Sir William Drummond

Sir William James Charles Maria Drummond of Logiealmond FRS FRSE DCL (c. 1770 – 1828) was a Scottish diplomat and Member of Parliament, poet and philosopher. His book Academical Questions (1805) is arguably important in the development of the ideas of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

He was born in Perthshire the son of John Drummond of Perth and educated at both St Andrew's University and Oxford University.

In 1798 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposers being Dugald Stewart, Alexander Keith and John Playfair. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London the following year.

He lived in London from 1809 and died in Rome in Italy on 29 March 1828.

In 1795 he was MP for St. Mawes, and in the elections of 1796 and 1801 was returned for Lostwithiel. These were both rotten boroughs in Cornwall. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1799 He became sworn as a Privy Counsellor in 1801, and left Parliament as a diplomat, as Envoy to the court of Naples.

In 1803 he became British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Appointed by the Levant Company on 14 January 1803, he arrived at the Dardanelles the following May. He was there for less than a year and then he returned to England in 1804. From 1806 to 1809 he served as Envoy to the Court of Naples for a second time.

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