FORBES, DUNCAN, OF CULLODEN (1685-1747), Scottish statesman, son of Duncan Forbes (1644?-1704), genealogist and M.P. for Nairn, was born at Bunchrew or at Culloden near Inver ness on Nov. Io, 1685. He studied at Edinburgh and Leiden, and was advocate and sheriff of Midlothian in 1709. The influence of the Argyll family and his loyalty to the Hanoverian cause in 1715 secured his rapid advancement. He became M.P. for Inver ness 0722), lord advocate (1725), and lord president of the court of session Some years before the rising of Forty-five Forbes had urged upon the government the expediency of embodying Highland regi ments, putting them under the command of colonels whose loyalty could be relied upon, but officering them with the native chieftains and cadets of old families in the north. In 1739, with Sir Robert Walpole's approval, the original (173o) six companies (locally enlisted) of the Black Watch were formed into the famous "Forty second" regiment of the line.
On the first rumour of the Jacobite rising in 1745 Forbes hastened to Inverness, and through his personal influence with the chiefs of Macdonald and Macleod, these clans were prevented from taking the field for Charles Edward ; the town itself also he kept loyal. In September 1745, after Cope's departure to the south, Forbes was the sole representative of government in the north. He worked hard to maintain order. But advances of arms and money arrived too late, and though Forbes employed all his own means and what money he could borrow on his personal security, his resources were quite inadequate to the emergency. It is doubtful whether these advances were ever fully repaid. Part was doled out to him, after repeated solicitations that his credit might be maintained in the country ; but it is evident his humane exertions to mitigate the savage revenge on the rebels after their defeat at Culloden had brought him into disfavour in London. Forbes died on the loth of December Forbes was a patriot without ostentation or pretence, a true Scotsman with no narrow prejudice, an accomplished and even erudite scholar without pedantry, a man of genuine piety without asceticism or intolerance. His statue by Roubiliac stands in the Parliament house, Edinburgh.
See Memoirs of the Life of the late Rt. Hon. Duncan Forbes (1748) ; Culloden Papers, with memoir by Duff (1815) ; John Hill Benton, Lives of Simon Lord Lovat, and Duncan Forbes of Culloden (1847).