Sir William Honyman

Sir William Honyman, 1st Baronet (December 1756 – 5 June 1835), also known by his judicial title Lord Armadale, was a Scottish landowner and judge from Orkney. On his lands in Sutherland he was one of the first landlords to evict tenants in order to create sheep farms, a process which grew to become the Highland Clearances.

He used his political power in Orkney to return as Member of Parliament (MP) for Orkney and Shetland first his brother Robert, then his son Robert, and finally a younger son Richard.

His father Patrick Honyman of Graemsay was a descendant of Andrew Honyman, a 17th-century Bishop of Orkney. The family claimed maternal descent from Sir Robert Stewart, an illegitimate son of King James V of Scotland.

His mother Margaret was a daughter of McKay of Strathy.

Honyman was called to the bar in 1777, and became Sheriff depute of Lanarkshire in July 1786. As Sheriff, he was involved in the investigations into the political reformer Thomas Muir of Huntershill, interrogating potential witnesses for Muir's show trial on a charge of sedition before the Lord Justice Clerk (Scotland's most senior judge) Lord Braxfield, who was also Honyman's father-in-law.

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