himself with characteristic zeal to the study of antiquities, a study to which he owes it that his name still lives, for he finds no place in either Haller or Hutchison’s Medical Biographies. He was out-and-out a Scot of the old patriotic type, and, living as he did during the agitations for the union of England and Scotland, he took part in the war of pamphlets inaugurated and sustained by prominent men on both sides of the Border. He crossed swords with no less redoubtable a foe than Daniel Defoe in his Advantages of the Act of Security, compared with those of the intended Union (Edinburgh, 1707), and A Vindication of the Same against Mr De Foe (ibid.) The logic and reason were with Defoe, but there was a sentiment in tho advocates of independence which was not sufficiently allowed for in the clamour of debate; and, besides, the disadvantages of union were near, hard, and actual, the advantages remote, and contingent on many things and persons. Union wore the look to men like Abercromby and Lord Belhaven of absorption, if not extinction. Abercromby was appointed physician to James II., but the Revolution deprived him of the post. Crawford (in his Peerage, 1716) ascribes the title of Lord Glasford to an intended recognition of ancestral loyalty; its bestowment in 1685 corresponding with the younger brother’s graduation as M.D., may perhaps explain his appointment. A minor literary work of Abercromby’s was a translation of Μ. Beague’s partizan History (so called) of the War carried on by the Popish Government of Cardinal Beaton, aided by the French, against the English under the Protector Somerset, which appeared in 1707. The work with which Abercromby’s name is permanently associated is his already noticed Martial Achievements of the Scots Nation, issued in two noble folios, vol. i. 1711, vol. ii. 1716. In the titlepage and preface to vol. i. he disclaims the ambition of being an historian, but in vol. ii., in title-page and preface alike, he is no longer a simple biographer, but an historian. That Dr Abercromby did not use the word “genuine history” in his title-page without warrant is clear on every page of his large work. Granted that, read in the light of after researches, much of the first volume must necessarily be relegated to the region of the mythical, none the less was the historian a laborious and accomplished reader and investigator of all available authorities, as well manuscript as printed; while the roll of names of those who aided him includes every man of note in Scotland at the time, from Sir Thomas Craig and Sir George Mackenzie to Mr Alexander Nisbet and Mr Thomas Ruddiman. The Martial Achievements has not been reprinted, though practically the first example of Scottish typography in any way noticeable, vol. ii. having been printed under the scholarly supervision of Thomas Ruddiman. The date of his death is uncertain. It has been variously assigned to 1715, 1716, 1720, and 1726, and it is usually added that he left a widow in great poverty. That he was living in 1716 is certain, as Crawford speaks of him (in his Peerage, 1716) as “my worthy friend.” Probably he died about 1716. Memoirs of the Abercrombys, commonly given to him, does not appear to have been published. (Chambers’s Eminent Scotsmen, s. v.; Anderson’s Scottish Nation, s. υ.; Chalmers’s Biog. Dict., s. v.; Chalmers’s Life of Ruddiman; Haller’s Bibliotheca Medicin ae Pract., 4 vols. 4to, 1779; Hutchinson’s Biog. Medical, 2 vols. 8vo, 1799; Lee’s Defoe, 3 vols. 8vo.) (a. b. g.)

ABERCROMBY, Sir Ralph, K.B., Lieutenant-General in the British army, was the eldest son of George Abercromby of Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, and was born in October 1734. After passing some time at an excellent school at Alloa, he went to Rugby, and in 1752-53 he attended classes in Edinburgh University. In 1754 he was sent to Leipsic to study civil law, with a view to his proceding to the Scotch bar, of which it is worthy of notice that both his grandfather and his father lived to be the oldest members. On returning from the Continent he expressed a strong preference for the military profession, and a cornet’s commission was accordingly obtained for him (March 1756) in the 3d Dragoon Guards. He rose through the intermediate gradations to the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the regiment (1773), and in 1781 he became colonel of the 103d infantry. When that regiment was disbanded in 1783 he retired upon half-pay. That up to this time he had scarcely been engaged in active service, was owing mainly to his disapproval of the policy of the Government, and especially to his sympathies with the American colonists in their struggles for independence; and his retirement is no doubt to be ascribed to similar feelings. But on France declaring war against England in 1793, he hastened to resume his professional duties; and, being esteemed one of the ablest and most intrepid officers in the whole British forces, he was appointed to the command of a brigade under the Duke of York, for service in Holland. He commanded the advanced guard in the action on the heights of Cateau, and was wounded at Nimeguen. The duty fell to him of protecting the British army in its disastrous retreat out of Holland, in the winter of 1794-5. In 1795 he received the honour of knighthood, the Order of the Bath being conferred on him in acknowledgment of his services. The same year he was appointed to succeed Sir Charles Grey, as commander-in-chief of the British forces in the West Indies. In 1796, Grenada was suddenly attacked and taken by a detachment of the army under his orders. He afterwards obtained possession of the settlements of Demerara and Essequibo, in South America, and of the islands of St Lucia, St Vincent, and Trinidad. He returned in 1797 to Europe, and, in reward for his important services, was appointed to the command of the regiment of Scots Greys, intrusted with the governments of the Isle of Wight, Fort George, and Fort Augustus, and raised to the rank of lieutenant-general. He held, in 1797-8, the chief command of the forces in Ireland. There he laboured to maintain the discipline of the army, to suppress the rising rebellion, and to protect the people from military oppression, with a care worthy alike of a great general and an enlightened and beneficent statesman. When he was appointed to the command in Ireland, an invasion of that country by the French was confidently anticipated by the English Government. He used his utmost efforts to restore the discipline of an army that was utterly disorganised; and, as a first step, he anxiously endeavoured to protect the people, by re-establishing the supremacy of the civil power, and not allowing the military to be called out, except when it was indispensably necessary for the enforcement of the law and the maintenance of order. Finding that he received no adequate support from the head of the Irish Government, and that all his efforts were opposed and thwarted by those who presided in the councils of Ireland, he resigned the command. His departure from Ireland was deeply lamented by the reflecting portion of the people, and was speedily followed by those disastrous results which he had anticipated, and which he so ardently desired and had so wisely endeavoured to prevent. After holding for a short period the office of Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, Sir Ralph, when the enterprise against Holland was resolved upon in 1799, was again called to command under the Duke of York. The difficulties of the ground, the inclemency of the season, unavoidable delays, the disorderly movements of the Russians, and the timid duplicity of the Dutch, defeated the objects of that expedition. But it was confessed by the Dutch, the French, and the British alike, that even victory the most decisive could not have more conspicuously proved the talents of this distinguished officer. His country applauded the choice, when, in 1801, he was sent with an army to dispossess the French of Egypt. His experience in Holland and the West Indies particularly fitted him for this new command, as was proved by his carrying his army in health, in spirits, and with the requisite supplies, in spite of very great difficulties, to the destined scene of action. The debarkation of the troops at Aboukir, in the face of an opposing force, is justly ranked among the most daring and brilliant exploits of the English army. A battle in the neighbourhood of Alexandria (March 21, 1801) was the sequel of this successful landing, and it was Sir R. Abercromby's fate to fall in the moment of victory. He was struck by a spent ball, which could not be extracted, and died seven days after the' battle. The Duke of York paid a just tribute to the great soldier’s memory in the general order issued on the occasion of his death :—“His steady observance of discipline, his ever-watchful attention to the health and wants of his troops, the persevering and unconquerable spirit which marked his military career, the splendour of his actions in the field, and the heroism of his death, are worthy the imitation of all λvho desire, like him, a life of heroism and a death of glory.” By a vote of the House of Commons, a monument was erected in honour of Sir Ralph Abercromby in St Paul’s Cathedral. His widow was created a peeress, and a pension of £2000 a year was settled on her and her two successors in the title. It may be mentioned that Abercromby was returned, after a keen contest, as member of Parliament for his native county of Clackmannanshire in 1773; but a parliamentary life had no attractions for him, and he did not seek re-election. A memoir of the later years of his life (1793-1801), by his son, Lord Dunfermline, was published in 1861.