MACKENZIE, SIR GEORGE of Rose haugh, Scottish lawyer, the grandson of Kenneth, first Lord Mac kenzie of Kintail. He was born at Dundee in 1636, educated at the grammar school there, at Aberdeen, at St. Andrews and Bourges. He was called to the bar in 1659. He succeeded Sir John Nisbet as king's advocate in August 1677, and in the discharge of this office became implicated in all the worst acts of the Scottish administration of Charles II., earning for himself an unenviable distinction as "the bloody Mackenzie." His refusal to concur in the measures for dispensing with the penal laws against Catholics led to his removal from office in 1686, but he was reinstated in February 1688. At the Revolution, being a member of convention, he was one of the minority of five in the division on the f or feiture of the crown. King William was urged to declare him incapacitated for holding any public office, but refused. When the death of Dundee (July 1689) had finally destroyed the hopes of his party in Scotland, Mackenzie went to Oxford, where he did literary work. He died at Westminster on May 8, 1691.
While still a young man Sir George Mackenzie appears to have aspired to eminence in the domain of pure literature, his earliest publication having been Aretina, or a Serious Romance (anon., i661) ; it was fol lowed, also anonymously, by Religio Stoici, a Short Discourse upon Several Divine and Moral Subjects (1663) ; A Moral Essay, preferring Solitude to Public Employment (1665) ; and one or two other disquisi tions of a similar nature. His most important legal works are entitled
A Discourse upon the Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Crim inal ( 1674 ) ; Observations upon the Laws and Customs of Nations as to Precedency, with the Science of Heraldry (168o) ; Institutions of the Law of Scotland (1684) ; and Observations upon the Acts of Parliament (1686) ; of these the last-named is the most important, the Institutions being completely overshadowed by the similar work of his great con temporary Stair. In his Jus Regium: or the Just and Solid Foundations of Monarchy in general, and more especially of the Monarchy of Scot land, maintained (1684) , Mackenzie appears as an uncompromising advocate of the highest doctrines of prerogative. His Vindication of the Government of Scotland during the reign of Charles II. (1691) is valuable as a piece of contemporary history. The collected Works were published at Edinburgh (2 vols. fol.) in 1716-22 ; and Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland from the Restoration of King Charles II., from previously unpublished mss., in 1821.
See A. Lang, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (1909).