Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/589

 and in the council-room of the Sheffield University.



MARJORIBANKS, EDWARD, second (1849–1909), politician, born in London on 8 July 1849, was eldest son in a family of four sons and two daughters of Sir Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, first baronet, a very capable man of business and a collector of works of art, who sat in parliament as liberal member for Berwick-on-Tweed from 1853 to 1868 and subsequently from 1874 to 1881; having been created a baronet on 25 July 1866, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Tweedmouth (12 Oct. 1881). Among his ancestors was Thomas Marjoribanks of Ratho, who was member for Edinburgh in the Scottish parliament and was in 1532 one of the founders of the Court of Session, becoming afterwards lord clerk register and a lord of session. His mother was Isabella, daughter of Sir, first baronet [q. v.] and sister of Sir, first Lord Magheramorne [q. v.], and of [q. v. Suppl. II], founder of the Regent Street Polytechnic. Of his sisters the elder, Mary Georgiana, married, first Viscount Ridley [q. v. Suppl. II], and the younger, Ishbel Maria, married John Campbell, seventh earl of Aberdeen. Educated at Harrow, Marjoribanks matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 9 March 1868. At the university he devoted himself chiefly to sport and took no degree. He was through life a fine horseman and devoted to hunting, a splendid shot alike with gun and with rifle, a keen fisherman, and an enthusiastic deer-stalker. After leaving Oxford in 1872 he went for a tour round the world, and on his return he studied law, being called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 17 Nov. 1874. He worked for a time in the chambers of Sir John Duke Coleridge [q. v. Suppl. I], afterwards lord chief justice, and was employed by him to collect and arrange material for the Tichborne trial. Coleridge formed a high opinion of his abilities, but he made little further progress at the bar, and deserted law for politics. His political and family connections were strong in Berwickshire, where his father had purchased considerable estates. An invitation to stand in June 1873 as a liberal candidate there on the sudden occasion of a vacancy failed to reach him in time. After failing in 1874 in a contest in Mid-Kent he became prospective liberal candidate for North Berwickshire in 1875. At the general election of 1880 he was elected by a majority of 268. He held the seat until the death of his father in 1894 removed him to the House of Lords.

During his earlier years in parliament, although Marjoribanks spoke little, he was active in promoting many public objects and measures in which his constituents were interested, and he was a leading supporter of the movement for legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister, being destined in due course to conduct the bill to its final victory in the House of Lords in 1907. In 1882 he moved the address in reply to the speech from the throne. He was soon in frequent requisition at political gatherings in many parts of the kingdom but especially in Scotland. When the home rule ministry of Gladstone was formed in 1886 Marjoribanks received his first official appointment as comptroller of Queen Victoria's household and second whip to the party, and was sworn a member of the privy council. For the next eight years he was indefatigable in promoting the interests of his party alike in parliament and in the constituencies. After the rejection of the home rule bill in June 1886 and the downfall of Gladstone's ministry, Marjoribanks, with Mr. Arnold Morley as his chief, served as second whip to the opposition until 1802. On Gladstone's return to office in 1802 Marjoribanks became parliamentary secretary to the Treasury, or chief liberal whip, Mr. Arnold Morley having accepted office in the cabinet. His engaging manners, assiduity, imperturbable good humour, and devotion to all manly sports made him an almost ideal whip, with few equals and no superiors among his contemporaries.

On the death of his father on 4 March 1804 he succeeded to the peerage as Lord Tweedmouth, and was invited by Lord Rosebery, who, on Gladstone's resignation, had just become prime minister, to join the cabinet as lord privy seal and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Tweedmouth's sure grasp of the internal mechanism and 