Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/138

  dated 12 Dec. 1635, and within a few months Weddell went out in command of a fleet of six ships. He arrived at Johanna in August 1636; went from there to Goa, and thence to Batticolo, Acheen, Macao, and Canton. At Canton (owing to Portuguese intrigues) he had a difficulty with the Chinese, and, after having stormed one of their forts, was compelled to return to Macao. Going back to India, he succeeded in establishing a trade at Rajapur, in spite of the remonstrances of the company's agents. He returned to England apparently in 1640, and in 1642, still as an interloper, was back in India, where he died. On 9 May 1643 letters of administration—in which he was named as dead ‘in partibus transmarinis’—were given to his creditor, William Courten [see under ], and on Courten's death, to Jeremy Weddell, only son of the late John Weddell, 28 Aug. 1656. Weddell's will has not been preserved; but the will of his widow, Frances Weddell, proved 2 Oct. 1652 [Somerset House; Bowyer, 165], mentions two sons, John and Jeremy (the former being dead), and a daughter, Elizabeth, wife of Edward Wye. Weddell's property, such of it as was not lost in the Charles, would seem to have been swallowed up in Courten's insolvency. A portrait of Weddell (now lost) was left by his widow to their daughter, Elizabeth Wye.

[Cal. State Papers, East Indies and Domestic; Bruce's Annals of the East India Company, vol. i.; Low's Hist. of the Indian Navy; notes kindly supplied by Mr. William Foster.]  WEDDERBURN, ALEXANDER (1610–1676), of Blackness, Forfarshire, eldest son of James Wedderburn, town clerk of Dundee, by Margaret, daughter of James Goldman, also a Dundee merchant, was born in 1610. Sir Peter Wedderburn [q. v.] was his younger brother. Alexander was educated for the law and passed advocate; but upon the death of his uncle Alexander of Kingennie, whose son was then a minor, he was in 1633 appointed town clerk of Dundee, and held the office till 1675. For his steadfast loyalty he obtained from Charles I in 1639 a tack of the customs of Dundee, and in 1640 a pension of 100l. per annum out of the customs. In September of the same year he was appointed one of the eight Scots commissioners to arrange the treaty of Ripon. In October following he had an exoneration and ratification from the king, and in 1642 a knighthood was conferred on him. He represented Dundee in the Scottish parliament, 1644–7 and 1648–51 (Return of Members of Parliament), and he served on numerous committees of the estates. At the Restoration in 1661 he was appointed one of the commissioners for regulating weights and measures; and on 10 Feb. 1664 he received from Charles II a pension of 100l. sterling. He died on 18 Nov. 1676. By Matilda, daughter of Sir Andrew Fletcher of Innerpeffer, he had five sons and six daughters. His second son, James (1649–1696), was grandfather of Sir John Wedderburn (1704–1746) [q. v.]

[Gordon's Scot's Affairs and Spalding's Memorialls of the Troubles (Spalding Club); Sir James Balfour's Annals; Returns of Members of Parliament; Douglas's Baronage of Scotland, pp. 279–80; Wedderburn's Compt Buik, ed. Millar, 1898.]  WEDDERBURN, ALEXANDER, first and first  (1733–1805), lord chancellor, born at Edinburgh on 13 Feb. 1733, was the eldest son of Peter Wedderburn of Chester Hall, advocate (afterwards a senator of the College of Justice), by his wife Janet Ogilvy. Sir Peter Wedderburn [q. v.] was his great-grandfather. His education was begun in the school of Dalkeith under James Barclay, a famous pedagogue of the time, and he had Henry Dundas (afterwards Viscount Melville) as his schoolfellow. On 18 March 1746 he matriculated at Edinburgh University. While a student he was on familiar terms with many of the leading literary men of the time, among them Dr. Robertson, the historian; David Hume, the librarian to the faculty of advocates; and Adam Smith, whose friendship was lifelong. As Wedderburn was intended for the legal profession, he began his special studies in 1750 with a view to practising in the court of session. From an early period, however, he felt that the English bar offered him larger opportunities, and on 8 May 1753 he was admitted a member of the Inner Temple while on a visit to London. Returning to Edinburgh, he pursued his studies, and was enrolled as advocate on 29 June 1754. He first won distinction as a debater in the general assembly of the kirk of Scotland, taking his position there as an elder when only twenty-one years old, and it was his task to defend David Hume from church censure and John Home, the author of ‘Douglas,’ from deposition from his ministerial office. At this time he was associated with a number of the Edinburgh literati in founding the Select Society, in which Wedderburn, though youngest member, had a prominent place. He also projected and edited two numbers of a semi-annual publication called the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ which was started and ended in 1756. The death