John Finlay

The career of David Armstrong was unusual by the standards of the eighteenth-century Scottish bar but at its height it presents a picture that was in some ways a signpost for the future development of the legal profession. Financial problems, consequent to the collapse of the Ayr Bank, reveal the importance to him of his local Dumfries connections and also led him into a scandal by which his career was cut short. This article examines that scandal and draws from Armstrong’s career a number of conclusions about the nature of contemporary legal practice in Scotland that have a wider resonance for the history of the profession generally during the long eighteenth century.