MANSFIELD, William Murray, EARL or. British jurist : b. Scone, Scotland, 2 Mardi 1705; d. London, 20 March 1793. One of tlx youngest sons of Viscount Stormont, he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford; studied law; was called to the bar in 1730; won a large Scottish practice and many literary friends, the foremost being Alexander Pope, and in 1742 was made solicitor-general and entered Parlia ment. Though of Jacobite descent he unfalter ingly upheld the Hanoverian interest in 1745, did special service in 1748 by his defense of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and was admitted leader of the House. An attempt to prove him guilty of treason or disloyalty to the Crown was unsuccessful, though often obliquely re peated. He was made Attorney-General in 1754 and Chief Justice and Baron Mansfield in 1756. He was a member of the cabinet, without office, for 15 years, but his part in politics waned after he went on the bench. He was still a tpyical Tory, however, and in 1770 sided vio lently with the government in the political libel trials and was sharply attacked by Junius. His unpopularity steadily increased because of his opposition to Wilkes, whose sentence, however, he greatly lightened because of a technical flaw which he discovered himself, and in general because of his contention in various famous cases of libel that the jury could decide only on the facts and not on any question of law.
In 1774 in the case, Campbell v. Hall, he de cided that countries acquired by British con quest were governed by the general principles of the British constitution; hut in regard to the American colonies he insisted that their com plaints could not be considered until they had submitted themselves to Parliament. He be came Earl of Mansfield in 1776;proposed the coalition of 1779, and in 1780 suffered at the hands of the Gordon rioters because of his sympathy with Catholic emancipation. In 1788 he retired from the bench. Though so un popular, and though constitutionally a believer in royal prerogative, Mansfield was a great judge, whose work was not too conservative, and an able, calm, logical debater. Possibly his greatest labor was his revision of the mercan tile law.