Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop

Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop
Born	1798
Died	1870
Nationality	British

Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop (27 December 1798 – 1 September 1870) was a Scottish church lawyer and Liberal Party politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Greenock from 1852 to 1868.

He was born 27 December 1798, the fifth son of Alexander Dunlop of Keppoch, Dumbartonshire, by Margaret Colquhoun of Kenmure, Lanarkshire. His family had in former times taken much interest in the Scottish church.

Dunlop was called to the bar in 1820, and in his earliest years was an ardent student of his profession. In 1822 he became one of the editors of 'Shaw and Dunlop's Reports', and gave no little evidence of his legal attainments. At an early period his attention was specially directed to parochial law; in 1825 he published a treatise on the law of Scotland relating to the poor, in 1833 a treatise on the law of patronage, and afterwards his fuller treatise on parochial law. The sympathies of Dunlop were very warmly enlisted in the operations of the church, and he took an active part in all the ecclesiastical reforms and benevolent undertakings of the period. But in a pre-eminent degree his interest was excited by the questions relating to the law of patronage, and the collision which arose out of them between the church and the civil courts.

Relying on history and statute, Dunlop very earnestly supported what was called the "non-intrusion" party, led by Chalmers and others, believing it to be constitutionally in the right, and when the church became involved in litigation he devoted himself with rare disinterestedness to her defence. He not only defended the church at the bar of the court of session, but in private councils, in committees, deputations, and publications he was unwearied on her behalf. The public documents in which his position was stated and defended, especially the Claim of Right in 1842, the Protest and Deed of Demission in 1843, were mainly his work.

In 1844, he married Eliza Esther, only child of John Murray of Ainslie Place, Edinburgh, and on the death of his father-in-law in 1849, he assumed the name of Murray-Dunlop. Subsequently, in 1866, on succeeding to the estate of his cousin, William Colquhoun-Stirling of Law and Edinbarnet, he took the name of Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop.

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