Richard Vary Campbell
Scottish advocate and author of legal books
Richard Vary Campbell FRSE FSA (1840–1901) was a Scottish advocate and author of legal books, who rose to be Sheriff of Roxburgh. He was also a Commissioner of the Northern Lighthouse Board.
Life
Richard Campbell was born in Glasgow on 4 August 1840, the son of David Campbell, a wine and spirit merchant from a Perthshire family, and Jane Vary, he was educated at Glasgow High School. He then studied Philosophy at Glasgow University (graduating MA in 1861) and began a legal apprenticeship with Robert Lamond before moving to Edinburgh to study Scots Law and Civil Law, graduating LLB. He then studied further at Heidelberg University before being appointed to the Scottish Bar. He became an advocate in 1864. He rose to be Sheriff of Dumfries and Galloway in 1890 and from 1896 was Sheriff of Roxburgh, Berwick and Selkirk.
In 1886, Richard unsuccessfully stood as the Liberal Unionist Party's candidate to be Member of Parliament for the Glasgow College constituency, losing to Sir Charles Cameron.
Richard was an expert on Church Law and addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on several occasions. He was Chairman of the Edinburgh Street Tramways Association and a Commissioner of the Northern Lighthouse Board. He was later elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1898, his proposers including Sir Stair Agnew.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Richard Vary Campbell” is scottish advocate and author of legal books. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Richard, Vary and Campbell, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q20877011. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1840, 1901, 1861 and 1864.
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Vary Campbell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.