Henry Thomas Cockburn, lord, a Scottish jurist, born near Edinburgh, Oct. 26, 1779, died April 26, 1854. In 1800 he entered the faculty of advocates, and attached himself to the whig party, although his family connections belonged to the tories. His politics interfered with success in his profession, but in course of time he rose to eminence as an advocate. He brought himself into notice in 1818 by gratuitously defending several persons charged with treason. In 1828 he defended Helen McDougal, charged as an accomplice with Burke in the "Westport murders," and obtained her acquittal. Under the administration of Earl Grey, Jeffrey became attorney general and Cockburn solicitor general for Scotland. In 1834 he was raised to the bench as one of the lords of sessions, when he took the title of Lord Cockburn. Three years afterward he was appointed a lord commissioner of justiciary. He was an early contributor to the "Edinburgh Review," an article in which from his pen went far to produce a reform in the method of selecting juries.

His literary fame rests on his "Life and Correspondence of Lord Jeffrey" (2 vols., 1852), and his posthumous "Memorials of his Times" (1856).