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he was eminently qualified to fill the post which he held for so short a time. It is somewhat remarkable that Blair never sat in parliament. As a recreation he took much pleasure in agricultural pursuits, and he brought his small estate at
Avontoun, near Linlithgow, to the highest state of cultivation. His statue by Chantrey stands in the first division of the inner house of the Court of Session. Two portraits of him were taken by Kay of Edinburgh, one in 1793, and the other in 1799.
141:, who came to Edinburgh specifically to attend Blair's funeral, was taken ill, and died on the very day Blair was buried. This unusual coincidence gave rise a circulated publication, 'Monody on the Death of the Right Hon. Henry Lord Viscount Melville, and Right Hon. Robert Blair of Avontown, Lord President of the College of Justice' (Edinburgh, 1811), written by an anonymous author. Presuming this to be a correct story this would place the funeral on 28 May 1811.
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declined to accept the office of lord advocate. In 1801, he was elected dean of the faculty of advocates. Upon the return of his friends to power in 1807, he refused the offices of solicitor-general and lord advocate, but in the next year, upon the resignation of Sir Ilay
Campbell, he accepted the presidency of the college of justice, thereafter being known as Lord President Blair..
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He was a man of a very powerful understanding, with a thoroughly logical mind and a firm grasp of legal principles, but without any gift of eloquence or even of fluency of speech. He had such 'an innate love of justice and abhorrence of iniquity,’ and took so liberal and enlarged a view of law, that
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In 1789, at the age of forty-seven, Blair became
Solicitor General for Scotland. This post he continued to occupy until the change of ministry which was occasioned by Pitt's death in 1806. During this period he twice refused the offer of a seat on the judicial bench, and both in 1802 and 1805
157:. His widow, one son, and three daughters, survived him; but he left them so badly off that a pension was granted by the crown to his widow and daughters through the instrumentality of Mr. Perceval.
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108:, and soon obtained a considerable practice at the bar, where he and Henry Erskine were often pitted against each other. In 1789, Blair was appointed by his friend Dundas one of the
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Blair married
Isabella Cornelia Halkett, the youngest daughter of Colonel Charles Craigie Halkett of
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He died suddenly on 20 May 1811, at home at 56 George Square in
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Former
Fellows of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1783–2002: Part 1 (A–J)
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Former
Fellows of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1783–2002: Part 1 (A–J)
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Former
Fellows of The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1783–2002: Part 1 (A–J)
372: This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
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Kay's
Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings, 1877, I. 318–6;
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In
November 1783 he was one of the founding members of the
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People educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh
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316:C D Waterston; A Macmillan Shearer (July 2006).
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218:C D Waterston; A Macmillan Shearer (July 2006).
44:The grave of Robert Blair, Greyfriars Kirkyard
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378:Barker, George Fisher Russell (1886). "
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175:Assessment
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386:(ed.).
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