Author: Bell, John Montgomerie
Biography:
BELL, John Montgomerie (1804-62: ODNB)
Sheriff and writer. He was born at Paisley to John Bell and Elliot (Montgomerie) Bell and educated at the Paisley grammar school and Glasgow University. He became an advocate and was called to the Edinburgh bar in 1825. In 1835 he married Anna Eliza Scott; several of their sons also entered the legal profession. Appointed Sheriff of Kincardinshire in 1851, he published what became the standard text on the Scottish law of arbitration in 1861. He died following a fall from his horse at Linnhouse, Midcalder. An extended and revised edition of his Byronic poem “The Martyr of Freedom,” published anonymously with “Henry St Clair” in 1833, was issued in 1863 as The Martyr of Liberty. (ODNB 28 Feb. 2019; ancestry.co.uk 28 Feb. 2018; PP) SR