Ronald McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun

The Right Honourable
The Lord Cushendun
PC
The Right Honourable The Lord Cushendun PC
	McNeill in 1923
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	Sir Oswald Mosley
Prime Minister
Junior Ministerial offices
Financial Secretary to the Treasury
	In office; 5 November 1925 – 19 October 1927
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Walter Guinness
Succeeded by	Arthur Samuel
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
	In office; 11 November 1924 – 5 November 1925
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Arthur Ponsonby
Succeeded by	Godfrey Locker-Lampson
	In office; 31 October 1922 – 23 January 1924
Prime Minister	Bonar Law; Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Cecil Harmsworth
Succeeded by	Arthur Ponsonby
Member of the House of Lords; Lord Temporal
	In office; 8 November 1927 – 12 October 1934; Hereditary peerage
Preceded by	Peerage created
Succeeded by	Peerage extinct
Member of Parliament ; for Canterbury; St Augustine's (1911–18)
	In office; 7 July 1911 – 4 November 1927
Preceded by	Aretas Akers-Douglas
Succeeded by	William Wayland
Personal details
Born	Ronald John McNeill; 30 April 1861; Torquay, Devon, UK
Died	12 October 1934 (aged 73); Cushendun, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, UK
Party	Conservative
Spouse	Elizabeth Bolitho
Children	3
Parents	Edmund McNeill (father); Mary Miller (mother);
Education	Harrow School
Alma mater	Christ Church, Oxford

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

Background and education

McNeill was born into an Ulster-Scots family in Torquay.^[1] He was the son of Edmund McNeill, DL, JP, Sheriff of County Antrim, and his wife Mary (née Miller). He was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1886. McNeill was called to the bar in 1888 and started work as editor of The St James's Gazette (1900–04), as well as assistant editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1906–10).^[2]

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 made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the cabinet in 1927. The same year he was also sworn of the Privy Council and, in November 1927, raised to the peerage as Baron Cushendun, of Cushendun in the County of Antrim.^[3] 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.

Cushendun and Glenmona House

From 1910, McNeill resided, when not in London, at Glenmona House (also known as Glenmona Lodge) in Cushendun, the coastal village in the Glens of Antrim in the north-east of County Antrim, from which he later took his title. He was burnt out of the house in 1922, having a replacement built that was designed by Clough Williams-Ellis.^[4] The village also contains buildings designed by Williams-Ellis, built in memory of Lord Cushendun's Cornish wife, Maud, who died in 1925.

Family

In 1884, he married Elizabeth Maud Bolitho (sister of William Bolitho), a Cornishwoman and Christian Scientist.^[5] They had three daughters: Esther Rose, Loveday Violet, and Mary Morvenna Bolitho (who married Major Philip Le Grand Gribble, military correspondent and memoirist). After Elizabeth's death in 1925 he married Catherine Sydney Louisa Margesson in 1930. She survived him, dying in 1939.^[6] Lord Cushendun died in Cushendun in October 1934, aged 73, when the barony became extinct.

References

↑ Bridget Hourican, 'McNeill, Ronald John'. Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009, retrieved 21 September 2023
↑ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Table of contributors. Encyclopædia Britannica. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. xii.
↑ "No. 33327". The London Gazette. 8 November 1927. p. 7113.
↑ "Glenmona House, National Trust". National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. Retrieved 20 July 2017.
↑ Gribble, Phillip (1964). Off the Cuff. London: Phoenix House. p. 35.
↑ Cokayne, George (1982). The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant. Vol. XIII. Gloucester, England: A. Sutton. p. 433. ISBN 0-904387-82-8.