Regency Personalities Series-Robert McQueen

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Robert McQueen
1722–1799

Robert McQueen

McQueen was born near Lanark, son of John McQueen of Braxfield.

He studied in Edinburgh and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1744. In 1759 he was appointed an Advocate Depute appearing for the Crown in prosecutions. He often appeared in more than 15 cases per day and earned £1900 in a single year.

He became a judge in 1776 and took the title Lord Braxfield.

In 1788 he became Lord Justice Clerk, the leading judge in Scotland. Explicitly taking the view that “Government in this country is made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right to be represented” he took an active role in the suppression of the Friends of the People Society in the trials and sentences passed on Thomas Muir and others. To accomplish this he “invented a crime of unconscious sedition”. A famous quote of his in this respect was “Let them bring me prisoners, and I will find them law”

Sir Henry Raeburn painted his portrait shortly before his death.

Braxfield has a notoriety in Scotland, due to the harsh way that he dealt with those who appeared before him, most famously in telling a defendant that “Ye’re a vera clever chiel, man, but ye wad be nane the waur o’ a hanging”. In a recent survey of Scottish historians, Braxfield was identified as one of the “vilest villains” in Scotland’s history.

He is thought to be the model for the judge in Robert Louis Stevenson’s unfinished novel Weir of Hermiston.

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