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The Scottish Nation
Dunlop


DUNLOP, a surname derived from a parish of that name in the district of Cunningham, Ayrshire, which has long been celebrated for its cheese. The origin of the name is said to be Dun lub, ‘the fortified hill at the bend,’ there being at the village of Dunlop a small hill, anciently fortified, round which is a bend or winding of the local stream.

      The family of Dunlop of Dunlop can be traced as far back as the year 1260, in which year Dominus William de Dunlop is incidentally mentioned as one of an inquest respecting certain lands in litigation between Dominus Godfrey de Ross and the burgh of Irvine. In the Ragman Roll occurs the name of Neill Fitz-Robert de Dulop. About the end of the fourteenth century the estate of Dunlop passed for a short time into the family of Douglas, as part of the barony of Stewarton, but was soon restored to its original owners. In 1489 Constantine Dunlop was appointed by parliament, among other barons, to collect the bygone rents and casualties of the crown. He is also mentioned as a member of an inquest on the retour of Mathew, earl of Lennox. He was first designed of Hunthall, but in 1499 was designed of Dunlop. He died in 1505. He had a daughter, Janet, married to James Stewart, sheriff of Bute, (great-grandson of King Robert the Second,) and a son and successor, John, whose descendant in the fourth generation, James Dunlop of Dunlop, was a warm supporter of the Presbyterian cause in the reign of Charles the First. To secure the estate from forfeiture, he executed a deed of resignation in favour of his next brother, John Dunlop, who having purchased the lands of Garnkirk, was designed of that place. In 1633 the latter took possession of Dunlop, in virtue of the deed mentioned, but resigned it to his nephew, James, the son of his brother. This gentleman also acted a prominent part during the civil wars, and as he too was a firm friend of the Presbyterian cause, he was obliged to make over a considerable portion of his estates to the earl of Dundonald. In 1665, for his opposition to the oppressive measures of the government, he was committed to Edinburgh castle, where he remained till 1677, when he was liberated under a bond of twelve thousand marks. In a few months thereafter he joined the ranks of the Covenanters. He was succeeded by his elder son, Alexander, who, being well known to be a zealous supporter of the covenant, was, on suspicion of having been at Bothwell Bridge in 1679, arrested on 30th July 1683, compelled to surrender a portion of his estates, and to execute a bond for ten thousand pounds, to appear in the following November (see Wodrow’s Hist. folio edition, vol. i. p. 280; vol. ii. pp. 309 and 373). In April 1684 he was indicted anew, when he made over to his son, John Dunlop, the lands of Peacock Bank and others, which had been settled on him on his marriage, in 1667, with Antonia, daughter and heiress of Sir John Brown of Fordal. Soon after doing so, he emigrated to America, and in 1685 was appointed sheriff of South Carolina. His son and successor, John Dunlop, acquired back the possessions which had been surrendered by his father in 1683, and by an adjudication in his favour in 1687, he recovered all his grandfather’s estates from the earl of Dundonald, though heavily burdened with expenses and fines. Dying unmarried in 1706, he was succeeded by his brother, Francis. The latter was one of those who were appointed, 26th March, 1707, to see the Regalia of Scotland built up in the Crown Room in the castle of Edinburgh, as appears from the minute of proceedings taken at the time and found amongst his papers. During the rebellion of 1715, he took an active part on the side of the government, and was lieutenant-colonel, under the earl of Kilmarnock, of a regiment of fencible cavalry, then raised. He was twice married. By his first wife he had three sons, and a daughter married to Sir Thomas Wallace of Cragie, baronet; and by his second wife he had two daughters. His eldest son, John Dunlop of Dunlop, was in 1745, with his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Wallace, deputed by the landed gentlemen of Ayrshire, to offer the assistance of that county to the duke of Cumberland in the suppression of the rebellion. He married Frances Anne, last surviving child of Sir Thomas Wallace of Craigie by Eleanor his wife, daughter and heiress of Colonel Agnew of Lochryan (see WALLACE of CRAIGIE, surname and family of). By this lady, celebrated as the early friend and correspondent of Burns, he had, with six daughters, five sons. Thomas, the eldest son, succeeded his maternal grandfather in the title of baronet and the estate of Craigie, and assumed in consequence the surname and arms of Wallace. Andrew, the second son, entered the army, and served in the first American war. He attained the rank of major, and afterwards raised a regiment of horse, called the Ayrshire Fencible cavalry, which he commanded until it was reduced in 1800. He died unmarried in 1804. James, the 3d son, succeeded to the family estate of Dunlop, and entering the army, first served in the American war. In 1787 he proceeded to India, as captain of the 77th foot, and remained there thirteen years. At the storming of Seringapatam, where he was severely wounded, he commanded one of the assaulting columns. In 1810, having attained the rank of major-general, he was appointed to the command of a brigade in the fifth division of Lord Wellington’s army in the Peninsula, and he remained at the head of that division during the campaign of 1811. In the following year he was elected M.P. for the stewartry of Kirkcudbright. He married in 1802, Julia, daughter of Hugh Baillie, Esq., and had three sons and two daughters. Frances, the younger daughter, became the wife, in 1838, of Alexander Earle Monteith, Esq., sheriff of Fifeshire. General Dunlop died in 1832. His eldest son, John Dunlop of Dunlop, born in 1806, was at one period an officer in the Grenadier guards. He represented the county of Ayr in parliament, and was created a baronet in 1838. He died 3d April 1839. He was twice married. By his first wife he had a son, Sir James, second baronet, born 27th August 1830. He entered the Coldstream Guards as ensign and lieutenant in 1849, and became a major in the army in 1855. He served in the East through the whole of the Crimean war, and wore the medal and clasps for the Alma, Balaklava, Inkermann, and Sebastopol. He died unmarried, 10th February 1858, when the title became extinct.

DUNLOP, WILLIAM, principal of the university of Glasgow after the Revolution, was the son of Mr. Alexander Dunlop, minister of Paisley, of the family of Auchenskeich in Ayrshire. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of William Mure of Glanderston, who was allied to the Mures of Caldwell. One of her sisters was the wife of Mr. John Carstairs of Glasgow, father of the celebrated Principal Carstairs, while another married, first, Zachary Boyd, and after his death, Mr. James Durham, of whom a memoir is given below. Hi was educated for the Church of Scotland in the university of Glasgow, and after leaving it he became tutor in the family of William Lord Cochrane. He seems to have been licensed to preach about the dark and eventful year 1679, but the troubles in Scotland at that period induced him, (to avoid being exposed to persecution from the oppressive government that then ruled in Scotland,) to emigrate to Carolina, in North America, where he continued till the Revolution restored to their country many good and able men, who had till then lived in voluntary exile. On his return in 1690, he was presented, through the interest of the Dundonald family, to the parish of Ochiltree in Ayrshire, but id not remain there long, as after receiving a call from his native place, Paisley, which he could not accept, he was in November of the same year (1690) appointed by King William principal of the university of Glasgow, then vacant. In 1694 he was a member of the deputation sent by the church of Scotland to London, with the twofold object of congratulating the king on his return from the continent, and of negociating with his majesty concerning the interests of the church. In 1699 he was again sent to London, as commissioner from the Scottish universities, to solicit the pecuniary aid of government to each of them, a mission which required considerable judgment, tact, and management to conduct. On this occasion he succeeded in obtaining a yearly grant of twelve hundred pounds sterling out of the bishops’ rents, each of the university towns receiving three hundred pounds for their respective colleges. His claim for the expenses incurred by him in his journey and in getting the grant passed through the proper public offices, was, on his return to Glasgow, considered too high, and several of the universities were not disposed to comply with it. Before the matter was adjusted, he died, but his son, Mr. Alexander Dunlop, renewed the demand, and obtained from the town council of Edinburgh, as patrons of that university, the sum of one hundred pounds, as their part of the expenses. As the king’s historiographer for Scotland, Principal Dunlop had a pension of forth pounds a-year. His death took place in March 1700. Wodrow highly eulogises him for his singular piety, public spirit, universal knowledge, and general usefulness.

      He had married, while young, his cousin Sarah, the sister of Principal Carstairs, who accompanied him to America, and by whom he had two sons; Alexander, born in Carolina in 1684, appointed in 1720 professor of Greek in the university of Glasgow, and died in 1742; and William, the subject of the succeeding notice. Alexander, the elder son, whose system of teaching the Greek language was considered superior to that of any of his contemporaries, published in 1736, a Greek Grammar, which was at one time so highly esteemed as to have been long the one chiefly in use in the Scottish universities.

DUNLOP, WILLIAM, a pious, learned, and eloquent divine, younger son of Principal Dunlop, was born at Glasgow in 1692, and received his education at the university of that city. In 1712 he took the degree of master of arts, and subsequently removed to Edinburgh, where he prosecuted his studies under the roof and superintendence of his uncle, Principal Carstairs. He afterwards spent two years at the university of Utrecht, studying the civil law, as was customary in those days, and on his return to Scotland, he applied himself with greater diligence than ever to the study of divinity. In 1714, he was licensed to preach the gospel by the presbytery of Edinburgh, and his learning and pulpit eloquence soon placed him in the foremost rank of the ministers of his time. Although not appointed to any parochial charge, he was, by the influence of Mr. William Wishart, who had succeeded his uncle as principal of the university of Edinburgh, nominated, on a vacancy, regius professor of divinity and ecclesiastical history in that university. His name, however, does not appear in the list of professors of the university from 1700 to 1759, in the register of the Town Council of Edinburgh. Bower says, “the patrons ‘recommended to the committee for the affairs of the college to receive Mr. William Dunlop second professor of divinity in the said college.’ No farther notice appears to be taken of it in the records, nor how long he retained that situation, nor anything respecting his future history, but there can be no doubt of his having been inducted to the office of professor of ecclesiastical history.” [Bower’s Hist. of the University of Edinburgh, vol. ii. p. 137.]

      About that period there had begun to appear both in England and Scotland a keen hostility to all creeds and confessions of faith, and it was deemed expedient for the Church of Scotland to lift up a testimony in their defence. In 1719, therefore, a number of gentlemen of Edinburgh resolved to publish an authorised collection of all the public standards of the church, and Professor Dunlop was requested to preface it with a vindication of the uses and ends of confessions. This he did with a candour and ability that proved his admirable fitness for the task. It was also, as appears from a paragraph at the end of the preface to his Sermons, intended to publish his lectures on ecclesiastical history, but this was never done. His career of usefulness was very short. He died October 29, 1720, at the early age of twenty-eight. His works are:

      Collections of Confessions of Faith, Catechisms, Directories, Books of Discipline, &c., of public authority in the Church of Scotland, with a preface, explaining and vindicating the uses and ends of Confessions, 2 vols. 12mo. Edin. 1719-22.

      Full Vindication of the Overtures transmitted to Presbyteries by the Commission, November 1719. Edin. 1720, 8vo.

      Sermons and Lectures, 2 vols. 12mo. Glasgow, 1746.

      Essay on Confessions, being the above preface reprinted separately. Edin. 1755, one vol. 8vo.


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