Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/203

 to 1801 both secretary of state for war and the colonies and president of the board of control for the affairs of India. In 1796 he was elected M.P. for Rye, and in the same year he married an heiress, Anne Saunders, great niece of Admiral Sir Charles Saunders, K.B., whose name he took in addition to his own, and in May 1800 he received his first official appointment as one of the keepers of the signet for Scotland. In 1801 he was elected M.P. for Midlothian, and in 1805 and 1806 he first made his mark in the House of Commons by his speeches in favour of his father when attacked and finally impeached for malversation in his office as treasurer of the navy. In March 1807 he was sworn of the privy council, and in April accepted a seat in the cabinet of the Duke of Portland as president of the board of control, a seat offered him rather on account of his father's great merits as an administrator and services to the tory party than for anything he had himself done. Sir Walter Scott, whom he visited about this time at Ashiestiel, Selkirkshire, says of him to John Murray: ‘Though no literary man he is judicious, clairvoyant, and uncommonly sound-headed, like his father, Lord Melville.’ In 1809 he filled the office of Irish secretary from April to October, but in November returned to his old post of president of the board of control under the Perceval administration. On his father's death, in May 1811, he became second lord Melville. When Lord Liverpool reconstituted the ministry in the following year, Melville was appointed first lord of the admiralty, an office which he held for no less than fifteen years. In this office he showed great administrative talent, kept his department in good order, and took particular interest in Arctic expeditions, an interest which was acknowledged by Melville Sound being called after him. He held many other offices in Scotland, was made lord privy seal there in 1811, appointed a governor of the Bank of Scotland, elected chancellor of the university of St. Andrews in 1814, and made a knight of the Thistle in 1821. After the death of Lord Liverpool, Lord Melville was one of the tory leaders who refused to serve under Canning, and he therefore resigned office; but he was reappointed to the admiralty by the Duke of Wellington in 1828, and occupied it till the fall of the Wellington administration in 1830, when he retired from political life. He took up his residence at Melville Castle, near Edinburgh, where he died at the age of eighty on 10 June 1851, and was succeeded as third viscount by his eldest son, Henry (see, third viscount Melville).

[Gent. Mag. August 1851; Doyle's Official Baronage.] 

DUNDAS, THOMAS (1750–1794), major-general, of Fingask and Carron Hall, Larbert, Stirlingshire, was eldest son of Thomas Dundas of Fingask, M.P. for Orkney and Shetland, who died in 1786, having had no issue by his first wife, Janet Graham, and having married secondly Lady Janet Maitland, daughter of Charles, sixth earl of Lauderdale. Dundas the younger, whose brother Charles, baron Amesbury, is separately noticed, was born 30 June 1750, and 25 April 1766 was appointed cornet in the king's dragoon guards. On 20 May 1769 he obtained a company in the 63rd foot, and on 20 Jan. 1776 became major, by purchase, in the 65th foot, with which he served in America and the West Indies. Early in 1778 the corporation of Edinburgh offered to raise a regiment of foot for the king's service. The offer was accepted, and a regiment, consisting of a thousand lowlanders, in ten companies, was formed under the name of the 80th (royal Edinburgh volunteers) regiment of foot. The colonelcy was given to Sir William Erskine, who was then serving in America, and Dundas, who had acquired the reputation of a smart and able officer, was appointed lieutenant-colonel, his commission bearing date 17 Dec. 1777. He proceeded in command of the regiment to America in 1779, and served under Clinton and Cornwallis in the campaigns of 1779–81, most of the time at the head of a brigade composed of the 76th and 80th regiments. He was one of the commissioners named by Lord Cornwallis to arrange the capitulation at York Town, Virginia, 17 Oct. 1781. He became a brevet-colonel 20 Nov. 1782. The 80th foot was disbanded in 1783, and Dundas remained some years on half-pay. At the outbreak of the French revolutionary war Dundas was made a major-general, and was appointed to the staff of the expedition sent to the West Indies under Lieutenant-general Sir Charles Grey and Admiral Jervis; he distinguished himself in command of a brigade of light infantry, composed of the light companies of various regiments, at the capture of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe in 1794. He became colonel 68th foot in May 1794. He died of fever while at Guadaloupe, 3 June 1794. When, shortly after, the island was recaptured by the French, a bombastic proclamation, headed ‘Liberté, Égalité, Droit et Fraternité,’ was issued by the French republican deputy, Victor Hugues, setting forth that ‘it is resolved that the body of Thomas Dundas, interred in Guadaloupe, be dug up and given a prey to the birds of the air; and that upon the spot shall be erected, at the expense of the Republic, a monument having on one side this decree, and on the other the