Ronald McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun

The Right Honourable The Lord Cushendum PC
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 19 October 1927 – 4 June 1929
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	The Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
Succeeded by	Oswald Mosley
Financial Secretary to the Treasury
In office 1925–1927
Preceded by	Walter Guinness
Succeeded by	Arthur Samuel

Ronald John McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun PC (30 April 1861 – 12 October 1934) was a British Conservative politician.

Background and education

McNeill was born in Ulster, the son of Edmund McNeill DL, JP and Sheriff of County Antrim, and his wife Mary (née Miller). He was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1886. After being called to the bar in 1888, he worked as editor of The St James's Gazette (1900–04) as well as assistant editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1906–10).

Political career

Having unsuccessfully contested the seats of West Aberdeenshire (1906), Aberdeen South (1907 and Jan 1910), and Kirkcudbrightshire (Dec 1910), McNeill was elected as Unionist Member of Parliament for the St Augustine's division of Kent in 1911. Seven years later he became representative for Canterbury, and in 1922 was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a post he held, with a short interval for the first Labour Government of 1924, until 1925.

After serving as Financial Secretary to the Treasury for two years, McNeill was in 1927 made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the cabinet. The same year he was also sworn of the Privy Council and raised to the peerage as Baron Cushendun, of Cushendun in County of Antrim,^[1] taking his title from the village he had designed by Clough Williams-Ellis in memory of his Cornish wife, Maud, who died in 1925. Acting Foreign Secretary in 1928 and twice chief British representative to the League of Nations, Lord Cushendun signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact in August that year. He retired from office in 1929.

Family

Lord Cushendun married Elizabeth Maud Bolitho in 1884. They had three daughters; Esther Rose, Loveday Violet and Mary Morvenna Bolitho (who married Major Philip Le Grand Gribble). Elizabeth died in 1925. Lord Cushendon married Catherine Sydney Louisa Margesson as his second wife in 1930. She survived him, dying in 1939.^[2] Lord Cushendun died in Cushendun in October 1934, aged 73, when the barony became extinct.

References

1. The London Gazette: no. 33327. p. 7113. 8 November 1927.
2. Cokayne, George (1982). The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant XIII. Gloucester, England: A. Sutton. p. 433. ISBN 0-904387-82-8.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Ronald McNeill
• Portraits of Ronald McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Works by Ronald McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Ronald McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun at Internet Archive