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British barrister, politician and judge (1705–1793)
descendants of the first Lord Mansfield

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, (2 March 1705 – 20 March 1793), was a British barrister, politician and judge noted for his reform of English law. Born to Scottish nobility, he was a member of the Scottish Clan Murray and was educated in Perth, Scotland before moving to London at the age of 13 to take up a place at Westminster School. He was accepted into Christ Church, Oxford, in May 1723, and graduated four years later. Returning to London from Oxford, he was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn on 23 November 1730, and quickly gained a reputation as an excellent barrister. He became involved in politics in 1742, beginning with his election as a Member of Parliament for Boroughbridge, now in North Yorkshire, and appointment as Solicitor General. In the absence of a strong Attorney General, he became the main spokesman for the government in the House of Commons, and was noted for his "great powers of eloquence" and described as "beyond comparison the best speaker" in the House of Commons. However, historians note that Mansfield's ruling in the Somersett case only made it illegal to transport a slave out of England against his will, and did not comment on the institution of slavery itself.

Murray was born on 2 March 1705, at Scone Palace in Perthshire, Scotland, the fourth son of the 5th Viscount of Stormont and his wife, Margaret, née Scott, and one of eleven children. Both his parents were strong supporters of the Jacobite cause, and his older brother James followed "The Old Pretender" into exile, this left the family's finance relatively impoverished. The Jacobite sympathies of Murray's family were glossed over by contemporaries, who claimed that he had been educated at Lichfield Grammar School with many other members of the English judiciary. While at Perth Grammar School, it became apparent that Murray was particularly intelligent. In 1718, his father and older brother, James, decided to send him to Westminster School as James knew the Dean, Francis Atterbury. He was admitted as a commoner on 15 June 1723, and matriculated on 18 June. The records say that he came from Bath rather than Perth, as the person recording the names of the new students was unable to understand his Scottish accent. Thanks to the patronage of Thomas Foley, 1st Baron Foley, who gave Murray £200 a year to live on, Murray could afford to study at the bar, and he became a member of Lincoln's Inn on 23 April 1724. His actions were seen as a show of support for the House of Hanover and the political status quo, something odd considering the strong Jacobite sympathies of his family. There is very little information about Murray's time at Oxford. It is known that he studied ancient and modern history, became fluent in French, and gained a good understanding of Roman Law. He also became fluent in Latin, translating Cicero's works into English and then back into Latin. Mansfield also helped mentor his nephew and heir, David Murray, 7th Viscount Stormont. Later, his nieces and unmarried sisters of Lord Stormont, Lady Anne and Lady Marjory Murray, would come to live at Kenwood to care for Lord and Lady Mansfield in their old age.

Murray's first contact when he moved to London was William Hamilton, a Scottish born barrister who was said to be the first Scot to practise at the English Bar, and one of the few people who was qualified to act as a barrister in both England and Scotland. Hamilton had been one of Murray's sponsors when he joined Lincoln's Inn in 1724 and, when Murray came to London, Hamilton helped find him a set of barristers' chambers at No. 1 Old Square. Thus, most of Murray's practical training came from reading the papers in Hamilton's chambers, and listening to Lord Raymond speak in court

Murray was called to the Bar on 23 November 1730, taking a set of chambers at 5 King's Bench Walk. The 1707 Acts of Union had merged the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into one national entity, but they retained separate legal systems. However, the House of Lords became the highest court of appeal in both English and Scottish law and, as a result, from 1707 Scottish cases on appeal from the Court of Session were sent there. A barrister had to be familiar with both Scottish and English law to deal with these cases, and Murray found his niche acting in Scottish cases in the House of Lords as early as 1733. His work in Moncrieff v Moncrieff in 1734 established Murray as a brilliant young barrister praised for his performance by Lords Cowper and Parker. In 1737, Murray acted as Counsel for the City of Edinburgh in the aftermath of the death of Captain John Porteous. In Edinburgh, it was traditional for criminals sentenced to death to be allowed to visit a church near the city jail the Sunday before the execution. Two criminals named Wilson and Robertson took this as an opportunity to escape; although Wilson did not make it out of the church, Robertson escaped completely. Wilson had been a smuggler who supplied his fellow citizens with goods and, because of this and the unpopularity of the city guard, public opinion was firmly on his side. Porteous was the captain of the Edinburgh city guard, and was angry with Wilson's attempt to escape and aware of the possibility of an attempt to free him. Porteous ordered a guard of 80 men to be placed around the gallows for Wilson's execution. Murray represented the City in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and eventually whittled down the bill so much that, by the time it was voted on, it simply proposed to fine the city and disqualify the Provost. On 20 September 1738, he married Lady Elizabeth Finch, the daughter of Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham, 7th Earl of Winchilsea and Anne Hatton, at Raby Castle, home of her sister Duchess of Cleveland in Durham. Her other sisters included Duchess of Somerset, Duchess of Roxburghe, and Lady Mary who was married to Thomas Watson Wentworth, 1st Marquess of Rockingham. Some of the aristocrats thought that the bride had married way below her status, and they also accused the groom (at the time just Mr. Murray) of social climbing into one of the great English families which the Finches belonged to. Indeed, Mansfield's marriage helped him be accepted by the highest level of the aristocracy. In 1742, however, the government of Sir Robert Walpole fell, and Murray's brother in law, the Earl of Nottingham, became First Lord of the Admiralty in the new Cabinet. With this added political influence, Murray hoped to be appointed to a government office, and when Sir John Strange resigned as Solicitor General, Murray was made a Member of Parliament for Boroughbridge on 15 December 1742 and immediately succeeded Strange as Solicitor General. His argument (that it was the prerogative of the King to decide how a war should be fought, and he should not be second guessed by politicians with no experience of warfare) defeated the motion to cease employing the Hanoverian troops by 231 votes to 181. The death of Frederick, the heir to the British throne on 20 March 1751, caused constitutional chaos; George II wished to appoint his favourite son Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, as Regent (since the heir apparent, George III, was only a child), while the public favoured the child's mother Princess Augusta. In an attempt to reach a compromise the government introduced a bill to Parliament declaring that Augusta was to be a regent along with a council of others, and that George would become the heir when he reached maturity. A few months later the Master of the Rolls died, and Murray was asked to replace him; he declined, however, as he "did not want to leave His Majesty's service". In an attempt to persuade him to stay, the new Prime Minister, the Duke of Newcastle offered him the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in addition to the position of Attorney General, an extra £6,000 a year, and a pension, and finally attempted to blackmail him by saying that if he accepted the office of Lord Chief Justice, the government would refuse to grant him a peerage. His Scottish and Jacobite roots also allowed for endless insinuation and controversy—in 1753 he was accused by the Bishop of Gloucester of "having drunk the health of the Old Pretender on his knees". He qualified as a Serjeant at law on 8 November 1756, and was sworn in as Lord Chief Justice at the house of the Lord Chancellor that evening. He suspended his duties temporarily on 5 April 1757, when appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, due to an old custom that the Lord Chief Justice took the position when it was empty. He only served until 8 April, and there is no evidence of his performing anything more than the standard day to day duties.

Mansfield first sat in court on 11 November 1756, and at the time had "a very low estimate of the Common Law of England which he was to administer". The legal system had been put together in the period immediately after the Norman conquest of England, and was completely unsuited to the 18th century, when Britain was "the greatest manufacturing and commercial country in the world". Mansfield immediately began to reform the way the law and courts worked. One of his first acts as Lord Chief Justice was to change the system for submitting motions. Every day the court was in session, all barristers were invited to submit motions, in order of their seniority as barristers. His reforms led to the Court of King's Bench becoming one of the most active courts, at the expense of the Court of Common Pleas, which was described as the "sleepy hollow".

In the eighteenth century, English merchant law was still based on the Lex mercatoria, a medieval series of customs and principles used to regulate trading. Other countries in Europe had reformed and modernised their law, resulting in English merchant law being about a century behind mercantile law of other European countries. In most European countries, the principle was that a merchant was bound by his promises, not just his signed legal documents, while English lawyers maintained that a merchant could only be legally bound by documents that he signed. He took out an insurance policy with Boehm against the fort's being taken by a foreign enemy.</blockquote> This was an attempt by Mansfield to introduce the assumption of good faith into English law, In insurance agreements, the insuree inevitably knows more about the risk involved than the insurer; without the requirement for pre contractual "good faith," the insuree would have no reason to tell the truth, and insurance companies would be loath to make contracts. In the earlier case of , Mansfield had tried to challenge the doctrine of consideration. In English law, consideration is a vital part of the contract; without valid consideration, almost any contract is void. But, Mansfield argued in his judgment that it should only be treated as evidence of a contract, not as a vital element. He built up a special corps of these jurymen, some of whom, such as Edward Vaux, became noted experts on commercial law. "Lord Mansfield's jurymen" acted as an effective liaison between the merchants and the courts.

Mansfield made another notable judgment in , in relation to copyright law. This was a massive victory for booksellers and publishers, as it meant that they could effectively make it impossible for new companies to compete, as in the absence of new texts, there was nothing they could print. Mansfield's judgement here has been seen as part of a wider agenda; along with other legal figures such as Sir William Blackstone, he was personally in favour of a perpetual copyright.

In 1695 Parliament failed to renew the Licensing Acts, and as a result, the press were free to print material attacking the government. Although there were eight attempts to force a new Licensing Act through Parliament between 1697 and 1713, none of them succeeded. From 21 November 1768, letters written by a man under the pseudonym of Junius were published in the Public Advertiser, a London newspaper run by Henry Sampson Woodfall. In them, Junius attacked many political leaders, including Lord Granby and Mansfield. As his letters were wildly popular, the circulation of the Public Advertiser doubled in just five months. Miller was tried on 13 July 1770, and after six hours of discussion, the jury found him innocent. In it, Junius attacked Mansfield, first for being Scottish, then for being a lapsed Jacobite, and finally for attempting to suppress the freedom of the press. Although the Attorney General, William de Grey, advised that the publishers should again be prosecuted, Mansfield disagreed, saying that if they failed to respond to Junius, he would become bored and stop writing. An activist layman, Granville Sharp, who continually sought test cases against the legal justifications for slavery, was Somersett's real backer. When the case was heard, no fewer than five advocates appeared for the slave, speaking at three separate hearings between February and May. James Mansfield and Francis Hargrave, who was later to become a noted barrister based on his work in this case. Finally, on 22 June 1772 Mansfield gave his judgment, which ruled that a master could not carry his slave out of England by force, and concluded:

The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory: it's so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged. Though the ruling criticised slavery, it did conclusively establish that there was no legal status of slave in either parliamentary legislation or the common law. This did not effect slavery in the British Empire which would not be done until the passage of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act through Parliament. As a result of the reporting of Mansfield's decision, public opinion and some newspapers gave the impression that slavery had been abolished in England by the ruling. Despite the ruling, Black Britons were occasionally kidnapped in the streets of London, Liverpool and Bristol and forcibly brought back to the colonies. (Such an incident was recounted by Olaudah Equiano in 1774 in his autobiography, An Interesting Narrative (1789).)

Lord Mansfield is frequently mentioned in modern legal settings as the originator of "Lord Mansfield's Rule", in his own words: " the law of England is clear, that the declarations of a father or mother, cannot be admitted to bastardize the issue born after marriage." This quote comes from Mansfield's appellate decision in The primary legal question in the case was not this preexisting principle, which applies only to children "born after marriage", but rather whether the child had been born before the marriage. The question was whether statements the child's parents allegedly made before their deaths could be introduced as evidence that the child had been born before their marriage and was thus illegitimate. Mansfield ruled to admit the testimony against the child's legitimacy and grant a new trial. The term "Lord Mansfield's Rule" is often used in a slightly different sense to denote the principle still applied in several jurisdictions that marriage creates a conclusive presumption of a husband's paternity of his wife's child.

After the formation of the Fox North Coalition, Mansfield agreed to act as Speaker of the House of Lords, taking up his post in February 1783. The main item of debate during the Coalition Ministry was the East India Bill, which provoked bitter arguments in both the House of Lords and House of Commons. was in December 1783.

Despite failing health, Mansfield refused to officially leave his post as Lord Chief Justice because George III was opposed to the appointment of Mansfield's protégé Francis Buller to the position after Mansfield resigned. The government of the time instead suggested Lloyd Kenyon as a possible successor. Mansfield clung to office until 1788 (despite not sitting in court for two years), in the hope that the government would fall before he was forced to retire. This was not to be, and on 3 June, he wrote a letter of resignation effective the next day. Most of his time was spent maintaining the grounds. When Fanny Burney visited Kenwood in June 1792, she was unable to see Lord Mansfield, because he was too infirm and hasn't been downstairs for 4 years, she asked after Miss Murrays and left her respects but 'Miss Murrays were upstairs with Lord Mansfield, whom they never left’. In the summer, he was visited by groups of barristers who informed him of the goings on at court. On 10 March 1793, he complained of feeling sleepy, and although he recovered the next day, by 12 March, he was again complaining of a need for sleep. Mansfield left a large amount of money after his death, including Estate worth £500,000 to his nephew now the 2nd Earl. He also gave £2,000 to Francis Buller.

Mansfield was noted at the Bar, in Parliament, and while sitting as a judge, for his eloquence and skill as a speaker; in particular Lord Chesterfield described him as "beyond comparison the best speaker" in the House of Commons. He was summarised by Gareth Jones as "Conservative, urbane, silver tongued, energetic, cultivated and well read; a highly imaginative lawyer who looked to reason and was not overawed by the legacy of the past". Edmund Burke, a contemporary, said that "he had some superiors in force, some equals in persuasion; but in insinuation he was without a rival. He excelled in the statement of a case. This, of itself, was worth the argument of any other man". The comment by Samuel Johnson that "Much may be made of a [Scotsman], if he be caught young" was directed at Mansfield, and Johnson also described him as "more than a mere lawyer", while Edward Coke, who is considered one of the most important lawyers in the history of English law, was "only a lawyer". Unlike other barristers, Mansfield was noted for always keeping a cool head and being "prudent to the point of timidity". Both opinions are suspect, however; Pitt's because he was a constant rival to Mansfield and Yorke's because he was attempting to beat Mansfield to the position of Lord Chancellor at the time. Mansfield has been called "the legal genius of his generation", Other Americans such as Julian S. Waterman, the founder of the University of Arkansas School of Law, described him as "not only the greatest common law judge but the greatest judge in Anglo American legal history", while Joseph Story himself said that Mansfield "broke down the narrow barrier of the common law, redeemed it from feudal selfishness and barbarity" and that "he was one of those great men raised up by Providence, at a fortunate moment, to effect a salutary revolution in the world".

In the 2013 film Belle, Murray is portrayed by Tom Wilkinson. In the 2015 film The Scandalous Lady W, Murray is portrayed by David Calder.