MILNE, Patrick (d.1820), of Crimonmogate, Aberdeen.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1812 - 1818

Family and Education

1st s. of Alexander Milne, merchant, of Aberdeen and Crimonmogate by Margaret, da. of Sir Patrick Bannerman, provost of Aberdeen. suc. fa. 1789.

Offices Held

Biography

Milne’s father was a partner in the Porthill linen manufacturing firm which failed in 1763, and bought an estate near Fraserburgh. Milne, whose younger brother Alexander predeceased him, was probably unmarried, as his will made no mention of a wife or children and he left his property to his first cousin once removed, Charles Bannerman of Kirkhill, later 8th Baronet.1

Charles Bannerman’s sister married William Keith Falconer, Lord Inverurie, who succeeded as 6th Earl of Kintore in 1804; and Milne played a leading part in some electoral chicanery carried out on Kintore’s behalf in the Elgin burghs in 1807, which won the seat for Lord Melville’s recommended candidate. Although Kintore died three weeks before the election of 1812, it was presumably to him that Milne owed his return for the burghs. Government counted on his support and they received it in most of the divisions of the 1812 Parliament for which full lists have been found. On 24 Jan. 1817 the Whig William Maule cited to Lord Holland the fact that Milne would not be in attendance on the first day of the new session as evidence of ‘a want of anxiety on the part of the tractable 45 to attend their duty’; but, in answer to Melville’s summons, Milne had already replied that he would ‘lose no time in being there as soon as I possibly can’, and he was present and voting with government by 17 Feb.2 He voted steadily against Catholic relief. He was appointed to the select committee on the Corn Laws, 6 June 1814, and in his only reported speech in the House, 30 June, appealed for witnesses on behalf of hostile petitioners to come forward.

In 1818 it was the turn of Francis William Grant* to nominate the Member for Elgin Burghs. Melville expressed to a mutual acquaintance his hope that Grant would retain ‘so respectable and so useful a Member’ as Milne, but he opted instead for a distant relative. He was mentioned as a possible ministerial candidate for Anstruther Burghs in 1819 and Elgin Burghs in 1820, but nothing came of either speculation.3 He died 16 May 1820.4

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: David R. Fisher

Notes

  • 1. ‘Aberdeen Jnl.’ N. and Q., ii (1909), 65, 71, 307; A. M. Munro, Aldermen of Aberdeen, 209, 233; PCC 627 Kent.
  • 2. Add. 51828; SRO GD51/1/183.
  • 3. St. Andrews Univ. Lib. Melville mss 4555, 4614.
  • 4. Edinburgh Annual Reg. (1820), 521.