Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/200

 was reprinted, with additions, from 'Fraser's Magazine.' He was also a frequent contributor to the 'Edinburgh Review.' In 1858 he received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh University: from 1868 to 1871 he was rector of Glasgow University, from which he received the degree of LL.D. in 1879, and in 1869 he was appointed a member of the privy council. On 17 May 1871 he was created a baronet; on 1 Jan. 1874 he was made a baron of the United Kingdom; in 1878 he was appointed a royal commissioner under the Endowed Institutions (Scotland) Act, and in 1883 he succeeded his brother as eleventh baronet of Tullibole. In September 1888 he resigned the position of lord justice-clerk, and took up the preparation of his 'Memorials,' which are yet to be published. On these he was engaged till his death on 27 April 1895. There is a portrait of Moncreiff, painted by Sir George Reid, P.R.S.A., on the wall of the parliament house in Edinburgh.

Lord Moncreiff married, on 12 Sept. 1834, Isabella, only daughter of Robert Bell, procurator of the church of Scotland, and sheriff of Berwickshire and Haddingtonshire, and by her (who died on 19 Dec. 1881) he had five sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Henry James, now Baron Moncreiff, sat since 1888, under the title of Lord Well wood, as a lord of session, an office which, as Lord Moncreiff, he still retains.

 MONIER-WILLIAMS, MONIER (1819–1899), orientalist, was the third of the four sons of Colonel Monier Williams, R.E., surveyor-general, Bombay presidency, and of his wife, Hannah Sophia, daughter of Thomas Brown of the East India Company's civil service, reporter-general of external commerce in Bengal. Born at Bombay in 1819, he came to England in 1822, where he was educated at private schools at Chelsea and Brighton, and afterwards at King's College School, London. He matriculated at Oxford in March 1837, but did not go into residence at Balliol College till Michaelmas 1838. In the following year he rowed in his college eight at the head of the river. Having received a nomination to a writer-ship in the East India Company's civil service in November 1839, he passed his examination at the East India House in December. He then left Oxford and went into residence at the East India Company's college, Haileybury, in January 1840, whence he passed out head of his year. He was about to proceed to the east when the news arrived that his youngest brother had been killed in the unsuccessful attempt to relieve the beleaguered fort of Kahun in Sindh. This entirely changed the course of his career; for, yielding to the urgent desire of his widowed mother that he should now not leave the country, he decided to relinquish his appointment and remain in England. He therefore returned to Oxford in May 1841; but as Balliol was full, and no provision existed in those days for out-college residence, he joined University College. He now entered upon the study of Sanskrit under Professor [q. v.], and gained the Boden scholarship in 1843. Graduating B.A. in the following year, he was appointed to the professorship of Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindustani, at Haileybury. This office he held for about fifteen years, till the college was closed after the Indian mutiny in 1858, and the teaching staff was pensioned off. After spending two or three years at Cheltenham, where he held an appointment at the college, he was elected Boden professor of Sanskrit in the university of Oxford by convocation in December 1860, when Professor [q. v. Suppl.] was his opponent.

In the early seventies Monier Williams conceived the plan of founding at Oxford an institution which should be a focus for the concentration and dissemination of correct information about Indian literature and culture. This project he first brought before congregation at Oxford in May 1875. With a view to enlisting the sympathies of the; leading native princes in his scheme, he undertook three journeys to India in 1875, 1876, and 1883; and his persevering efforts were so far crowned with success that he collected a fund which finally amounted to nearly 34,000l. By rare tenacity of purpose he succeeded in overcoming all the great difficulties in his way, and the Indian Institute at last became an accomplished fact. The foundation-stone was laid by the Prince of Wales in 1883. The building was erected in three instalments, the first being finished in 1884, and the last in 1896, when the institute was formally opened by Lord George Hamilton, the secretary of state for India. Monier Williams subsequently presented to the library of the institute a valuable collection of oriental manuscripts and books to the number of about three thousand. By his sister's desire, and at her own expense, an excellent portrait of him was painted in oils by Mr. W. W. Ouless, R.A., in 1880, and was presented by her to the institute.

Monier Williams was a fellow of Balliol College from 1882 to 1888; was elected