BUCHANAN, Neil (c.1696-1744), of Hillington, Renfrew, and Botolph Lane, Eastcheap, London.

A London tobacco merchant, of a Glasgow family, Buchanan was returned as an opposition Whig, voting against the Government on the chairman of the elections committee, 18 Dec. 1741. After Walpole’s fall the Glasgow town council, to whom he owed his election, wrote to him commending his conduct in Parliament and instructing him to promote bills for limiting the number of placemen and pensioners in Parliament; preventing any pecuniary influence over Members, ‘the unhappy source of all our calamities’, and restoring frequency of parliaments, thus giving ‘vigour to our happy but now exhausted constitution’. In Parliament he followed the Duke of Argyll, voting against the Hanoverians 10 Dec. 1742, but after Argyll’s death in 1743 he went over to the Government, voting with them on the Hanoverians 6 Dec. 1743 and again 18 Jan. 1744.1Glasgow Recs. vi. III, 123-4; Owen, Pelhams, 83 n.3; Caldwell Pprs. ii (I), p. 58. He died 12 Mar. 1744.