Robert Blair, Lord Avontoun

Young Blair commenced his education at the grammar school at Haddington, where he formed a friendship with Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, which only ended with their lives.

[1] In 1764, he was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates, and soon obtained a considerable practice at the bar, where he and Henry Erskine were often pitted against each other.

During this period he twice refused the offer of a seat on the judicial bench, and both in 1802 and 1805 declined to accept the office of lord advocate.

Robert Blair of Avontown, Lord President of the College of Justice' (Edinburgh, 1811), written by an anonymous author.

[4] He was a man of a very powerful understanding, with a thoroughly logical mind and a firm grasp of legal principles, but without any gift of eloquence or even of fluency of speech.

He had such 'an innate love of justice and abhorrence of iniquity,’ and took so liberal and enlarged a view of law, that he was eminently qualified to fill the post which he held for so short a time.

As a recreation he took much pleasure in agricultural pursuits, and he brought his small estate at Avontoun, near Linlithgow, to the highest state of cultivation.