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LORD DAVID DALRYMPLE HAILES (1726-1792)

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Originally appearing in Volume V12, Page 821 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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LORD DAVID DALRYMPLE HAILES (1726-1792)  , Scottish lawyer and historian, was born at
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Edinburgh on the 28th of
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October 1726 . His
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father,
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Sir James Dalrymple, Bart., of Hailes, in the county of Haddington, auditor-general of the
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exchequer of Scotland, was a grandson of James, first Viscount Stair; and his
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mother, Lady Christian Hamilton, was a daughter of Thomas, 6th
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earl of Haddington . David was the eldest of sixteen children . He was educated at
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Eton, and studied law at Utrecht, being intended for the Scottish bar, to which he was admitted shortly after his return to Scotland in 1748 . As a pleader he attained neither high distinction nor very extensive practice, but he rapidly established a well-deserved reputation for sound knowledge, unwearied application and strict probity; and in 1766 he was elevated to the bench, when he assumed the title of Lord Hailes . Ten years later he was appointed a lord of justiciary . He died on the 29th of November 1792 . He was twice married, and had a daughter by each wife . The baronetcy to which he had succeeded passed to the son of his
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brother John, provost of Edinburgh . Another brother was Alexander ,Dalrymple (1737-1808), the first admiralty hydrographer, who distinguished himself in the East India
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Company's service and as a geographer . Lord Hailes's younger daughter married Sir 1" Hail," a call of greeting or salutation, a shout to attract attention, must, of course, be distinguished . This word represents the Old
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Norwegian Neill, prosperity, cognate with O .

Eng.

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bird, whence " hale," " whole," and hcel, whence "
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health," " heal . James Fergusson; and their grandson, Sir Charles Dalrymple, 1st Bart . (cr . 1887), M.P. for Bute from ,868 to 1885, afterwards came into Lord Hailes's estate and took his
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family name . Lord Hailes's most important contribution to literature was the Annals of Scotland, of which the first
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volume, " From the accession of Malcolm III., surnamed Canmore, to the accession of Robert I.," appeared in 1776, and the second, " From the accession of Robert I., surnamed Bruce, to the accession of the house of Stewart," in 1779 . It is, as Dr Johnson justly described this
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work at the time of its appearance, a "
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Dictionary " of carefully sifted facts, which tells all that is wanted and all that is known, but without any laboured splendour of language or affected subtlety of conjecture . The other
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works of Lord Hailes include
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Historical
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Memoirs concerning the Provincial
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Councils of the Scottish Clergy (1769); An Examination of some of the Arguments for the High Antiquity of Regiam Majestatem (1769); three volumes entitled Remains of Christian Antiquity (" Account of the Martyrs of Smyrna and Lyons in the Second Century," 1776; " The Trials of Justin Martyr, Cyprian, &c.," 1778; " The
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History of the Martyrs of
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Palestine, translated from Eusebius," 1780); Disquisitions concerning the Antiquities of the Christian Church (1783); and
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editions or
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translations of portions of Lactantius, Tertullian and Minucius Felix . In 1786 he published An Inquiry into the Secondary Causes which Mr Gibbon has assigned for the Rapid Growth of
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Christianity (Dutch
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translation, Utrecht, 1793), one of the most respectable of the very many replies which were made to the famous 15th and 16th chapters of the Decline and Fall of the
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Roman
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Empire . A " Memoir " of Lord Hailes is prefixed to the 1808 reprint of his Inquiry into the Secondary Causes .

End of Article: LORD DAVID DALRYMPLE HAILES (1726-1792)
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