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

Life

A native of

Arbroath Arbroath () or Aberbrothock ( ) is a former royal burgh and the largest town in the Subdivisions of Scotland, council area of Angus, Scotland, Angus, Scotland, with a population of 23,902. It lies on the North Sea coast, some east-northeast of ...

, 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 Aberdonense''), 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, 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 entitled to Call to the bar, call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple (with whi ...

. He became a friend of

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

and John Horne Tooke, whose political opinions he admired. In November 1792 he joined the Society for Constitutional Information. On 29 May 1794 he was arrested and examined by the privy council but was soon discharged. On 4 June he was again summoned before the council, and three days later was committed to the

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

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 d ...

, 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, 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's '' The Age of Reason''. 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. Biographical Dictionary of the Common Law. Butterworths. London. 1984. p. 298. * ;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Kyd, Stewart 1759 births 1811 deaths Alumni of the University of Aberdeen Members of the Middle Temple