William Forsyth (barrister)
British politician (1812–1899)
William Forsyth QC (25 October 1812 – 26 December 1899) was a Scottish lawyer and Conservative Member of Parliament (MP).
Early life and education
He was born at Greenock in Renfrewshire, son of merchant Thomas Forsyth, of Birkenhead, and Jane Campbell, daughter of John Hamilton, of Deer Park, near Greenock, from a landed gentry family of Scottish origin that had settled at Wilton, Herefordshire. His brother was the diplomat Sir Douglas Forsyth.
He was educated at Sherborne School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1834. He was admitted at the Inner Temple in 1834 and called to the Bar in 1839.
Career
He became a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 1857, Queen's Counsel in 1857 and Treasurer in 1872. He worked on the Midland Circuit. He was Standing Counsel to the Secretary of State for India 1859 to 1874. He was elected as MP for Cambridge at the 1865 general election but was unseated in April 1866, being disqualified as holding an office of profit under the Crown. He was later MP for Marylebone from 1874 to 1880.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8009227. VIAF identifies the subject as 100179349. The Library of Congress control number is n50025000. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1812, 1899, 1834 and 1839.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Forsyth (barrister)” 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.