The Earl of Mansfield

Died: October 21 2015

THE Earl of Mansfield, who has died aged 85, was a prominent nobleman, lawyer and landowner, and a Minister of State, first in the Scottish Office and then in the Northern Ireland Office, in Margaret Thatcher's government.

The family seat is Scone Palace, the traditional coronation site for the Kings of Scotland from at least the 9th century; the eighth Earl also conformed to the pattern of his ancestors in his career as both a lawyer and a Tory politician.

William David Mungo James Murray was, technically, both the seventh and the eighth Earl of Mansfield, since the title had two distinct creations. The Earldom of Mansfield in Nottingham was created in 1776 for the Scottish lawyer William Murray, who had held its barony since 1756, when he became Lord Chief Justice. In 1792, he also became Earl of Mansfield of Caen Wood, Middlesex.

The titles descended through different branches of the family until the fourth earl of the 1792 creation, a Treasury peer in Sir Robert Peel's government, inherited the earlier title from his grandmother, thus becoming its third earl, in 1843.

Although the barony of Mansfield died out in 1793, the family had no shortage of other titles. Until succeeding on his father's death in 1971, William Murray was styled Lord Scone and Viscount Stormont; thereafter he was also Baron Balvaird, Hereditary Keeper of Bruce's Castle of Lochmaben, Honorary Sheriff for Perthshire (from 1974) and Deputy Lieutenant for Perth and Kinross (1980). In the Jacobite Peerage he could count himself Earl of Dunbar, Viscount Drumcairn and Baron Halldykes.

He was born on July 7 1930, the only son of the 7th Earl and his wife Dorothea. Murray was educated at Eton and served in the Scots Guards during the Malaya Emergency from 1949-50. After National Service, he went up to Christ Church, Oxford to read law.

In 1955 he married Pamela Foster, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, and in 1958 was called to the English Bar at Inner Temple. During the 1960s he built up a successful practice as a barrister.

His maiden speech in the House of Lords in 1972 drew on this experience; he argued that compensation orders should be more widespread and that victims should have a say in the proceedings.

From 1973 until 1975, before the creation of elected MEPs, he served as a member of the British delegation to the European Parliament, and was an opposition spokesman in the Lords from 1975 until 1979. During the progress of the Scotland Bill dealing with the proposed Assembly, he raised issues ranging from the rules of statutory interpretation to the position of the Atholl Highlanders. In common with many Tories at the time, Mansfield was in favour of devolution in principle, but opposed to the Bill.

He became a minister after the 1979 election; in addition to his legal expertise, he handled the government's response on topics from forestry to fisheries, to prison conditions, energy provision and the fate of barnacle geese on Islay.

Away from Parliament, Mansfield had a strong interest in the rehabilitation of prisoners and land management issues. From 1977 he was president of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. He was also much involved in local government in Perthshire, and other conventional aristocratic responsibilities – his estate covered 27,000 acres and his wealth was estimated at £60 million.

The Earl endured some unwelcome publicity when, three years ago, his younger son was tried for rape, and acquitted. By that stage he had retired to Logie House, Logiealmond, leaving the day-to-day management of his estates to his elder son, Viscount Stormont, who succeeds him as the ninth (and 8th) earl. His wife, second son and daughter also survive him.

ANDREW MCKIE