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Single Person record details
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Back
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Person Code
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NA11944
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Forenames
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James Robert Nicolson
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Surname
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Macphail
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Dates
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1858-1933
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Epithet
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sheriff of Stirling, Dumbarton and Clackmannan and record scholar
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Activity
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Sheriff J R N Macphail was born on 29 June 1858 at Glenbervie House, Kincardineshire, son of Rev James Calder Macphail, a Free Church minister, and his wife Anne Badenach Nicolson. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and then Edinburgh University, from where he graduated in 1881. Thereafter he set himself for the Bar, and was admitted an advocate in 1886. He was created a King's Counsel in 1910. He was appointed Sheriff of Stirling, Dumbarton and Clackmannan in 1917, and a Commissioner of the General Board of Control for Scotland in 1920. He was greatly interested in Scottish history, which led him to numerous publications, some of them editions of charters or other important documents. In particular, there are his four volumes of 'Highland Papers', produced for the Scottish History Society. Because of his historical and legal expertise, he was engaged on many important peerage cases, for example, the Lauderdale, Gordon and Macdonald of Sleat cases. Macphail was assumed as one of the trustees of the Fraser Trust, after the death of the antiquarian and record scholar Sir William Fraser in 1898. This involved the sorting of an immense accumulation of documents and books, for which he was greatly suited. Macphail himself collected numerous documents, some purchased at auctions when family archives were being broken up in the early 20th century. He was a long-term member of the Scottish History Society, Scottish Record Society, Old Edinburgh Club, Royal Celtic Society and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, amongst others, for all of whom he undertook some committee work. He died in Edinburgh on 15 October 1933.
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Notes
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W K Dickson, biographical introduction to 'Highland Papers volume iv' (ed J R N Macphail, Scottish History Society, Edinburgh, 1934); 'Who was Who' Vol. 3 (1929-1940) (London, 1941); Francis J Grant, 'The Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, 1532-1943' (Edinburgh, 1944).
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Associated records
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