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The Erskine family, which
has produced a remarkable number of eminent men in every
department of public life, derived their designation from the
barony of Erskine in Renfrewshire, situated on the south bank of
the Clyde. A Henry de Erskine, from whom the family trace their
descent, was proprietor of this barony so early as the reign of
Alexander II. A daughter of his great-grandson, Sir John de
Erskine, was married to Sir Thomas Bruce, a brother of King
Robert, who was taken prisoner and put to death by the English;
another became the wife of Walter, High Steward of Scotland. The
brother of these ladies was a faithful adherent of Robert Bruce,
and as a reward for his patriotism and valour, was knighted under
the royal banner on the field. He died in
1329. His son, Sir Robert de Erskine,
held the great offices of Lord High Chamberlain, Justiciary north
of the Forth, and Constable of the Castles of Edinburgh, Stirling,
and Dumbarton. He was six times ambassador to England, was also
sent on an embassy to France, was Warden of the Marches, and
heritable Sheriff of Stirlingshire. He took an active part in
securing the succession of the House of Stewart to the throne, on
the death of David Bruce. In return for this important service he
received from Robert II. a grant of the estate of Alloa, which
still remains in the possession of the family, in exchange for the
hunting-ground of Strathgartney. Sir Thomas, the son of this
powerful noble by his marriage to Janet Keith, great
grand-daughter of Gratney, Earl of Mar, laid the foundation of the
claim which the Erskines preferred to that dignity, and the vast
estates which were originally included in the earldom. Though
their claim was rejected by James I., the family continued to
prosper; new honours and possessions were liberally conferred upon
them by successive sovereigns, and they were elevated to the
peerage in 1467. The second Lord Erskine fought on the side of
King James III. against the rebel lords at Sauchieburn. Robert,
third Lord Erskine, fell at the battle of Flodden with four other
gentlemen, his kinsmen. The grandson of that lord, the Master of
Erskine, was killed at Pinkie. For several generations the
Erskines were entrusted with the honourable and responsible duty
of keeping the heirs to the Crown during their minority. James
IV., James V., Queen Mary, James VI., and his eldest son, Prince
Henry, were in turn committed to the charge of the head of the
Erskine family, who discharged this important trust with great
fidelity. John, the fourth Lord Erskine, who had the keeping of
James V. during his minority, was employed by him in after life in
important public affairs, was present at the melancholy death of
that monarch at Falkland, and after that event afforded for some
time a refuge to his infant daughter, the unfortunate Mary, in
Stirling Castle, of which he was hereditary governor. On the
invasion of Scotland by the English, he removed her for greater
security to the Priory of Inchmahome, an island in the Lake of
Menteith, which was his own property. His eldest son, who fell at
the battle of Pinkie during his father’s lifetime, was the
ancestor, by an illegitimate son, of the Erskines of Shieldfield,
near Dryburgh, from whom sprang the celebrated brothers Ebenezer
and Ralph Erskine, the founders of the Secession Church.
JOHN,
fifth Lord Erskine, though a
Protestant, was held in such esteem by Queen Mary that she
bestowed on him the long-coveted title of Earl of Mar, which had
been withheld from his ancestor a hundred and thirty years
earlier. He maintained a neutral position during the protracted
struggle between the Lords of the Congregation and the Queen
Regent, Mary of Guise; but when she was reduced to great straits,
he gave her an asylum in the castle of Edinburgh, where she died
in 1560. The young Queen Mary put herself under his protection
when about to be delivered of her son, afterwards James VI. The
infant prince was immediately committed to the care of the Earl,
who conveyed him to the castle of Stirling, and in the following
year he baffled all the attempts of Bothwell to obtain possession
of the heir to the throne. When James was subsequently crowned,
though only thirteen months old, the Parliament imposed upon the
Earl of Mar the onerous and responsible duty of keeping and
educating the infant sovereign, which he discharged with exemplary
fidelity. James seems to have spent his youthful years very
happily as well as securely in the household of the Earl, pursuing
his studies, and enjoying his sports in the company of Mar’s
eldest son. Mar’s sister was the mother, by James V., of Regent
Moray, [She afterwards married Sir William Douglas of Loch Leven.
In Sir Walter Scott’s Abbot,
Lady Douglas is represented as a harsh
custodian of Queen Mary. She was in reality very friendly to that
illustrious Princess, and was not resident in Loch Leven Castle
when Mary was imprisoned there.] and the Earl was himself chosen
Regent of Scotland in 1571, on the death of the Earl of Lennox;
but he sank beneath the burden of anxiety and grief occasioned by
the distracted state of the kingdom, and died in the following
year. The family attained its highest lustre under the Regent’s
son, JOHN, second Earl of Mar of the name of Erskine, the famous
‘Jock o’ the Sclaits’ (slates), [It is supposed that this
sobriquet was given by James to his class-fellow from his
having been intrusted by George Buchanan with a slate,
whereon to record the misdeeds of the royal pupil during the
pedagogue’s absence.] a name given him by James VI., his
playfellow and a pupil along with him and his cousins, sons of
Erskine of Gogar, of the learned and severe pedagogue, George
Buchanan, under the superintendence of the Countess of Mar. He was
one of the nobles who took part in the Raid of Ruthven in 1582,
and was, in consequence, deprived of his office of Governor of
Stirling Castle—which was conferred on the royal favourite
Arran—and was obliged to take refuge in Ireland. An unsuccessful
attempt to regain his position in 1584 made it necessary for the
Earl to retire into England; but in November of the following
year, he and the other banished lords re-entered Scotland, and, at
the head of eight thousand men, took possession of Stirling Castle
and the person of the King, and expelled Arran from the Court.
From this time
forward the Earl of Mar was one of the King’s most trusty
counsellors and intimate friends, down to the end of his career.
In July, 1595, he was formally entrusted by James with the custody
and education of Prince Henry, by a warrant under the King’s own
hand, being the fifth of the heirs to the throne who had been
committed to the charge of an Erskine. He was sent ambassador to
England in 1601, and by his dexterous management contributed not a
little to facilitate the peaceable accession of James to the
English throne. A quarrel took place between the Earl and Queen
Anne respecting the custody of Prince Henry, but James firmly
maintained the claim of his friend in opposition to the angry
demand of his wife, who never forgave the Earl for resisting her
wishes. Mar, in return, steadily supported the policy of the King
in his quarrels with the Scottish clergy, and voted for the ‘Five
Articles of Perth,’ though he was well aware how obnoxious they
were to the people of Scotland. In 1616 the Earl was appointed to
the office of Lord High Treasurer, which he held till 1620, and
became the most powerful man in the kingdom.
After the death of
his first wife, Anne, daughter of David, Lord Drummond, the Earl
fell ardently in love with Lady Mary Stewart, the daughter of the
Duke of Lennox, the ill-fated royal favourite, and cousin of the
King. As he was older than this French beauty, and had already a
son and heir, she at first positively refused to marry him,
remarking that ‘Anne Drumrnond’s bairn would be Earl of Mar, but
that hers would be just Maister Erskine.’ ‘Being of a hawtie
spirit,’ says Lord Somerville, ‘she disdained that the children
begotten upon her should be any ways inferior, either as to honour
or estate, to the children of the first marriage. She leaves nae
means unessayed to advance their fortunes.’ [Memoirs of the
Somervilles. Lord
Somerville is mistaken in representing Lord Mar as an old man at
this time. He was little more than thirty years of age.]
The Earl took her
rejection of his suit so much to heart as to become seriously ill;
but the King strove to comfort him, and, in his homely style of
speech said, ‘By my saul, Jock, ye sanna dee for ony lass in a’
the land.’ He was aware that the main cause of the lady’s refusal
to marry his friend was her knowledge of the fact that the Earl’s
son by his first wife would inherit his titles as well as his
estates, and he informed her that if she married Mar, and bore him
a son, he should also be made a peer. The inducement thus held out
by his Majesty removed Lady Mary’s scruples, and James was as good
as his word. He created the Earl Lord Cardross, bestowing upon him
at the same time the barony of that name, with the unusual
privilege of authority to assign both the barony and the title to
any of his sons whom he might choose. The Earl was the father of
three peers, and the father-in-law of four powerful earls. Lady
Mary Stewart bore him five sons and four daughters. The eldest of
these, Sir James Erskine, married Mary Douglas, Countess of Buchan
in her own right, and was created Earl of Buchan. The second son,
Henry, received from his father the title and the barony of
Cardross. The third son, Colonel Sir Alexander Erskine, lost his
life, along with his brother-in-law, the Earl of
Eladdington and other
Covenanting leaders, when Dunglass Castle was blown up in 1640 by
the explosion of the powder-magazine. He was a handsome and
gallant soldier, originally in the French service, and is noted as
the lover whose faithlessness is bewailed in the beautiful and
pathetic song entitled, ‘Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament.’ Sir Charles
Erskine, the fourth son, was ancestor of the Erskines of Alva, now
represented by the Earl of Rosslyn. William Erskine, the youngest
son, was cup-bearer to Charles II., and Master of the
Charterhouse, London. The Earl of Mar’s youngest daughter married
the eldest son of the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Hamilton, first Earl
of Haddington—’ Tam o’ the Cowgate.’ When King James heard of the
intended marriage, knowing well the great ability, and the
‘pawkiness’ of the two noblemen who were thus to be brought into
close alliance, he exclaimed in unfeigned, and not altogether
groundless, alarm, ‘Lord, haud a grupp o’ me. If Tam o’ the
Cowgate’s son marry Jock o’ the Sclaits’ daughter, what will
become o’ me!’
It is a curious
confirmation of his Majesty’s apprehensions that, in 1624, the
other nobles complained that the Earls of Mar and Melrose (the
Lord-Chancellor’s first title), wielded all but absolute power in
the State. The former, it was said, disposed of the King’s
revenue, and the other ruled in the Council, and Court of Session,
each according to his pleasure.
The Earl died at
Stirling Castle, 14th December, 1634, at the age of seventy-seven,
and was interred at Alloa. Scott of Scotstarvit says of his death,
‘His chief delight was in hunting; and he procured by Act of
Parliament that none should hunt within divers miles of the King’s
house. Yet often that which is most pleasant to a man is his
overthrow; for, walking in his own hall, a dog cast him off his
feet and lamed his leg, of which he died: and, at his burial, a
hare having run through the company, his special chamberlain,
Alexander Stirling, fell off his horse and broke his neck.’
It is said that
there are some of the descendants of the Lord Treasurer who, on
account of this casualty, are to this day chary of meeting an
accidental hare.
From this period
the decay of the family began, and steadily proceeded in its
downward course till it reached its lowest position in 1715, when
they were subjected, in consequence of the part which they took in
the Great Civil War, to sequestrations and heavy fines.
JOHN,
the eighth Earl of Mar of the name of
Erskine, however, entered on life with every prospect of a
prosperous career. He was invested with the Order of the Bath in
1610, was nominated one of the Extraordinary Lords of Session,
sworn a privy councillor in 1615, and was, at the same time,
appointed Governor of Stirling Castle. But, in 1638, he was
deprived of the command of the castle, which Charles I. conferred
on General Ruthven, afterwards Earl of Forth, whom he had recalled
from the Swedish service at the time when he was resolved to
suppress the Covenant by force. The same year the Earl was made to
sell to the King the sheriff-ship of Stirling, and the bailiery of
the Forth, for the sum of £8,000 sterling. He obtained a bond for
the money in 1641, but it is doubtful whether any part of it was
ever paid. Mar at first supported the Covenanters, but when their
policy became apparent, he signed the Cumbernauld Bond, along with
the Earl of Montrose and other nobles, to support the King. His
property was, in consequence, sequestered by the Estates. In 1638
he sold the barony of Erskine, the most ancient possession of the
family, to Sir John Hamilton of Orbiston, in order to clear off
the heavy incumbrances on his other estates; and he is said to
have lost in the Irish rebellion some lands which he had purchased
in Ireland. He died in 1654. His eldest son—
JOHN, the ninth.
Earl, before he succeeded to the family titles
and estates, commanded the
Stirlingshire regiment in the army of
the Covenanters, raised in 1644, for
the purpose of resisting the threatened invasion of Scotland by
Charles I. But in the following year, along with his father, he
joined the Cumbernauld association, for the defence of the royal
cause. This step, while it deeply offended the Covenanters, did
not secure him protection from the Royalist forces; for, in 1645,
the Irish kernes in the army of Montrose plundered the town
of Alloa, and the estates of the Earl of Mar in the vicinity of
that town. Notwithstanding this outrage, the Earl and his son gave
a handsome entertainment to Montrose and his officers, and, by
this exercise of hospitality, so highly incensed the Earl of
Argyll, the leader of the Covenanters, that he threatened to burn
the castle of Alloa. After the battle of Kilsyth (15th August,
1645) Lord Erskine joined the victorious Royalist army, and was
present at their ruinous defeat at Philiphaugh on the 13th
September following, but escaped from the battlefield, and was
sent by Montrose on the forlorn attempt to raise recruits in
Braemar. The Estates, in consequence, fined him 24,000 marks, and
caused his houses of Erskine and Mar to be plundered. On
succeeding his father, in 1654, the Earl’s whole estates were
sequestrated by the orders of Cromwell, and he was so completely
ruined that he lived till the Restoration in a small cottage, at
the gate of what had been his own mansion, Alloa House. To add to
his misfortunes and sufferings, he lost his eyesight. His estates
were restored to him by Charles II. in 1660; but the family never
recovered from the heavy losses to which they had been subjected
during the Civil War. The unfortunate nobleman died in September,
1688, just in time to escape witnessing the ruin of that royal
house for which he had suffered so much. His Countess, Lady Mary
Maule, eldest daughter of the second Earl of Panmure, bore him
eight sons and one daughter. Five of his sons died young. The
second son was James Erskine of Grange, Lord Justice Clerk. The
third was Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Erskine, who was killed at the
battle of Almanza in 1707. The eldest—
JOHN, eleventh Earl
of the Erskine family, was the well-known
leader of the Jacobite rebellion
in 1715. He found the family estates much involved, and joined the
Whig party then in power under the Duke of Queensberry, merely
because it was his interest to do so. He received from them the
command of a regiment of foot, and was invested with the Order of
the Thistle. In 1704, when the Whigs went out of office, Mar paid
court to the Tory party, their successors, and contrived to
impress them with the belief that he was a trustworthy friend of
the exiled family. When the Whigs came once more into power he
gave them his support, and assisted in promoting the Union between
England and Scotland. As a reward for his services he was
appointed Secretary of State for Scotland, and was chosen one of
the sixteen representative peers. But finding that he had lost the
good opinion of his countrymen by supporting the Union, which was
very unpopular in Scotland, he endeavoured to regain their favour
by voting for the motion in the House of Lords for the dissolution
of the Union, which was very nearly carried. On the dismissal of
the Whig ministry in 1713, Mar, without scruple or shame, went
over to their opponents, and was again appointed Secretary of
State, and manager for Scotland. These repeated tergiversations
rendered him notorious even among the loose-principled
politicians of his own day, and gained him in his native country
the nickname of ’Bobbing John.’
On the death of
Queen Anne, the Earl of Mar, as Secretary of State, signed the
proclamation of George I., and in a letter to the new sovereign
made earnest protestations of ardent loyalty and deep attachment,
accompanied by a reference to his services to the country. He also
procured a letter to be addressed to himself by the chiefs of the
Jacobite clans, declaring that they had always been ready to
follow his directions in serving the late queen, and that they
were equally ready to concur with him in serving the new
sovereign. George, however, was quite well aware of the double
part which the Earl had acted, and on presenting himself to the
King on his arrival at Greenwich he was left unnoticed, and eight
days after he was dismissed from office.
Deeply mortified at
this treatment, Mar resolved upon revenge, and entered into
correspondence with the disaffected party in Scotland, with the
view of exciting an insurrection against the reigning family. He
attended a court levee on the 1st of August, 1715, and next
morning he set out for Scotland to raise the standard of rebellion
against the King to whom he just paid homage. Accompanied by
Major-General Hamilton and Colonel Hay, the Earl, disguised as an
artisan, sailed in a coal-barge from London to Newcastle. He hired
a vessel there which conveyed him and his companions to the coast
of Fife, and landed them at the small port of Elie. He spent a few
days in that district among the Jacobite gentry, with whom he made
arrangements to join him in the North. On the 17th of August he
left Fife, and with forty horse proceeded to his estates in
Aberdeenshire, sending out by the way invitations to a great
hunting match in the forest of Braemar, on the 25th of that month.
On the day appointed the leading Jacobite noblemen and chiefs
assembled, attended by a few hundreds of their vassals, and after
a glowing address from Mar, denouncing the usurping intruder who
occupied the throne, and holding out large promises of assistance
from France in both troops and money, they resolved to take up
arms on behalf of the exiled Stewart family. Accordingly, on the
6th of September, the Jacobite standard was unfurled at Castletown,
in Braemar.
The fiery cross was
sent through the Highlands, summoning every man capable of bearing
arms to repair with all speed to the camp of the Jacobite leader.
Mar’s own tenants and vassals showed great reluctance to take part
in the enterprise. There is a very instructive letter sent by him
to the bailie of his lordship of Kildrummie, in which he complains
bitterly that so few of his retainers had voluntarily repaired to
his standard. ‘lt is a pretty thing,’ he said, ‘when all the
Highlands of Scotland are now rising upon their King and country’s
account, that my men should be only refractory,’ and he threatened
that should they continue obstinate, their property should be
pillaged and burned, and they themselves treated as enemies. The
clansmen of the Highland chiefs, however, repaired with more
alacrity to the ‘standard on the braes of Mar;’ the Earl was soon
at the head of an army of twelve thousand men, and almost the
whole country to the north of the Tay was in the hands of the
insurgents. Mar, however, was totally unfit to head such an
enterprise. Though possessed of great activity and a plausible
address, he was fickle, vacillating, infirm of purpose, ‘crooked
in mind and body,’ and entirely ignorant of the art of war. He
wasted much precious time lingering in the Highlands, and when at
length he made up his mind to descend into the Lowlands, he found
that the Duke of Argyll had taken up a position at Stirling which
blocked his march. The two armies encountered at Sheriffmuir, near
Dunblane, on the 13th of November, 1715, and though the result was
a drawn battle, the advantages of the contest remained with the
Duke. The march of the insurgents into the low country was
permanently arrested. Mar retreated to Perth; his army rapidly
dwindled away; and though joined by the Chevalier in person, who
created him a duke, he was at last fain to retreat to the North,
after laying waste, in the most ruthless manner, the country
through which the royal troops must march in pursuit of the
retreating army. The unfortunate Prince, his incompetent general,
and several others of the leaders embarked at Montrose (February
4, 1746) in a French ship, and sailed for the Continent, leaving
their deluded and indignant followers to shift for themselves. The
Earl of Mar and the Chevalier, with his attendants, landed at
Waldam, near Gravelines, February 11th.
The Earl
accompanied the Prince to Rome, and for some years continued to
manage his affairs, ‘the mock minister of a mock cabinet,’ in the
French capital, and possessed James’s unlimited confidence. He
entered, however, into some negotiations with the Earl of Stair,
ambassador at the French Court, through whom he obtained a pension
of £2,000 from the British Government, and £1,500
a year was allowed to his wife and
daughter out of his forfeited estate. Mar, while revealing the
secrets of James to the British Government, still professed to be
a staunch adherent of the exiled family. But he was accused both
of embezzling the money the Jacobites had raised for the promotion
of their cause, and of betraying his master, and in the end James
withdrew his confidence from him, and dismissed him from his
service; indeed, he had by his double-dealing forfeited the esteem
and confidence of both parties. He died at Aix-la-Chapelle in May,
1732, regretted by no one.
The HON. JAMES
ERSKINE OF GRANGE, younger brother of the Earl of Mar, was a very
remarkable character. His memory has been preserved mainly in
consequence of his extraordinary abduction of his wife. He was
admitted to the Bar in July, 1705, was appointed to a seat on the
Bench in October, 1706—no doubt through the influence of his
brother the Earl, who was at that time Secretary of State for
Scotland. In 1707 he was made a Lord of Justiciary, and in 1710
was appointed Lord Justice-Clerk. He had contracted a violent
dislike to Sir Robert Walpole, and for the purpose of assisting
the enemies of that minister in hunting him down, he offered
himself a candidate for the Stirling Burghs. In order to exclude
his vindictive enemy from the House of Commons, Walpole got an Act
passed disqualifying judges of the Court of Session from holding a
seat in Parliament., Grange was determined, however, not to be
balked in his design, and he resigned his office, and was elected
member for the Stirling district of burghs. Great expectations
were entertained of the influence which he would exercise in the
House. ‘But his first appearance,’ says Dr. Carlyle, ‘undeceived
his sanguine friends, and silenced him for ever. He chose to make
his maiden speech on the Witches’ Bill, as it was called; and
being learned in daemonologia, with books on which subject his
library was filled, he made a long canting speech that set the
House in a titter of laughter, and convinced Sir Robert that he
had no need of any extraordinary armour against this champion of
the house of Mar.’
Carlyle speaks
contemptuously of Erskine’s learning and ability, and says he had
been raised on the shoulders of his brother, the Earl of Mar, but
had never distinguished himself. The minister of Inveresk,
however, was too young to know him intimately, and he makes
several erroneous statements respecting Grange’s career. He was
usually a member of the General Assembly, and voted with what
Carlyle calls ‘the High-flying party.’ ‘He had my father very
frequently with him in the evenings,’ Carlyle continues, ‘and kept
him to very late hours. They were understood to pass much of their
time in prayer, and in settling the high points of Calvinism, for
their creed was that of Geneva. Lord Grange was not unentertaining
in conversation, for he had a great many anecdotes, which he
related agreeably, and was fair-complexioned, good-looking, and
insinuating. After these meetings for private prayer, however, in
which they passed several hours before supper, praying
alternately, they did not part without wine, for my mother used to
complain of their late hours, and suspected that the claret had
flowed liberally. Notwithstanding this intimacy, there were
periods of half a year at a time when there was no intercourse
between them at all. My father’s conjecture was that at those
times he was engaged in a course of debauchery at Edinburgh, and
interrupted his religious exercises. For in those intervals he not
only neglected my father’s company, but absented himself from
church, and did not attend the Sacrament, which at other times he
would not have neglected for the world.’
Mr. Erskine’s wife,
Lady Grange as she was called, was Rachel Chiesley, the daughter
of Chiesley of Dalry, who shot President Lockhart, 31st March,
1689, in the Old Bank Close, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, in consequence
of a decision given by him in an arbitration, that Chiesley was
bound to make his wife and family an allowance. There can be no
doubt that there was madness in her family, and the lady was a
confirmed drunkard. She had been very beautiful, but had a most
violent temper, and, becoming jealous of her husband, she employed
spies to watch him when he visited London, and is said to have
often boasted of the family to which she belonged, hinting that
she might one day follow her father’s example. Her husband
declared that his life was hourly in danger from her outrageous
conduct, and that she slept with deadly weapons under her pillow.
According to Wodrow, ‘she intercepted her husband’s letters in the
post-office, and would have palmed treason upon them, and took
them to the Justice Clerk, as is said, and alleged that some
phrases in some of her lord’s letters to Lord Dun, related to the
Pretender, without the least shadow for the inference.’ Carlyle
says her husband ‘had taken every method to soothe her. As she
loved command, he had made her factor upon his estate, and given
her the whole management of his affairs. When absent he wrote her
the most flattering letters, and did what was still more
flattering: he was said, when present, to have imparted secrets to
her which, if disclosed, might have reached his life. Still she
was unquiet, and led him a miserable life.’ Though she had agreed,
in 1730, to accept a separate maintenance, with which she would be
satisfied, she still continued to persecute and annoy her husband
in the most violent manner.
The outrageous
conduct and alarming threats of this wretched woman at length
caused Grange to take measures for her confinement in a remote and
solitary spot in the Highlands. On the evening of 22nd January,
1732, Lady Grange, who was living in lodgings next door to her
husband’s house, was seized and gagged by a number of Highlandmen
who had been secretly admitted into her residence. She was carried
off by night journeys to Loch Hourn, on the west coast Highlands,
and was thence transported to the small and lonely island of
Hesker, where she remained five years. She was then conveyed to
St. Kilda, where she was detained for seven years more, and
ultimately to Harris, where she died in 1745. It was not till 1740
that some rumours got abroad respecting her abduction, and the
wretched condition in which she was kept, but no effective
measures were taken for her release. She affirmed that the men who
carried her off wore Lovat’s livery—probably meaning his
tartan—and that Lovat himself had an interview at Stirling with
the person in charge of her captors to make arrangements for her
journey. Though that consummate villain denied the charge in the
most vehement terms, there can be little or no doubt that it was
true. ‘As to that story about Lord Grange,’ he said, ‘it is a much
less surprise to me, because they said ten times worse of me when
that damned woman went from Edinburgh than they say now; for they
said it was all my contrivance, and that it was my servants that
took her away; but I defied them then, as I do now, and do declare
to you upon honour that I do not know what has become of that
woman, where she is, or who takes care of her; but if I had
contrived, and assisted, and saved my Lord Grange from that devil
who threatened every day to murder him and his children, I would
not think shame of it before God or man.’
The Laird of M’Leod,
to whom the island of St. Kilda belonged, was believed to have
been Lovat’s accomplice in this lawless deed. ‘What was most
extraordinary,’ says Carlyle, ‘was that, except in conversation
for a few weeks only, this enormous act, committed in the midst of
the metropolis of Scotland, by a person who had been Lord
Justice-Clerk, was not taken the least notice of by any of her own
family, or by the King’s Advocate, or Solicitor, or any of the
guardians of the laws. Two of her sons were grown up to manhood;
her eldest daughter was the wife of the Earl of Kintore; they
acquiesced, in what they considered as a necessary act of justice,
for the preservation of their father’s life. Nay, the second son
was supposed to be one of the persons who came masked to the
house, and carried her off in a chair to the place where she was
set on horseback.’
A curious paper,
written partly by Lady Grange, partly by the minister of St.
Kilda, found its way to Edinburgh, and fell into the hands of Mr.
William Blackwood, the well-known publisher. It was purchased by
John Francis, Earl of Mar, and, along with some letters from that
lady, was presented to the Marquis of Bute. This interesting
document, which is dated January 21st, 1746, gives a long and
minute account of Lady Grange’s abduction, and of the treatment
which she received from her captors and successive custodians,
which bears the stamp of truth. It was published in the Scots
Magazine for November, 1817, by a gentleman who had obtained a
copy of the paper.
Grange left a
diary, a portion of which was printed in 1834, under the title,
‘Extracts from the Diary of a
Member of the College of Justice.’
The forfeited
estates of the Jacobite Earl of Mar were purchased from the
Government by Erskine of Grange. His two eldest sons died young.
James, the third son, an Advocate, was appointed Knight-Marischal
of Scotland in 1758. He married his cousin, Lady Frances Erskine,
only daughter of the Jacobite Earl of Mar, and died in 1785,
leaving two sons. The Mar titles were restored by Act of
Parliament to the elder son, John Francis Erskine, in 1824. They
are now possessed, along with the estates, by a descendant of his
younger son, WALTER HENRY ERSKINE, Earl of Mar and Kellie. [See
ANCIENT EARLDOM OF
MAR.]
Life of Ralph Erskine
By Jean L. Watson (1881) (pdf)
The Sermons and Other Practical
Works of the Late Rev. Ralph Erskine, A. M. (1865) in seven
volumes on the
Internet Archive
The Erskines
By A. R. MacEwen (1900) (pd) |
