He was born in
Inverey, Aberdeenshire, the second son of
Sir Walter Scott's friend,
James Skene (1775–1864), of
Rubislaw, near
Aberdeen, and his wife, Jane Forbes, daughter of
Sir William Forbes, 6th Baronet of Pitsligo. His siblings included
James Henry Skene and
Felicia Skene. The family moved to Edinburgh in 1817, originally living with his uncle,
Andrew Skene then from 1820 living at 126
Princes Street facing
Edinburgh Castle. He was educated at the
High School in
Edinburgh. He was then apprenticed as a lawyer first to Francis Wilson WS at Parliament Square then to
Henry Jardine WS also at Parliament Square. William Forbes Skene was a leading member of the congregation of the Anglican
St Vincent's Chapel in
Stockbridge in north Edinburgh. He is commemorated there by a prominent memorial on the south wall of the nave. An avowed
Evangelical, he had argued that, since the
Scottish Episcopal Church's General Synod of 1863 had established the English
Book of Common Prayer as the primary authority for the Church's worship and the Scottish Episcopal Church had adopted the Church of England's
Thirty-nine Articles as a doctrinal yardstick, for St Vincent's to remain outside that church could no longer be justified. In his final years he had offices at 5 Albyn Place on the
Moray Estate and lived at 27 Inverleith Row. He died unmarried and childless in
Edinburgh on 29 August 1892. He is buried with his family in
St John's Episcopal Churchyard on
Princes Street. The graves lie in the south-east chapel and are marked by a bronze plaque. ==Publications==