Biography
Son of William Veitch of Eliock (d. 1747), a Writer to the Signet. Sometime Sheriff Depute of Peebles. Sometime MP for Dumfries. Appointed Lord of Session as Lord Eliock in 1761. He was unmarried.
According to Boswell, Eliock had studied in the Saxon city of Halle.1
Alexander Carlyle wrote in his autobiography that:
"Elliock was an excellent scholar, and a man of agreeable conversation, having many curious anecdotes in his store; and to his other fund, had the good fortune to be well acquainted with Frederick the Great of Prussia, when he retired into Holland from his father's tyranny, and visited him at least once by invitation, after he came to the throne."2
- 1Boswell on the Grand Tour I, p. 119
- 2In Carlyle, Alexander & John Hill Burton. (1861) Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk: Containing Memorials of the Men and Events of His Time, p. 373
Life with Boswell
Boswell visited Veitch, then Lord Eliock, a colleague of his father's, at Dumfries on October 6, 1762, to get recommendations to the Duke of Queensberry and General Douglas, in connection with his desire to secure a commission in the guards.