SCS.5HS.I6I SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY FIFTH SERIES VOLUME 2 Letters of George Lockhart of Carnwath A Letters of George Lockhart of Carnwath 1698-1732 edited by Daniel Szechi, d.phil ★ EDINBURGH printed for the Scottish History Society by PILLANS & WILSON SPECIALIST LITHO PRINTERS LTD. EDINBURGH 1989 © Scottish History Society 1989 ISBN 906245 11 7 Printed in Great Britain PREFACE The collection of letters below is the surviving personal and official correspondence of George Lockhart of Carnwath. Legal statements, estate management papers and all the numerous works intended for publication have been excluded for the sake of brevity, with the partial exception of an open letter which was circulated anonymously in manuscript around Edinburgh in 1713. Many legal and estate papers survive; these are held by the National Library of Scotland in Acc.7124 and 4322 (Lockharts of Lee and Carnwath), and others may be found in the records of the House of Lords. The bulk of material either published or intended for publication, as well as Lockhart’s extensive autobiographical writings, can be found in Anthony Aufrere’s excellent edition of The Lockhart Papers (2 vols, 1817). Thus far I have been unable to discover the eventual fate of the manuscripts from which Aufrere compiled The Lockhart Papers. Nevertheless, my own research has many times confirmed both the authenticity of what is contained therein and Aufrere’s reputation for painstaking scholarship. It should be emphasised that the collected letters that follow constitute the complete corpus of Lockhart’s correspondence known to me at the present time. It is perfectly possible that other letters may survive in archives not accessible at the time my research was being conducted, most notably the archive of the Dukes of Argyll at Inveraray. I must at this point acknowledge my debt to Her Majesty the Queen for permission to publish letters from the Stuart Papers microfilm at Cambridge University Library, without which this collection would not have been worth bringing together. I must also thank: the Duke of Hamilton for letting me see the family papers held at Lennoxlove and the Scottish Record Office; the Earl of Dalhousie for permission to use the Dalhousie Papers; Sir John Clerk for the use of the Clerk of Penicuik MSS held at the S.R.O.; the Keeper of the Records of Scotland for his permission to use the Breadalbane and Montrose Papers; and Mr S. Macdonald Lockhart for permission to reproduce George Lockhart’s portrait. LETTERS OF GEORGE LOCKHART OF CARNWATH 1698-1732 In addition, I am grateful for the courteous help and assistance I have received in the course of my research from the staff of the National Library of Scotland, the Edinburgh University Library, the Cambridge University Library, the Public Record Office at Chancery Lane and the Huntington Library in California. Above all, I owe a special debt of gratitude to the staff at the Scottish Record Office, who (with the kind permission of the Keeper) helped me identify the inevitable handful of individuals who cropped up in the letters below whom I could not pin down. It is also appropriate here to thank the Twenty Seven Foundation and its trustees for the generous grant that allowed me to make one of my research trips to Edinburgh, and the British Academy for the funds that allowed me to complete the project without the collapse of my domestic economy. Finally, I must thank Clyve Jones of the Institute of Historical Research and Dr David Hayton of the History of Parliament Trust for their help and the interest they took in this project; without them I would have missed much important material. Mrs Joy Muir, an enthusiastic amateur historian, who lives alongside the only part of Lockhart’s seat at Dryden not demolished by Edinburgh University in the 1950s - a wall - proved a tonic for a jaded researcher and was unstintingly generous in passing on all she could find out about the Dryden estate. Dr T.I. Rae, my general editor, also well deserves to be mentioned here, and especially for his patience in putting up with such a bad correspondent. DANIEL SZECHI Oxford August, 1988 CONTENTS Preface v Table of Abbreviations xi Introduction xiii LETTERS OF LOCKHART OF CARNWATH I. Towards Union: 1698-1707 1 II. Opposition and Alienation: 1708-1714 38 III. Jacobite Connections: 1715-1720 117 IV. Keeping the Faith: 1721-1724 156 V. Active Conspiracy: 1725-1726 220 VI. Exile and Retirement: 172^1732 304 INDEX 349 A generous contribution from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland towards the cost of producing this volume and a munificent bequest from the late Mr Godfrey William Iredell are gratefully acknowledged by the Council of the Society George Lockhart of Camwath By Sir John Medina TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations British Library, London W- Portland Loan Cambridge University Library Edinburgh University Library Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports HMC Laing Laing MSS Portland Papers Portland Stuart Papers LO Huntington Library, San Marino, California, Loudoun Papers Lennoxlove Hamilton muniments held at Lennoxlove LP NationalThe Lockhart Library Papers, of Scotlanded. A. Aufrere (2 vols, 1817) Acc. 4322 Lockhart of Lee and Camwath Estate Papers Acc. 7124 Lockhart of Lee and Camwath Estate Papers Acc. 7228 Newhailes Papers SPDom. Public Record Office, Chancery Lane ScottishState Papers Record Domestic Office Clerk of Penicuik Muniments GDISGD 45 GD 124 MarDalhousie and Kellie Papers Muniments GD 220 Montrose Muniments GD 406 Correspondence of the Dukes of Hamilton Stuart Papers microfilm at Cambridge University Library INTRODUCTION george lockhart of Carnwath (1681 - 1732), the man and his career, embodies a series of challenges to conventional assump- tions about the kind of man who became a Jacobite. Our stereotypical Jacobite is a declining landowner, burdened with inherited debts left over from the civil wars of the mid-seven- teenth century, jealous of his social position, suspicious of the local (prospering) bourgeoisie, hostile to innovation of any kind, agricultural, technological, or religious, and with social connec- tions only to other families of the same ilk.1 Basically a relic of an old order marked for destruction by the industrial revolution, Lockhart was a very wealthy, agriculturally improving laird who took a great interest in exploiting the coal reserves on his land, elegantly modernised and emparked his favourite country seat in the latest fashionable style, and was closely (and fondly) connected with one of the most powerful Whig families in post-Revolution Britain.2 If nothing else, George Lockhart is an object lesson in the dangers of crude economic and social determinism. How did such a man become a zealous Jacobite? This collected edition of Lockhart’s letters cannot directly answer that question. What it can do is supply its parameters. Somewhere in the confluence between the mind of the man revealed in these letters, his autobiographical writings and the events and circumstances of his life and times it may be possible to discern how this Jacobite was made. The letters that follow have been drawn together from many different sources: Lockhart’s neighbours, his friends, his kinsmen and his fellow Jacobites. Their very diversity allows us to see the man in a series of different guises. The polite politician, the dissembling intriguer, the oppressive landowner, and the outraged1 patriarch are just a few of the personae that appear with For examples of which, see: J.H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675-1725 2(1967), pp.168-9; G.P. Insh, The Scottish Jacobite Movement (1952), pp.118, 123-4, 128 S. Macdonald-Lockhart, Seven Centuries: a history of the Lockharts of Lee and Camwath (Carnwath, 1976), pp.85-86, 88-89, 92 xiv LETTERS OF GEORGE LOCKHART OF CARNWATH 1698-1732 startling clarity from his complex but lucid prose. Through him, we can catch a glimpse of the gentry and nobility of early eighteenth-century Scotland at work and play. More seriously, Lockhart’s correspondence allows us a direct insight into the Jacobite underworld of Scottish politics, its activities, rivalries, dreams and obsessions. Simply as a source of information about Jacobite machinations 1707-28, Lockhart has a value second only to the surviving archives of the exiled Court. More importantly, this collection vividly illuminates the complexities and passions of the Jacobite mind. George Lockhart was born in 1681, the eldest son of Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath, second son of Sir James Lockhart of Lee, and Philadelphia Wharton, youngest daughter of Philip, 4th Lord Wharton.3 Sir George was a highly successful lawyer from a well-established legal dynasty that fell from favour for some time after 1660. The Lockharts of Lee, like the Whartons, had been rather too zealous Covenanters/Parliamentarians during the civil wars and interregnum to enjoy much royal favour until well after the Restoration.4 Sir George accordingly made his name and fortune defending the Crown’s opponents in Scotland when they came to trial - not necessarily with any great success (the Crown was unlikely to lose such contests anywhere in seventeenth-cen- tury Britain), but with surpassing eloquence. The profits of his success were invested in land in the early 1680s, when Sir George bought the Carnwath estate from the debt-ridden Earl of that name.5 From the late 1670s he became steadily more involved with legal work for the Crown, for which he was duly rewarded in 1685 by appointment to the Lord Presidency of the Court of Session in succession to Sir David Falconar. He was reputedly 3 The DNB states Lockhart was bom in 1673 (xxxiv. 45), which was six years before his parents were married. As well, in a submission to the House of Lords in an appeal against a decision by the Commission for Forfeited Estates (bl.