Background
McNeill was born in Ulster, the son of Edmund McNeill Doctor of Laws, Justice of the Peace and Sheriff of County Antrim, and his wife Mary (née Miller).
McNeill was born in Ulster, the son of Edmund McNeill Doctor of Laws, Justice of the Peace and Sheriff of County Antrim, and his wife Mary (née Miller).
He was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, graduating in 1886.
After being called to the bar in 1888, he worked as editor of The Street James"s Gazette (1900-1904) as well as assistant editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1906-1910). 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 in 1927 made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the cabinet.
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. Lord Cushendun married Elizabeth Maud Bolitho in 1884.
They had three daughters. Esther Rose, Loveday Violet and Mary Morvenna Bolitho (who married Major Philip Le Grand Gribble).
Elizabeth died in 1925.
She survived him, dying in 1939. Lord Cushendun died in Cushendun in October 1934, aged 73, when the barony became extinct.
30th United Kingdom Parliament. 31st United Kingdom Parliament. 32nd United Kingdom Parliament.
33rd United Kingdom Parliament.
34th United Kingdom Parliament]
Having unsuccessfully contested the seats of West Aberdeenshire (1906), Aberdeen South (1907 and January 1910), and Kirkcudbrightshire (December 1910), McNeill was elected as Unionist Member of Parliament for the Street Augustine"s division of Kent in 1911.