Alexander Wedderburn, 1st Earl of Rosslyn, PC, KC (3 February 1733 – 2 January 1805) was a Scottish lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1761 and 1780 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Loughborough.

[2] His father was called to the Scottish bench in 1755, and for the next three years Wedderburn returned to Edinburgh, where he employed his oratorical powers in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and passed his evenings in social and argumentative clubs.

The dean of faculty at this time, Alexander Lockhart (later Lord Covington), a lawyer notorious for his harsh demeanour, in the autumn of 1757 assailed Wedderburn with more than ordinary insolence.

(Carlyle puts the amount at £10,000) [1] When George Grenville, whose principles leaned to Toryism, quarrelled with the court, Wedderburn affected to regard him as his leader in politics.

In the opinion of the people he was now regarded as the embodiment of all legal virtue; his health was toasted at the dinners of the Whigs amid rounds of applause, and, in recompense for the loss of his seat in parliament, he was returned by Lord Clive for his pocket-borough of Bishop's Castle, in Shropshire, in January 1770.

[1] During the next session he acted vigorously in opposition, but his conduct was always viewed with distrust by his new associates, and his attacks on the ministry of Lord North grew less and less animated in proportion to its apparent fixity of tenure.

[1] During the existence of the coalition ministry of North and Fox, the great seal was in commission (April to December 1783), and Lord Loughborough held the leading place among the commissioners.

The resignation of Pitt on the question of Catholic emancipation (1801) put an end to Wedderburn's tenure of the Lord Chancellorship, for, much to his surprise, no place was found for him in Addington's cabinet.

[1] Pitt's friends believed he had been guilty of treachery over the Emancipation issue; and even the King, who used Loughborough as a spy in Cabinet, later commented that his death removed "the greatest knave in the Kingdom".

[7] At the bar Wedderburn was the most elegant speaker of his time, and, although his knowledge of the principles and precedents of law was deficient, his skill in marshalling facts and his clearness of diction were marvellous; on the bench his judgments were remarkable for their perspicuity, particularly in the appeal cases to the House of Lords.

[1] Regarding the Thellusson Will Case, the Lord Chancellor stated: A fortune in circulation, even if spent in luxuries, waste, and dissipation, did more good to the public, and afforded more emulation to industry, and better encouragement to arts and manufactures, than any useless accumulation of money could do.