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FINDLATER,
a surname supposed to be derived from Fin-la-terre, the French for
‘the land’s end,’ and strikingly descriptive of the locality of that name
in the parish of Fordyce, Banffshire, from which the earls of Findlater
(see next article) took their title, being bounded by the sea, and
projecting far into it on that part of the coast.
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FINDLATER, Earl of,
a title (dormant since 1811) possessed by the Ogilvies, a branch of the
Airlie family. It was first conferred on James, second Lord Ogilvy of
Deskford, Banffshire, on 20th February 1638, to him and the
heirs male of his body succeeding to him in the estates of Findlater and
Deskford. He was the son of Sir Walter Ogilvy of Deskford and Findlater,
created Lord Ogilvy, 4th October 1616, (see OGILVY, Lord,) and
his second wife, Lady Mary Douglas, third daughter of the earl of Morton;
being the sixth in direct lineal descent from Sir Walter Ogilvy of
Auchleven, who, by his marriage in 1487 with Margaret, daughter and
heiress of Sir John Sinclair of Deskford and Findlater, killed at the
battle of Harlaw in 1411, acquired these lands, which became the
distinctive possessions of his family. The first earl was nominated a
privy councillor for life by parliament in November 1641, and was a member
of several committees of parliament from 1641 to 1647. He married, first,
Lady Elizabeth Leslie, second daughter of the fifth earl of Rothes, relict
of David Wemyss, younger of Wemyss, and by her had two daughters, namely,
Lady Elizabeth Ogilvy, married to Sir Patrick Ogilvy of Inchmartin,
Perthshire; and Lady Ann, to the ninth earl of Glencairn,
lord-high-chancellor of Scotland. He married, secondly, Lady Marion
Cunningham, fourth daughter of the eighth earl of Glencairn, without
issue. Having no sons, his lordship made a resignation of his titles into
the king’s hands, and on 18th October 1641, obtained a new
patent, conferring the earldom of Findlater, after his death, upon his
elder daughter, Lady Elizabeth, and her husband, Sir Patrick Ogilvy, and
his heirs male.
Patrick, second
earl, descended from Patrick de Ogilvy, probably a younger son of Patrick
de Ogilvy of Wester Powrie in Forfarshire, the brother of Sir Walter
Ogilvy of Auchterhouse, Sheriff of Angus, was the son of Sir Patrick
Ogilvy of Inchmartin, and Anne, daughter of Sir Duncan Campbell of
Glenorchy. After the grant of the new patent, he had the style of Lord
Deskford in the lifetime of his father-in-law, the first earl of Findlater,
and under that title was served heir to his father, Sir Patrick Ogilvy, in
the lordship of Errol, Inchmartin, and other lands in Perthshire, on 5th
October 1652. A fine of fifteen hundred pounds was imposed on him by
Cromwell’s act of grace and pardon, 12th April 1654. He had a
son, James third earl, and died 30th March 1658.
James, third
earl, was served heir to his father, 15th April 1662. He
steadily supported the treaty of union in the parliament of 1706, and died
in 1711. He married, first, Lady Anne Montgomery (relict of Robert Seton,
son of Sir George Seton of Hailes); and secondly, Lady Mary Hamilton,
third daughter of William second duke of Hamilton, killed at the battle of
Worcester in 1651. By his first wife he had three sons and two daughters.
The sons were, Walter Lord Deskford, who died before his father,
unmarried; James, fourth earl of Findlater; and the Hon. Col. Patrick
Ogilvy of Lonmay and Inchmartin, member for the burgh of Cullen in the
Scots parliament, to which, on the 21st July 1704 he presented
a petition, requesting the command of an independent troop of dragoons. He
gave his support to the union, and was one of the representatives for
Scotland chosen to the first parliament of Great Britain in 1707, and at
the general election of 1708 he was elected for the Cullen burghs. He died
at Inchmartin 20th September 1737, in the seventy-second year
of his age. He married his cousin Elizabeth, daughter of the Hon. Francis
Montgomery of Giffen, with issue.
James, fourth
earl of Findlater, and first earl of Seafield, chancellor of Scotland,
born in 1664, was educated for the law, and after his return from his
travels, he was admitted advocate, 16th January 1685. In 1681
he had been elected member for the burgh of Cullen in Banffshire, in the
Scots parliament, and he was chosen for the same burgh to the convention
of estates in 1689, when he made an energetic speech in favour of King
James, and was one of the five members who dissented from the memorable
vote which declared that monarch to have, by maladministration, forfeited
the crown. He afterwards took the oaths to King William and Queen Mary. He
had an extensive practice as an advocate, and in 1693 he was constituted
solicitor-general, at which time he was knighted and appointed sheriff of
Banffshire. In 1695 he was promoted to the office of secretary of state,
and in virtue of a letter from the king, he sat and voted in the
parliament of 1696, as lord secretary. On the 12th of September
of that year, a new writ was issued to the burgh of Cullen to elect
another commissioner in his room. He was created Viscount Seafield, 28th
June 1698, and appointed president of the parliament which met 19th
July of that year. On the 9th of the same month, he and the
earl of Marchmont, lord-high-chancellor and commissioner to the
parliament, arrived at Edinburgh, and met with a splendid reception. In
the parliament they carried all triumphantly for the king. He was high
commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1700,
1703, 1724, and 1727, and was advanced to the dignity of earl of Seafield
24th June 1701. [See SEAFIELD, earl of.] On the accession of
Queen Anne, in March 1702, he was continued secretary of state, in
conjunction with the duke of Queensberry. The same year he was named one
of the commissioners to treat of a union, and on the first of November was
appointed lord-high-chancellor of Scotland. At this period a contemporary
thus describes his lordship: “He has a great knowledge of the civil law
and the constitution of Scotland – understands perfectly how to manage a
Scottish parliament to the advantage of the court. This, together with his
implicitly executing whatever King William pleased, without ever reasoning
on the subject, established him very much in that monarch’s favour; but
his conduct in the affair of Darien lost him with the people. He affects
plainness and familiarity of manner, but is not sincere; is very beautiful
in his person, with a graceful behaviour, a smiling countenance, and a
soft tongue.” [Macky’e Memoirs.] His lordship was high
commissioner, or representative of the king, to the parliament of Scotland
in 1703, when he was invested with the order of the Thistle. In the
following year he was superseded in his office of chancellor by the
marquis of Tweeddale, but on the 17th of October of the same
year he was again constituted instead one of the secretaries of state. On
the 9th March 1705 he was a second time appointed
lord-high-chancellor of Scotland, and nominated one of the commissioners
for the union. At this time so great was his unpopularity that he narrowly
escaped with his life in a tumult which took place in Edinburgh, in 1705,
after the trial of Captain Green and his crew, who were convicted of
having committed piracy and murder on board one of the Darien Company’s
vessels [Laing’s Scotland, vol. ii. p. 287.] He was a zealous and
active supporter of the union, setting forth the advantages of that
measure in his speeches in parliament, and when it was at length
accomplished, and the Scots estates rose for the last time, he remarked
with levity, “Now, there is an end of an auld sang.” His residence at this
period was the noble mansion of Moray house, in the Canongate, already
associated with many historical recollections, which became the scene of
the numerous secret deliberations that preceded the ratification of the
treaty of union. He was one of the sixteen representatives of the Scots
peerage elected by parliament in 1707, and was rechosen in 1708, 1712,
1713, 1722, and 1727.
When in London
in 1717, he was sworn a member of the privy council in England, and on his
return to Edinburgh, 3d July of that year, he produced to the lords of
session a new commission, appointing him chancellor of Scotland, and was
accordingly sworn and admitted. Doubts having arisen, however, as to the
utility of this office in Scotland, while that of chancellor over the
United Kingdom was held by Lord Cowper, the earl of Seafield was, it is
supposed on that account, appointed lord chief baron in the court of
exchequer, and admitted 25th May 1708. For his great services
to the state he received also a pension of three thousand pounds per
annum. In Evans’ Catalogue of British Portraits, vol. i., is one of the
fourth earl of Findlater, engraved by Smith, from the original by Kneller,
from which the following woodcut is taken.
[woodcut of 4th earl of Findlater]
On
succeeding to his father in 1711, he was thereafter styled earl of
Findlater and Seafield. When the malt-tax was extended to Scotland he
considered it an infringement of the articles of union, and was so greatly
incensed on the occasion that, on 1st June 1713, he brought the
subject before the House of Lords, and then was exhibited the spectacle of
this the chief agent in promoting the union in the final session, only six
years before, of the Scottish legislature, being the first to propose its
repeal in the imperial parliament. The grievances of the Scottish nation
he reduced to four heads: 1st, The being deprived of a privy
council. 2d, The extension of the treason laws of England to Scotland. 3d,
Scottish peers being incapacitated from being peers of Great Britain;
(this was found to be an inconvenience, and was afterwards remedied;) and
4th, The Scots being subjected to the malt-tax. The National
Scots Rights Association organised in 1853, in their list of grievances,
do not include any of these. In the change of times others of a different
nature demand consideration. But on these four, his lordship, seeing, as
he said, that the union had not produced those good effects which were
anticipated from it, moved for leave to bring in al bill for dissolving
the union between England and Scotland, and securing the protestant
succession in the house of Hanover. The motion was negatived, but only by
the small majority of four, and these by proxies. There were on the
occasion 108 peers present, who were equally divided, 54 for the motion
and 54 against it; while of proxies 13 voted for and 17 against it. The
same year he was appointed keeper of the great seal of Scotland, and he
presided as chancellor in the court of session, where his knowledge of the
law and a peculiar talent which he possessed for despatching business and
abridging processes, rendered him eminently useful. While he always lived
in a style suitable to his high station, his great abilities, industry,
and prudent management enabled him not only to retrieve the family estate,
which h ad become much involved, and to pay his father’s debts, but
greatly to increase his landed property. He died in 1730, in the
sixty-sixth year of his age. He married Anne, daughter of Sir William
Dunbar of Durn, baronet, and had three sons and two daughters, namely,
James, fifth earl of Findlater; the Hon. William Ogilvy, who was named
after King William; the Hon George Ogilvy, who passed advocate in 1723,
and died, unmarried, in January 1730; Lady Elizabeth, who married the
sixth earl of Lauderdale; and Lady Janet, whose second husband was the
first earl of Fife, in the Irish peerage.
James, fifth earl of Findlater and second earl of Seafield, born about
1689, was, on the breaking out of the rebellion in 1715, one of those who
were committed prisoners to the castle of Edinburgh, on suspicion of
disaffection to the government. He was then styled Lord Deskford. After
succeeding to the earldom he was, in 1734, appointed one of the lords of
the police, and in 1737 vice-admiral of Scotland, which office he retained
till his death. In 1734 he had been chosen one of the sixteen
representative Scots peers, and was afterwards three times re-elected.
Under the act for abolishing the heritable jurisdictions in Scotland in
1747 he was allowed, for the regality of Ogilvy, the constabulary of
Cullen, and the bailiary of regality of Strathila, one thousand and
eighty-five pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, in full of his claim
of five thousand five hundred pounds. He died at Cullen house, Banffshire,
9th July 1764, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. He
married, first Lady Elizabeth Hay, second daughter of Thomas sixth earl of
Kinnoul; and, secondly, Lady Sophia Hope, eldest daughter of Charles first
earl of Hopetoun, by whom he had no issue. By his first countess he had
one son, James, sixth earl of Findlater, and two daughters; Lady Margaret,
married in November 1735 to Sir Ludovick Grant of Grant, baronet (see
GRANT of Grant), and Lady Anne, who became the wife of the second earl of
Hopetoun.
James, sixth earl of Findlater and third earl of Seafield, born about
1714, completed an excellent education by foreign travel. Douglas (Peerage,
vol. i. Wood’s edition, p. 588, note) quotes the following extract from a
letter by Horace Walpole to General Conway at Rome, 23d April, 1740;
“Harry, you saw Lord Deskford at Geneva, Don’t you like him? He is a
mighty sensible man; there are few young people have so good an
understanding. He is mighty grave, and so are you; but you both can be
pleasant when you have a mind. Indeed one can make you pleasant; but his
solemn Scotchery is not a little formidable.” [Orford’s Works,
vol. vi.] In 1752, while yet Lord Deskford, he established a
bleachfield in the north end of the parish of that name in Banffshire,
where about 1,500 pieces of cloth and 1,700 spindles of thread yarn were
annually whitened; but in the course of the present century, from the
decay of the linen manufacture and household spinning in the parish, the
bleaching also fell off, ans was given up. He also established at Cullen a
considerable manufacture of linen and damask. On 29th July
1754, he was appointed one of the commissioners of customs in Scotland,
but resigned his seat at that board in 1761. Three years afterwards he
succeeded his father, and in 1765 he was appointed one of the lords of
police. He was also one of the trustees for the improvement of fisheries
and manufactures, and for the management of the annexed estates in
Scotland. For several years before his death he resided constantly at
Cullen house, employing himself in the promotion of agriculture, trade,
and all kinds of industry. He was the first to attempt improvements both
in agriculture and manufactures in the county of Banff. He brought an
overseer from England, and cultivated a farm in the neighbourhood of
Banff, in a manner totally unknown at that period in that part of the
country. He introduced the turnip husbandry, and granted long leases to h
is tenants, on condition that the latter should enclose the lands within a
certain period, and that they should sow grass seeds, and summer fallow to
a certain extent within the first five years of their occupancy. To
encourage them to preserve the plantations on his estate from any damage
by their cattle, he adopted a plan with several of his tenants of giving
them, at the termination of the lease, every third tree, (or the value in
money,) which had been planted during the currency of the lease. The
Findlater family within fifty years previous to 1806 had planted about
eight thousand Scottish acres, or at least thirty-two millions of trees.
His lordship died at Cullen house 2d November 1770, in the 56th
year of his age. He married at Huntingtower, 9th June 1749,
Lady Mary Murray, second daughter of the first duke of Athol, and by her
had two sons, James, seventh earl of Findlater, and the Hon. John Ogilvy,
who died young, in 1763.
James, seventh earl of Findlater and fourth earl of Seafield, born at
Huntingtower 10th April 1750, was educated at the university of
Oxford, and soon after succeeding to the earldom he went to the Continent,
where he chiefly resided for the remainder of his life. He was esteemed a
good classical scholar, and though he admired Horace, his favourite author
was Virgil. He married at Brussels in 1779, Christina Teresa, daughter of
Joseph Count Murray of Melgum, baronet of Nova Scotia, lieutenant-general
in the armies of the emperor of Germany, and captain-general ad interim
of the Low Countries. With his countess he did not reside long, and by her
he had no issue. He died at Dresden, 5th October 1811, in his
sixty-second year. On his death the earldom of Findlater became dormant,
but the earldom of Seafield, with estates in Scotland worth at that period
thirty thousand pounds sterling, went to his cousin, Sir Lewis Alexander
Grant of Grant, baronet, who, on becoming earl of Seafield, assumed the
surname of Ogilvy in addition to that of Grant. [See SEAFIELD, earl of.]
The earldom of Findlater is claimed by Sir William Ogilvie of Carnousie,
baronet, and by John Farquharson of Haughton, Esq., son of Alexander
Ogilvie, Esq., by Mary Farquharson, his wife, as presumptive male heir of
the Ogilvie family. |
