|
CALLANDER,
a surname derived from the lands of Callendar in Stirlingshire, (supposed
to be a corruption of choille-tor, wood-hill), which were bestowed
by Alexander the Second in 1246, on one Malcolm the son of Duncan, who had
received, in 1217, from Malduin earl of Lennox, the lands of Glasswell,
Kilsyth, &c., in the same county. It is probable, however, that it was the
British name for the district extending over the middle portion of the
Forth. A Roman station was at Calentarra, supposed to be the camp at
Ardoch, near the village of Callander in Perthshire, and the army of
William the Conqueror passed through Callantrae on their way to Abernethy
on the Tay, against Malcolm Canmore. One of the portions of the Scottish
army under David the First, at the battle of the Standard (1138), were the
men of Callantrae. Malcolm was succeeded by Aluin de Callenter his son,
who took his name, as was usual in those days, from his estate. In the
Ragman Roll, among those who swore fealty to Edward the First in 1292 and
1296, occur the names of ‘Joannes de Callentar, miles,’ and ‘Johannes de
Callentyr,’ the former being the head of the ancient family of the
Callendars of that ilk, and the latter, it is likely, a son or nephew.
Patrick de Callendar of that ilk was forfeited by David the Second, for
adhering to the party of Edward Baliol, upon which Sir William Livingston,
ancestor of the earls of Linlithgow and Callendar, [see LIVINGSTON,
surname of], obtained the estate of Callendar, by a charter, dated 10th
July 1347, and to prevent his title to the lands from being afterwards
called in question, he married Christian Callendar, the daughter and
heiress of the said Patrick. [See CALLENDAR, earl of.]
CALLANDER, JOHN,
of Craigforth, Stirlingshire, a distinguished antiquary, was born about
the beginning of the eighteenth century. Being educated for the bar, he
was admitted advocate; but he devoted the greater part of his time in
early life to classical studies, and was the author of various works,
which display great scholarship. His first publication was a translation
from the French of M. de Brosses, entitled ‘Terra Australis Cognita, or
Voyages to the Southern Hemisphere, during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and
Eighteenth Centuries,’ which appeared at Edinburgh in 1766, in 3 vols.
8vo. In 1779 appeared at Glasgow his ‘Essay towards a literal English
Version of the New Testament, in the Epistle to the Ephesians.’ The work
by which he is best known was published at Edinburgh in 1782, in 8vo,
entitled ‘Two ancient Scottish Poems; the Gaberlunzie Man, and Christ’s
Kirk on the Green, with Notes and Observations.’ In editing these he does
not appear to have consulted the most correct editions; but, as regards
the latter especially, gave “such readings as appeared to him most
consonant to the phraseology of the sixteenth century.” In April 1781 he
was elected a fellow of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, founded in
the preceding November by the late earl of Buchan, and appointed secretary
for foreign correspondence. In August of the same year, he presented the
society with five folio volumes of manuscripts, entitled ‘Spicelegia
Antiquitatis Graecae, sive ex Veteribus Poetis, Deperdita Fragmenta;’ and
also with nine folio volumes of manuscript annotations on Milton’s
Paradise Lost. Of the latter, a specimen, containing his notes on the
first book, was printed at Glasgow, by Messrs. Foulis, in 1750. An
admirable paper in Blackwood’s Magazine on these annotations, in which Mr.
Callander was accused of having taken, without acknowledgment, the greater
part of his materials from a folio work on the same subject, published by
Mr. Patrick Hume, at London, in 1695, led, on the suggestion of Mr. David
Laing, librarian to the signet library, to the appointment, in 1826, of a
committee of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries for the purpose of
examining the manuscripts. Their report, published in the third volume of
the Transactions of that Society, vindicated Mr. Callander from the charge
of plagiarising the general plan, on the largest portion of his materials,
from Mr. Hume’s work, but stated that there are some passages where the
similarity is so striking, that there can be no doubt of his having
availed himself of the labours of his predecessor, and of these he has
made no acknowledgment.
In 1778, Mr.
Callander printed in folio a specimen of a ‘Bibliotheca Septentrionalis.’
In 1781 appeared ‘Proposals for a History of the Ancient Music of
Scotland, from the age of the Venerable Ossian to the beginning of the
Sixteenth Century;[ and the same year, a specimen of a Scoto-Gothic
Glossary is mentioned in a letter to the earl of Buchan. But none of these
projected works appear ever to have been completed. Mr. Callander died
September 14, 1789. By his wife, Mary, daughter of Sir James Livingstone
of Westquarter, Bart., he had seventeen children. From a little work,
entitled ‘Letters from Thomas Percy, D.D., afterwards bishop of Dromore,
John Callander of Craigforth, Esq., David Herd, and others, to George
Paton, which appeared at Edinburgh in 1830, we learn that Mr. Callander
had a taste for music, and was an excellent performer on the violin, and
that in his latter years he became very retired in his habits, and saw
little company, his mind being deeply affected by a religious melancholy,
which entirely unfitted him for society. The estate of Craigforth
originally belonged to Lord Elphinstone, but in the year 1684, it was
acquired by Mr. Alexander Higgins, advocate. That gentleman, shortly after
his purchase, became much embarrassed, and in consequence of large sums of
money advanced by John Callander, the king’s master smith in Scotland, Mr.
Higgins conveyed the estate to him. Craigforth has since remained in the
possession of his descendants, notwithstanding a strenuous effort which
was made by Mr. Higgins to regain it. Mr. Callander, the smith, is
traditionally said to have made the greater part of his money by a mistake
of some English government officials, who paid him a large sum in pounds
sterling, instead of pounds Scots.
James Callander,
born in 1745, the eldest son of the antiquary, was a person of some
notoriety in his day. He left Scotland when very young, and remained
upwards of twenty years on the continent. In 1810, on the death of his
cousin, Sir Alexander Campbell of Ardkinglass, bart., he succeeded, as
heir of entail, to that estate, on which he dropped the name of Callander,
and assumed the name and title of Sir James Campbell, baronet. When the
succession opened to him, he was resident in France, and being one of
those who were detained by Napoleon, he sent a French lady, whose
acquaintance he had formed, named Madame Lina Talina Sassen, as his
commissioner to Scotland. In the power of attorney with which he furnished
her on the occasion, she was designed his “beloved wife;” but when he
arrived in Scotland himself he disclaimed the marriage, in consequence of
which, Madame Sassen raised an action against him. Although the judges of
the court of session found the marriage not proven, they awarded her a sum
of three hundred pounds sterling per annum. On appeal to the house of
lords, however, the judgment was reversed. The lady afterwards brought
various actions against Sir James, in the court of session, having been
admitted to sue in forma pauperis, and the superintendence of these
suits formed the occupation of her life; they were only terminated by the
death of the parties, within a fortnight of each other. It is said that
latterly Sir James offered her a very liberal compromise, which she
rejected, as she would accept nothing short of a complete recognition of
all her claims. She was a constant attendant in the parliament house
during the sittings of the court of session. She was little in stature,
and in her youth had been a pretty woman. Sir James died in 1832. He
published Memoirs of his own life in 2 vols. 8vo., a work not remarkable
for the accuracy of its facts.
CALLENDAR,
earl of, a title in the peerage of Scotland (attained in 1716), conferred
in 1641 on the Hon. Sir James Livingstone, third son of Alexander, first
earl of Linlithgow [See LINLITHGOW, earl of.] Sir James, in his youth,
distinguished himself greatly in the wars in Bohemia, Germany, Holland,
and Sweden, and on his return to Scotland he was appointed one of the
gentlemen of the bedchamber to King Charles the First, and created Lord
Livingstone of Almond, by patent dated at Holyroodhouse 19th
June 1633, to him and his heirs male for ever. On 12th June
1634 he had the lordship of Callendar and several other lands near Falkirk
erected into a free barony. In 1640, when the Scots covenanters raised an
army to oppose the attempt of King Charles the First to coerce them into
his measures, he was appointed by the war-committee lieutenant-general or
second in command under General Alexander Leslie, afterwards created earl
of Leven. On the 20th August the Scots army crossed the Tweed,
the van being led on foot by the earl of Montrose, who had not then
declared himself for the king. After defeating, on the 28th, a
large body of the king’s troops sent to defend the fords at Newburn on the
Tyne, they took possession of Newcastle and other towns, and eight
commissioners being soon after sent to treat with commissioners on the
part of the king, the treaty of Ripon, concluded the last day of October,
which put an end to hostilities for the time, was the consequence. On his
return to Scotland Montrose secretly formed an association in favour of
the king, and Lord Almond was one of the first who subscribed the bond, at
Cumbernauld, in July 1641. He afterwards revealed the matter to the earl
of Argyle, who reported it to the committee of parliament, and the bond
was in consequence delivered up and burned. When Charles visited Scotland
in August of that year, he was pleased to create him earl of Callendar,
Lord Livingstone and Almond, by patent dated at Holyroodhouse, 6th
October 1641, to him and the heirs male of his body. In 1643, when the
Scots army were about to enter England, Lord Callendar was offered his
former post of lieutenant-general, but he declined it. In the following
year, however, he accepted the command of five thousand covenanters raised
to oppose Montrose, who had erected the royal standard at Dumfries.
Montrose, however, did not wait for them, but in two days made a
precipitate retreat to Carlisle. Advancing into England, the earl of
Callendar joined the Scots army under the earl of Leven, employed in the
siege of Newcastle, which was taken by storm in October 1644. After the
king had taken refuge in the Scots camp at Newark in May 1646, the earl of
Callendar waited on his majesty, by whom he was graciously received. He
obtained a patent, dated at Newark 22d July 1646, granting to him, in the
event of failure of heirs male of his body, the power of nominating the
person who should succeed him in his titles and estates, and in default of
such nomination then to devolve on Alexander Livingstone, the son of his
brother, and his heirs of entail. His lordship was sent back to Edinburgh,
with a letter to the committee of estates, expressive of his majesty’s
resolution to comply with the wishes of his Scots parliament, but all was
rendered abortive by his majesty’s declining to afford them full
satisfaction in matters of religion. In 1647 he waited on the king at
London, and obtained from his majesty a grant of the office of sheriff of
the county of Stirling. In the following year, when the “engagement” for
the rescue of the king, then a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, was entered
into, the earl was, 11th May 1648, appointed lieutenant-general
of the army raised for the purpose, being second in command under the duke
of Hamilton. On this occasion, he was attended by a body of his Falkirk
retainers, This army, amounting to about ten thousand foot and four
thousand cavalry, marched into England, and on 12th July took
Carlisle, of which place the earl of Callendar was appointed governor. The
Scots, however, were totally routed at Preston in Lancashire, by Cromwell,
on the 17th of August, when his lordship escaped in disguise to
Holland. His Falkirk troop valiantly forced their way th rough the
victorious army, and on their return home they were summoned before the
congregation, at the instance of the kirk session, and were publicly
“admonished” for being in what was called “the late unlawful engagement.”
The session record contains the names of seventy-seven of the persons so
dealt with, and among these the names of Sir William Livingstone of
Westquarter, and of other gentlemen appear. [New Statistical Account of
Scotland, art. Falkirk, p. 6.] Lord Callendar was one of the persons
excepted in Cromwell’s act of grace and pardon. At the restoration, having
no issue of his own, the earl obtained a new patent, of date 21st
November 1660, of his titles and estates in favour of his nephew,
Alexander Livingstone, second son of Alexander second earl of Linlithgow,
and the heirs make of his body, which failing to the second son of George,
third earl of Linlithgow. Lord Callendar married, in 1633, Margaret, only
daughter of James seventh Lord Yester, sister of John first earl of
Tweeddale, and widow of Alexander first earl of Dunfermline,
high-chancellor of Scotland, but her ladyship had no children to him. He
died in 1672, and was succeeded by his nephew Alexander.
The second earl
of Callendar was a zealous covenanter, and a copy of the Solemn League and
Covenant is still preserved in Falkirk, bearing his signature with that of
many others. On two different occasions the troops of government took
possession of Callendar house, near Falkirk, but on the last of these in
1678, a mob from that town put the intruders to flight. He married, in
1663, Lady Mary Hamilton, third daughter of the second duke of Hamilton,
but by her had no issue. He had, however, a natural son, Sir Alexander
Livingstone of Glentirran. The earl died in 1685, when the titles and
estates devolved on Alexander Livingstone, the second son of George third
earl of Linlithgow.
The third earl
of Callendar died in December 1692, leaving, by his wife, Lady Ann Graham,
eldest daughter of James second marquis of Montrose, a son, James, the
fourth earl, and two daughters.
The fourth earl
of Callendar, on the death of his uncle George fourth earl of Linlithgow,
in August 1695, succeeded to that title. [See LINLITHGOW, earl of.] His
titles and estates were forfeited in consequence of his engaging in the
rebellion of 1715. The last earl of Callendar and Linlithgow died in exile
on the continent. His estate of Callendar was sold about 1720 to the York
Buildings Company, whose affairs having become disordered, it was brought
to sale in 1783, under the authority of the court of session, and
purchased by William Forbes, Esq., merchant in London. The titles both of
Callendar and Linlithgow are claimed by the baronetted family of
Livingstone of that ilk and Westquarter. |
