William Forsyth

William Forsyth QC (25 October 1812 – 26 December 1899) was a Scottish lawyer and Conservative

He was educated at Sherborne School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1834. He was admitted at the Inner Temple in 1834 and called to the Bar in 1839.

Career He became a Bencher of the Inner Temple in 1857, Queen's Counsel in 1857 and Treasurer in 1872. He worked on the Midland Circuit. He was Standing Counsel to the Secretary of State for India 1859 to 1874. He was elected as MP for Cambridge at the 1865 general election but was unseated in April 1866, being disqualified as holding an office of profit under the Crown. He was later MP for Marylebone from 1874 to 1880. In 1849, the chief surveyor of the Canterbury Association, Joseph Thomas, named Lake Forsyth for him.

He died at Knightsbridge, Middlesex, and was buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. His will probated at £18,667 in 1899.

Family

Forsyth was married twice. He was firstly married to Mary Lyall (daughter of George Lyall and Margaret Ann Edwards) (1819–1864), in 1843, by whom he had six children (two sons and four daughters). He remarried to Georgina Plummer in 1866; they also had children. His descendants and spouses of descendants include Doreen Knatchbull, Baroness Brabourne, James Stanhope, 7th Earl Stanhope and John Hamilton Wedgwood.