The 8th Earl of Mansfield and Mansfield, who has died aged 85 after a long illness, was one of Scotland’s best-known aristocrats; for many years a practitioner at the English Bar, he served under Margaret Thatcher as a minister of state in the Scottish and Northern Ireland offices.
In later life, living at the family seat of Scone Palace, Perthshire, he ran its 27,000-acre estate and devoted his energies to helping his wife Pamela develop Scone as a leading tourist attraction. In 1996 he conducted an unsuccessful campaign to have the Stone of Scone, which had been used for centuries in the coronation of Scottish kings, housed at Scone when the government decided that it should be returned to Scotland from its place under King Edward’s Chair in Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield suggested the construction of a purpose-built secure home at Scone Palace, but in the end the stone was rehoused in Edinburgh Castle.
William David Mungo James Murray was born on July 7 1930, the only son of Mungo Murray, 7th Earl of Mansfield and Mansfield, and his wife Dorothea, younger daughter of Sir Lancelot Carnegie GCVO, KCMG. The double Mansfield title (he was sometimes styled the 8th and 9th Earl of Mansfield), derived from the uniting of two earldoms (Earl of Mansfield, in the County of Nottingham, and Earl of Mansfield, of Caen Wood in the County of Middlesex) under a single holder in 1843.
The two titles had been created, in 1776 and 1792 respectively, for William Murray, 1st Baron Mansfield, who had served as Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench from 1756 to 1788. The first Earl was childless and the two titles were created with different remainders – one to a niece, the other to a nephew. They were reunited in the person of William David Murray, 4th Earl of Mansfield and Mansfield, who succeeded his father to the 1792 creation and his grandmother to the 1776 creation (having served as a Lord of the Treasury in the first administration of Sir Robert Peel).
The 8th Earl also held the titles of 13th Viscount Stormont and Lord Scone, 11th Lord Balvaird and Hereditary Keeper of Bruce’s Castle of Lochmaben. Some of his ancestors had suffered imprisonment for their support of the Jacobite cause, and he also held the titles of Earl of Dunbar, Viscount of Drumcairn and Lord Halldykes in the Jacobite peerage.
The Murrays had been Lords of Scone since they were granted the estate by James VI of Scotland (James I of England) in 1604 (he also created them Viscounts Stormont), although the history of the family seat goes back to the medieval period, when it was the site of an Augustinian abbey and the place where the Kings of Scotland came to be enthroned and hold assemblies. It was at Scone that Macbeth is supposed to have bled to death and where Robert the Bruce was crowned. The present palace, a huge, castellated Gothic edifice, was designed by an English architect, William Atkinson, for the 3rd Earl of Mansfield in the early 19th century.
Given the courtesy title Viscount Stormont, William Murray was educated at Eton College and afterwards read Law at Christ Church, Oxford. He did National Service with the Scots Guards in Malaya and was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1958. He developed an extensive London-based common law practice until 1971 when he inherited the Mansfield titles on the sudden death of his father, after which he returned to Scone.
His father had represented Perth in the House of Commons and, following his example, the 8th Earl embarked on a life of public service from 1973 to 1975 as a member of the first British delegation to the (unelected) European Parliament, where he impressed with his knowledge of agriculture. There followed three years as an opposition spokesman in the House of Lords. After the Conservative victory in 1979 he served as a Minister of State at the Scottish Office until 1983, then at the Northern Ireland Office until 1984.
In later life, though dogged by ill health, Lord Mansfield devoted himself to helping his wife develop Scone Palace and its gardens as a tourist destination, marketing it as a venue for country fairs, horse trials and pop concerts, and working to improve the attractions on offer. He served as chairman of the Scottish branch of the Historic Houses Association from 1976 to 1979.
The Mansfields had always been interested in horticulture and the 8th Earl was no exception. From small beginnings in the 1970s, he built up Scotland’s largest private collection of orchids, which were moved into their own purpose-built orchid house in 1991. He was made honorary life president of the Scottish Orchid Society and an orchid – the Phalaenopsis “Earl of Mansfield” – was named after him.
Lord Mansfield was appointed an Honorary Sheriff for Perthshire in 1974, a Justice of the Peace in 1975 and a Deputy Lieutenant for Perth and Kinross in 1980. He held a number of business appointments and devoted time to several charities. As a government minister and member of the House of Lords, he had taken a serious interest in prisoners’ welfare and became the first President of the Scottish Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders. He served as first Crown Estate Commissioner from 1985 until 1996.
In 1955 he married Pamela Foster, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, Georgina, who surprised guests at her wedding, in 1998, to John Bullough, by choosing the family’s 11-year old Pekinese, Daphne, to serve as her bridesmaid. “Daphne is very much loved,” Lord Mansfield explained. “The family has had a long and intimate association with animals. It has all been explained to the minister and he could see no theological objections.”
The 8th Earl of Mansfield and Mansfield is succeeded in the family titles by his eldest son, Alexander David Mungo, Viscount Stormont, born in 1956.
The 8th Earl of Mansfield and Mansfield, born July 7 1930, died October 21 2015
