WEDDERBURN, Alexander, Baron LOUGH-BOROUGH, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 13 February, 1733 ; died in Bayles, Berkshire, England, 3 January, 1805. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, called to the Scottish bar at nineteen years of age, and was rapidly rising in his profession when he became offended by a rebuke that was administered by one of the judges, removed to London, and was admitted to the English bar in 1757. He soon gained high reputation, especially in the great Douglas case in 1768-'9, in which the succession in that family had become a subject of litigation among its several branches. He obtained a seat in parliament, and on 26 January, 1771, became solicitor-general in the ministry of Lord North, in which office he added to his reputation by his defence of Lord Clive, who was accused of maladministration in the affairs of India. In January, 1774, when the petition of Massachusetts for the removal of Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver was laid before the privy council, Wedderburn defended those functionaries in a speech in which he made a gross attack upon Benjamin Franklin, the agent of the petitioners, stigmatizing him as a " true incendiary." He violently opposed the claims of the American colonies, and throughout the Revolution was a strong supporter of Lord North's ministry. When, in 1776, Fox directed the attention of that ministry to the assumption of power on the part of the government to raise taxes in America, or annihilate charters at its pleasure, as the two principal grievances of the colonists that needed revision, Wedderburn replied: " Till the spirit of independence is subdued, revisions are idle ; the Americans have no terms to demand from your justice, whatever they may hope from your grace and mercy." He was burned in effigy in Philadelphia, and justly regarded as one of the most unscrupulous foes to the liberties of the people. He became attorney-general in 1778, chief justice of the court of common pleas in 1780, and the same year was raised to the peerage as Lord Loughborough, Baron of Loughborough in the county of Leicester. In April, 1783, he assisted Lord North in forming the famous coalition ministry, in which he was the first commissioner of the great seal. After its dissolution he remained out of office till 27 January, 1793, when he became high chancellor under William Pitt. On his resignation of that office in April, 1801, he was created Earl Rosslyn, in the county of Mid-Lothian. When George III. heard that Wedderburn was dead, he remarked: " He has not left a greater knave behind him in my dominions." He published a "Treatise on English Poor Laws" and " Management of Prisons" (London, 1793).