Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin Party Conservative Party Role British Politician | Name Ronald 1st Preceded by Walter Guinness Succeeded by Oswald Mosley | |
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Preceded by The Viscount Cecil of Chelwood Died October 12, 1934, Cushendun, United Kingdom Education Harrow School, Christ Church, Oxford | ||
Ronald John McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun PC (30 April 1861 – 12 October 1934) was a British Conservative politician.
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Background and education
McNeill was born in Ulster, the son of Edmund McNeill DL, JP and Sheriff of County Antrim, and his wife Mary (née Miller). He was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1886. After being called to the bar in 1888, he worked as editor of The St James's Gazette (1900–04) as well as assistant editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1906–10).
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 in 1927 made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the cabinet. The same year he was also sworn of the Privy Council and raised to the peerage as Baron Cushendun, of Cushendun in County of Antrim. 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 at Glenmona House in Cushendun, the coastal village in County Antrim from which he later took his title. He was burnt out of the house in 1922, having a replacement designed by Clough Williams-Ellis. The village also contains properties by Williams-Ellis built in memory of his Cornish wife, Maud, who died in 1925.
Family
Lord Cushendun married Elizabeth Maud Bolitho in 1884. They had three daughters; Esther Rose, Loveday Violet and Mary Morvenna Bolitho (who married Major Philip Le Grand Gribble). Elizabeth died in 1925. Lord Cushendun married Catherine Sydney Louisa Margesson as his second wife in 1930. She survived him, dying in 1939. Lord Cushendun died in Cushendun in October 1934, aged 73, when the barony became extinct.