Stewart Kyd (1759 – 26 January 1811) was a Scottish politician and legal writer.

Life

A native of

Arbroath Arbroath () or Aberbrothock ( gd, Obar Bhrothaig ) is a former royal burgh and the largest town in the council area of Angus, Scotland, with a population of 23,902. It lies on the North Sea coast some ENE of Dundee and SSW of Aberdeen. Th ...

, Forfarshire, he went at the age of fourteen from Arbroath grammar school to

King's College, Aberdeen King's College in Old Aberdeen, Scotland, the full title of which is The University and King's College of Aberdeen (''Collegium Regium Abredonense''), is a formerly independent university founded in 1495 and now an integral part of the Univer ...

. Abandoning a design of entering the church, he settled in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, and was

called to the bar The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...

from the

Middle Temple The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's I ...

. He became a friend of

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wor ...

and

John Horne Tooke John Horne Tooke (25 June 1736 – 18 March 1812), known as John Horne until 1782 when he added the surname of his friend William Tooke to his own, was an English clergyman, politician, and philologist. Associated with radical proponents of parl ...

, whose political opinions he admired. In November 1792 he joined the

Society for Constitutional Information The Society for Constitutional Information was a British activist group founded in 1780 by Major John Cartwright, to promote parliamentary reform. It was an organisation of social reformers, many of whom were drawn from the rational dissenting c ...

. On 29 May 1794 he was arrested and examined by the privy counsel but was soon discharged. On 4 June he was again summoned before the counsel, and three days later was committed to the

Tower A tower is a tall structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting structures. Towers are specific ...

on a charge of

high treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

, with Hardy, Tooke, and ten others. On 25 October all the prisoners were brought up for trial before a special commission at the

Old Bailey The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey after the street on which it stands, is a criminal court building in central London, one of several that house the Crown Court of England and Wales. The s ...

, but after the acquittal of Hardy, Tooke and

John Thelwall John Thelwall (27 July 1764 – 17 February 1834) was a radical British orator, writer, political reformer, journalist, poet, elocutionist and speech therapist.

, the attorney-general declined offering any evidence against Kyd, and he was discharged. In June 1797 he defended Thomas Williams, a bookseller, who was indicted for blasphemy in publishing

Tom Paine Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...

's ''

The Age of Reason ''The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology'' is a work by English and American political activist Thomas Paine, arguing for the philosophical position of deism. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century Briti ...

''. His speech was printed during the same year. Kyd died in the Temple on 26 January 1811. His portrait has been engraved.

Works

Besides a continuation of Comyns' Digest (London, 1792), Kyd published: *''A Treatise on the Law of Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes''. London. 1790. 3rd edition. 1795. 2nd American edition. Albany, New York. 1800. *''A Treatise on the Law of Awards''. London. 1791. 2nd edition. 1799. *''A Treatise on the Law of Corporations''. 2 vols. London. 1793-4. *''The Substance of the Income Act''. London. 1799. Two editions. *''Arrangement under distinct Titles of all the Provisions of the several Acts of Parliament relating to the Assessed Taxes''. London. 1799 (Postscript, 1801).

References

* *Uglow, Jenny. "Kyd, Stewart". In

A. W. B. Simpson Alfred William Brian Simpson, QC (Hon.), JP, FBA (17 August 1931 – 10 January 2011) usually referred to as Brian Simpson and publishing as A. W. Brian Simpson, was a British legal historian and legal philosopher. At the time of his ret ...

Biographical Dictionary of the Common Law ''Biographical Dictionary of the Common Law'' is a biographical dictionary concerned with legal biography, edited by A. W. B. Simpson and published in 1984 by Butterworths LexisNexis is a part of the RELX corporation that sells data analytics ...

. Butterworths. London. 1984. p. 298. * ;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Kyd, Stewart 1759 births 1811 deaths Alumni of the University of Aberdeen Members of the Middle Temple