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- Sir Hew Dalrymple, the first baronet of North Berwick, was the third son of the first Viscount Stair. He was admitted advocate 23d February 1677, and afterwards constituted one of the commissaries of Edinburgh, on the resignation of his brother, Sir James. On 11th January 1695 he was chosen dean of the faculty of advocates, in place of Sir James Stewart, lord advocate, and held that office till his elevation to the bench. He was created by King William a baronet, 29th April 1697, and by letter dated 17th March 1698 he was nominated by the king president of the court of session, in the room of his father, that office having been vacant since his death in 1695. Some opposition to his admission in the usual manner, – that is, without undergoing his probationary trials, by hearing cases for three days in the outer house, as customary with the other judges, – was occasioned by the discontent of Sir William Hamilton, Lord Whytlaw, who expected to have got this appointment, through the interest of Lord Tullibardin, at that time secretary of state. When Sir Hew Dalrymple was sitting as Lord Probationer, Lord Whytlaw shunned to sit with him in the outer house [Fountainhall's Decisions, vol. ii. p. 1.] After undergoing the usual probation, he was admitted, took the oaths, and his seat as president of the court of session, 7th June 1698. He represented the burgh of New Galloway in the Scots parliament from 1696 to 1702, and in 1703 he sat as member for North Berwick. In 1706 he was one of the commissioners appointed to arrange the articles of Union, of which he was a steady supporter. Besides being president of the court of session, he was also a commissioner and trustee for improving the fisheries and manufactures of Scotland.
In 1713, he was much annoyed by the chancellor (Seafield) who frequently presided in court, and claimed the right of subscribing the decisions. President Dalrymple, in consequence, absented himself from the house, for the purpose of forming a party in the court against the chancellor. [Wodrow's Analecta, MS. iii. 254.] In 1726, he went to London, to solicit permission to resign with a pension equal to his salary, and also to procure the appointment of an ordinary lord of session for his second son Hew. In the latter object he was successful, but not so in the former. Sir Robert Walpole opposed giving him a pension upon his resignation, as forming a bad precedent, and the answer to his application was, according to Wodrow, "that the king was so well pleased with his services as president, he could not want him at the head of that society," on which that writer remarks, "this, as the English speak, is a being kicked up stairs." He continued president till his death, on 1st February 1737, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. Macky in his Memoirs, page 211, says of him, "He is believed to be one of the best presidents that ever was in that chair, and one of the compleatest lawyers in Scotland; a very eloquent orator, smooth and slow in expression, with a clear understanding, but grave in his manner." Lord Woodhouselee in his life of Lord Kames (vol. k. p. 30) passes this eulogium on President Dalrymple: "If he inherited not the distinguished talents of his father, the viscount of Stair, and his elder brother the secretary, he was free from that turbulent ambition and crafty policy which marked the characters of both; and, with sufficient knowledge of the laws, was a man of unimpeached integrity, and of great private worth and amiable manners." His lordship collected the decisions of the court of session from June 1698 to 21st June 1720, printed at Edinburgh in 1758, folio. He was twice married, first to Marion, daughter of Sir Robert Hamilton of Pressmannon, one of the lords of session, by whom he had five sons and three daughters; and secondly, to Elizabeth, daughter of John Hamilton of Olivestob, Esq., the widow of Hamilton of Bangour, and mother of the poet, by whom he had no issue. Robert, his eldest son, was created a knight bachelor, and died before his father. His son succeeded as the second baronet, as after stated.
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- 1737