Sir Frederick Pollock, 1st Baronet

Sir Jonathan Frederick Pollock, 1st Baronet, PC (23 September 1783 – 28 August 1870) was a British lawyer and Tory politician.

Background and education Pollock was the son of saddler to HM King George III David Pollock, of Charing Cross, London, and the elder brother of Field Marshal Sir George Pollock, 1st Baronet. An elder brother, Sir David Pollock, was a judge in India.

The Pollock family were a branch of that family of Balgray, Dumfriesshire; David Pollock's father was a burgess of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and his grandfather a yeoman of Durham. His business as a saddler was given the official custom of the royal family.

Pollock was educated at St Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was Senior Wrangler at Cambridge University. He is also thought to be one of the founding members of the Cambridge Union Society, along with Henry Bickersteth and Sir Edward Hall Alderson, both of Gonville and Caius College.

Political, legal and mathematical careers Pollock was Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon from 1831 to 1844. He served as Attorney General between 1834 and 1835 and 1841 and 1844 in the Tory administrations of Sir Robert Peel. In 1841 he was admitted to the Privy Council and in 1844 he was appointed Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, a post he held until 1868.

In 1854, Pollock was appointed to the Royal Commission for Consolidating the Statute Law, a royal commission to consolidate existing statutes and enactments of English law. In 1859 he presided at the Thomas Smethurst murder trial.

Having been knighted on 29 December 1834, Pollock was created a Baronet, of Hatton in the County of Middlesex, on 2 August 1866. Apart from his political and legal career Pollock was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816. He contributed a number of papers in mathematics to the Royal Society, including one on what is now known as the Pollock's conjecture.

Family Pollock died in August 1870, aged 86, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son, William, sometime Queen's Remembrancer. His fourth son, Charles Edward Pollock, apprenticed to his father, had no university education. He became a law reporter then co-serving Baron of the Court of Exchequer, becoming the last in that appeal court. Another son, George Frederick Pollock, was Master of the Supreme Court succeeded his eldest brother as Queen's Remembrancer. Another son, Edward James Pollock, became an Official Referee.

Two of Pollock's grandsons became prominent lawyers: Sir Frederick Pollock, 3rd Baronet (d.1937), was Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford; Ernest Pollock, 1st Viscount Hanworth (d.1936), served as Master of the Rolls.