William Mure (10 July 1799 – 1 April 1860) was a Scottish scholar and Conservative politician. He sat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1855 as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Renfrewshire and was Laird of Caldwell in Ayrshire. Early life William Mure was born on 10 July 1799 at Caldwell House, near Ayrshire. He was the eldest son of William Mure of Caldwell (d. 1831), colonel of the Renfrew militia, and Lord Rector of Glasgow University from 1793 to 1794, and Anne Blair Mure (d. 1854). She was the eldest daughter of Sir James Hunter Blair, 1st Baronet (1741–1787) of Dunskey, Wigtownshire. His paternal grandfather was William Mure (1718–1776), Baron of the Exchequer, and a descendant of the Mures of Rowallan. His younger brother was M.P. and judge David Mure, Lord Mure (1810–1891). He was educated at Westminster School, at the University of Edinburgh, and afterwards in Germany at the University of Bonn. Succession Mure succeeded to the Caldwell estates on his father's death, 9 February 1831. Career When he was about twenty-two he contributed to the Edinburgh Review an article on Spanish literature. His first independent publication was Brief Remarks on the Chronology of the Egyptian Dynasties (against Champollion), issued in 1829; (London, 8vo). It was followed in 1832 by A Dissertation on the Calendar and Zodiac of Ancient Egypt (Edinburgh, 8vo). In 1838, Mure began a tour in Greece, leaving Ancona for Corfu on 17 February. He studied the 'topography of Ithaca, and visited Acarnania, Delphi, Boeotia, Attica, and the Peloponnese. He published an interesting Journal of a Tour in Greece and the Ionian Islands in 1842 (Edinburgh, 8vo). His principal work, A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Antient Greece, was issued 1850–7, London, 8vo ; 2nd edit. 1859, 8vo ; it consists of five volumes, but deals only with a part of the subject, viz. the early history of writing, Homer, Hesiod, the early lyric poets and historians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. It contains no account of the dramatists, orators, or any literature subsequent to 380 B.C. Mure also published The Commercial Policy of Pitt and Peel, 1847, 8vo ; Selections from the Family Papers [of the Mures] preserved at Caldwell, Maitland Club, 1854, 8vo ; Remarks on the Appendices to the second vol. 3rd edit, of Mr. Grote's History of Greece, London, 1851, 8vo; and National Criticism