Patrick Colquhoun (lawyer)

Sir Patrick (Macchombaich de) Colquhoun QC (13 April 1815-1891 ) was British diplomat, legal writer and sculler who was considered the father of Cambridge rowing.

Colquhoun was the son of Thomas Colquhoun and his wife Katherine and was baptised at St James, Westminster. [Parish register] He was educated at Westminster and St John's College, Cambridge. In 1837 he won the Wingfield Sculls [ [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22196 "Sport, ancient and modern: Pastimes", A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 2: General; Ashford, East Bedfont with Hatton, Feltham, Hampton with Hampton Wick, Hanworth, Laleham, Littleton (1911), pp. 283-292. Date accessed: 08 October 2008] ] and in the same year instituted the Colquhoun Sculls at the University of Cambridge. [ [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66695 "Sport", A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 5 (1973), pp. 279-303 Date accessed: 09 October 2008] ]

Colquhoun was a bencher of the Inner Temple. He was well respected in the literary world and a noted linguist. Charles Leland wrote "Who that knows London knoweth not Sir Patrick Colquhoun? I made his acquaintance in 1848, when, coming over from student-life in Paris" [Charles Godfrey Leland "The Gypsies".]

Colquhoun was at one time Plenipotentiary of the Hanse Towns at Constantinople [William Schaw Lindsay "History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce" 1874 by Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, London"] where he was close friends with James Redhouse. In 1861, when he was Chief Justice of the Ionian Islands, he was knighted on 14 November [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=TOM3GNgwNdkC&pg=PA356&lpg=PA356&dq=Colquhoun+Macchombaich&source=web&ots=9-EW-FmSGc&sig=Q3LbxYyL1zT8qiC8n4qLnUEomCo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result William Arthur Shaw "The Kights of England] ] In Constantinople he encountered the author George Borrow on his travels and was not impressed. [ Elizabeth Robins Pennell "Charles Godfrey Leland a Biography Part Two" Kessinger Publishing, 2004 ISBN 1417941847, 9781417941841]

Colquhoun was a member of the Order of the Temple and associated with fringe Freemasonry. [ [http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/aqc/fringe/fringe.html Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon "Fringe masonry in England 1870-1885"] ] His daughter married Sir James Redhouse. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=5IM0yQMSCDsC&pg=PA381&lpg=PA381&dq=%22Patrick+Colquhoun%22+Redhouse&source=web&ots=R4g7R4jGsw&sig=i7S22zbevwawvcT5aB2k4U8EfmY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result Dictionary of National Biography Sir James Redhouse] ]

Publications

* "A Summary of the Roman Civil Laws" 1849
* "Russian Despotism and Ruthlessness: As disclosed in authentic documents" 1877
* "A Concise History of the Order of the Temple" 1878,

References

*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography A. F. Pollard, "Colquhoun, Sir Patrick Macchombaich (1815–1891)"