William Collyer

William Collyer was the Queen's Advocate who defended Falkland Warren when Charles Watkins sued him over the excavation at Frangissa. Michael Given calls him "the Queen's Advocate and therefore the leading government lawyer and in effect a subordinate of Warren"¹. The case was heard before Judge Charles Walpole from December 1885 to January 1886. Collyer argued that Warren's jurisdiction was limited to his own office and that Warren had not abused his position; Given calls this a brief argument made of bold assertions without evidence¹. When the Frangissa contract disappeared in court, Collyer joked with the judge about the Government Engineer's lack of boxes for papers, an exchange Given reads as cronyism¹. Warren won. Warren's opponent in court was the advocate Ulick Burke¹.

A "Mr. Collyre", described as a British lawyer in Cyprus, appears earlier in Marangou's account of Luigi Palma di Cesnola. After Max Ohnefalsch-Richter published an article in the Cyprus Herald on 6 October 1883, Cesnola told his agent George Menardos to find the best English lawyer in Cyprus. According to Marangou, "the case was taken in Cyprus by Mr. Collyre, who agreed that there was a case and undertook to defend the General"². In 1884 Menardos and Collyre took statements from Cesnola's workmen Theocharis, Lazaris and Mustafa, and from others in Paphos and Limassol². Marangou gives no forename and does not say that this Collyre was the Queen's Advocate; the name and the decade are the only link. Nothing is recorded of his life outside these years.