Ronald McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun


Ronald John McNeill, 1st Baron Cushendun, PC was a British Conservative politician.

Background and education

McNeill was born in Ulster. He was the son of Edmund McNeill DL, JP and Sheriff of County Antrim, and his wife Mary. He was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1886. He was called to the bar in 1888, and started to work as editor of The St James's Gazette as well as assistant editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Political career

Having unsuccessfully contested the seats of West Aberdeenshire, Aberdeen South, and Kirkcudbrightshire, 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 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

In 1884 Lord Cushendun married Elizabeth Maud Bolitho, a Cornishwoman and Christian Scientist. They had three daughters: Esther Rose, Loveday Violet, and Mary Morvenna Bolitho. After Elizabeth's death in 1925 he married Catherine Sydney Louisa Margesson in 1930. She survived him, dying in 1939. Lord Cushendun died in Cushendun in October 1934, aged 73, when the barony became extinct.