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.
