CUMMING, Sir Alexander, 1st Bt. (c.1670-1725), of Culter, Peterculter, Aberdeen.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley, 2002
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

18 Jan. 1709 - 1722

Family and Education

b. c.1670, 1st s. of Alexander Cumming of Culter by Helen, da. of James Allardice of Allardice, Kincardine.  educ. adv. 1691; Leyden 30 Dec. 1695, aged 25.  m. c.1690, Elizabeth (d. 1709), da. of Sir Alexander Swinton, Lord Mersington SCJ, 1s. 2da.; (2) 10 Sept. 1710, Elizabeth (d. bef. 1739), da. and coh. of William Dennis (d. 1701) of Pucklechurch, Glos., 1s. 5da.  cr. Bt. 28 Feb. 1695. suc. fa. c.1715.1

Offices Held

Commr. justiciary for Highlands [S] 1701, 1702; capt. of ft. Earl of Mar’s regt. 1702–4; conservator, Scottish staple at Campvere 1707–11.2

Burgess, Edinburgh 1704, Arbroath 1708, Old Aberdeen 1710, Anstruther Easter 1720.3

Biography

Cumming, whose grandfather had been penalized by the Scottish parliament in 1645 as a ‘malignant’, held to the episcopalian principles of his forebears (his library included, among other theological works, a copy of the Book of Common Prayer) and when excitement over ecclesiastical issues reached a peak he took on many of the characteristics of a Scottish Tory, except for any perceptible Jacobite sentiment. At the same time, he was also a pragmatist with a strong concern for material advancement, a wide acquaintance, and a clear eye for the main chance, as indeed the relatively modest extent of his patrimony obliged him to be. Moreover his distant relationship with the house of Argyll, his first marriage into a prominent Covenanting family, to the godly daughter of Sir Alexander Swinton, ‘the fanatic judge’, and his sister’s marriage into a dynasty of Presbyterian merchants in nearby Aberdeen, furnished him with numerous connexions of a different kidney.4

Presumably through his father-in-law’s influence, Cumming entered the faculty of advocates when no more than 21, before he had even begun to study the law, which he then undertook in Holland, returning to Scotland in 1696 to take the oaths and be admitted to practise. His clients soon included such prominent Court magnates as the Duke of Queensberry and, more significant in the long run, the 1st Duke of Argyll, to whose family he became closely attached. Argyll pressed hard, but without success, for his appointment to the Edinburgh commissariat in 1701, and in 1702 Cumming unsuccessfully contested the Scottish parliamentary election for Aberdeenshire, at which he suffered the accusation of being an apprentice courtier. Although he obtained a captain’s commission in a Scottish regiment in 1702 (and yet another potential patron in the shape of his colonel, the Earl of Mar), he could not afford to regard this as adequate: he began to search for a more lucrative post, and relinquished the commission to his son in 1704 even before he had found an alternative for himself. Eventually, the following year, the patronage of the 2nd Duke of Argyll secured for him the place of conservator of the Scottish staple in the Low Countries. Worth about £800 p.a., this was given as ‘the best the Queen had then in her grant’.5

The circumstances of the appointment were, however, far from straightforward. Technically the incumbent, Sir James Kennedy, shared the patent for life with his son Andrew, whose interest extended thereafter at the sovereign’s pleasure. Under Sir James’s stewardship the administration of the staple left much to be desired, and merchants’ complaints of the infringement of their privileges were cited in justification of his removal. But there was still unease in government circles at the abrogation of the younger Kennedy’s rights, on both legal and moral grounds, and Lord Seafield for one ‘shunned the doing it’. Furthermore, confirmation by the convention of royal burghs was required, and proved difficult to obtain, Kennedy’s own protests finding an echo in complaints that the convention’s rights were being violated. Cumming thus became involved in a prolonged dispute, carried on in the law courts, in the convention and at the staple port of Campvere. In December 1707 the lords of session finally affirmed the legality of his grant. He seems to have taken this decision as investing him with authority to act, though it lacked any confirmation from the burghs, and indeed he found himself in 1708 the object of the convention’s censure for exacting fines ‘unwarrantably’. The fact that the complainant in this case was the Duke of Hamilton’s baillie may well have had some political significance, given Cumming’s association with Argyll. Even the Treasury felt unable to decide between the rival claimants to the office, suspending payment of the salary in January 1709 until a legal resolution.6

During one of his visits to the Low Countries, Cumming was involved in an incident which was to be enshrined in family tradition. After visiting a nephew who had been wounded at Oudenarde, he ‘fell in with the . . . retinue’ of the Electoral Prince of Hanover, and through his influence as conservator at Campvere was able to assist the Prince on his journey home. An even greater opportunity then presented itself. As his heir was to record many years later, Cumming

had the good fortune to be the instrument of providence to save the Electoral Prince . . . from being drowned in his highness’s returning to Germany . . . and being aboard the same ship with his highness, from Ostend to Zeeland, his highness was pleased to give the said Sir Alexander an invitation to Hanover and to assure him at the same time that if his highness should happen to live to have power in England the said Sir Alexander should be distinguished by the first honours of this kingdom.7

At this point in his career Cumming’s association with Argyll may still have been strong enough to determine his political conduct. His son went over to Flanders in 1709 to attend the Duke, and fought at Malplaquet, where several members of Lady Cumming’s family fell. Certainly, it would seem likely that at his first return to Parliament, in a by-election for Aberdeenshire earlier that year, Cumming was a supporter of the ministry, not least because he needed government backing in order to pursue his claim to the conservatorship: indeed, failure to resolve his dispute with the Kennedys probably accounts for his sudden desire to enter the House. But there were other sources of ministerial influence than Argyll, in particular the Earl of Mar, who seems to have given support to Cumming’s parliamentary ambitions in Aberdeenshire. Cumming also cultivated the favour of another Court Tory, Lord Leven, and, as if to demonstrate the eclecticism of his political friendships, went out of his way to make professions of service to Lord Marchmont’s son, Hon. Sir Andrew Hume*, though Hume felt that the best service Cumming could do would be to secure for him the interest of the Duke of Argyll.8

Cumming came up to Westminster in 1709 armed with detailed instructions from his constituents: he was to use his ‘utmost endeavours to procure a division of the [court of] session and settlement of a branch thereof at Aberdeen’; to ‘take away all superiorities of subjects and that the whole lands of the nation may hold of his Majesty’; and to ‘have a good correspondence with the Member of Parliament for the town of Aberdeen [John Gordon] for advancing the good of the shire and town’. It may well have been with these instructions in mind that he obtained appointment to draft bills to discharge Scottish freeholders from attendance on the lords of judiciary on circuit (18 Jan. 1710), and to explain the Act for better securing the Queen’s person and government (16 Feb.). He was also active on behalf of Aberdeen in soliciting the Treasury for the council’s claim to the property of one James Douglas, a bastard who had died intestate, and in assisting Scottish merchants in general in their requests for convoys for their coastal shipping.9

To begin with, Cumming voted with the ministry, dividing in 1709 in favour of the naturalization of the Palatines. But the following year his party-political allegiance was transformed, and he subsequently claimed that he had been ‘the first, if not the only, Commoner of my country that expressed my sentiments to her Majesty in relation to the late administration’, that is to say his revulsion from it. The impeachment of Dr Sacheverell may have been a watershed. Cumming was listed (apparently in error) as having voted for the impeachment. George Lockhart* noted Cumming among a number of Scottish Members wrongly classified, who in fact had adhered ‘constantly in all votes to the Tories’.10

Having become a widower in 1709, Cumming immediately began chasing fortunes, and in the following September ‘carried off from the ring in Hyde Park Madam Dennis, and married her’. His sexual mores were questioned by the Edinburgh presbytery in September 1710, when a formal charge was presented relating to a ‘scandal’ of adultery that had been first raised in December 1708. Although Cumming had formerly condescended to present himself for scrutiny, he now refused to appear to answer the accusation. It is impossible to say whether there was any truth in the charge, or whether it was simply a product of the partisan malice that subsequently produced denunciations in the Edinburgh press of Cumming’s ‘vicious’ character. His remarriage undoubtedly facilitated a less restrained political expression of his episcopalianism. With his new bride he had gained an estate in Gloucestershire, including various coal mines, but although rumour estimated his windfall at £16,000, in terms of rental value the land was worth no more than about £3,700, or some £320 p.a., and parcels were soon being sold off.11

In 1710 Cumming was successfully re-elected after a contest in Aberdeenshire, in which he had enjoyed the interest of both Argyll and Mar. The episcopalian clergyman Richard Dongworth described Cumming in an analysis of the new House as an ‘episcopal Tory, rather Court’, an assessment borne out by events, for in the first session he participated in attacks on the old ministry, being included in the list of ‘worthy patriots’ who had helped to detect their mismanagement. In a specifically Scottish context, he voted against the Duke of Montrose’s factor, Mungo Graham*, in February 1711 over the disputed Kinross-shire election, and was a member of the informal ‘steering committee’ of Scottish episcopalian MPs, consisting, apart from himself, of George Lockhart, Sir Alexander Areskine, John Carnegie and Hon. James Murray. These men were prepared to urge the episcopalian cause in the Commons irrespective of any restraint attempted by magnates like Hamilton and Atholl who had hitherto claimed leadership of the cavalier faction. Yet at the same time Cumming maintained his connexions with members of the old Court party in Scotland, and his more moderate approach to the issue of toleration gave Lockhart reason to suspect him of being a Court stooge. When the proposal was made to press for a Scottish toleration bill, Cumming and some other members of the informal committee endorsed the idea in principle but produced the same ‘scruples and objections’ to implementation that Mar had brought forward. Lockhart concluded that they must have ‘imparted the design’ and been ‘instructed to thwart it’. In March 1711 Cumming received a memorial from some ‘gentlemen’ in his constituency complaining of the ‘tediousness’ of Scottish legal procedure in relation to insolvency and urging him to move for the extension of the English bankruptcy laws to North Britain: his response is unknown, but nothing came of the initiative. The only speech he recorded during this session was on 19 May 1711 in favour of the bill to regulate the Scottish linen industry, when, in common with all Scotsmen, of whatever political persuasion, he answered the objections raised by the Irish lobby to the clause prohibiting the export of Scottish linen yarn to Ireland. Throughout this Parliament Cumming numbered such particular economic interests among his preoccupations. Fisheries were another recurring theme: in 1711 he helped draft several memorials and cases on behalf of Scottish fishing interests and was appointed to the committee of 16 May on one such petition, concerning imports of foreign salt. Given his experience over the conservatorship he was also an inevitable choice to assist in the preparation of yet another memorial from the Scots merchant community, this time for a removal of the restrictions on Scottish exports to the Continent via the staple port, in order to bring trading practices into line with the requirements of the Act of Union.12

In April 1711 Cumming’s long struggle to retain his office was effectively ended when an appeal from the Kennedys was upheld by the Lords. Even then Cumming did not let the matter rest, claiming that the verdict declaring his grant invalid applied only to the original commission issued in 1705 and not to a renewal in 1708. At length, in 1713, the Queen withdrew the second commission and reappointed the Kennedys, the last instalment of the saga occurring in the following year when the question of repayment of salary advanced in 1708 was settled against Cumming. These various judicial codas notwithstanding, Cumming conceded in 1711 that he had lost the conservatorship, and although, as he said, the grant had cost him more in expenses than he had received in salary, he bewailed its loss and applied for compensation to Lord Treasurer Oxford (Robert Harley*), in a series of letters beginning in January 1712 and continuing until Oxford was removed as lord treasurer in 1714. Education for the law and experience in administering the staple fitted him for any office, he wrote, and his own ‘little fortune’, together with the small amount his second marriage had brought him, ‘makes it indifferent to me where I am employed’. In justification he cited his services in Parliament, claiming never to have ‘opposed’ Harley’s interest, nor ‘trimmed’, and to have been constant in his attendance in each session. In June 1712 he recalled having acted as an intermediary between Harley and the Argyll interest, though his use of language makes the chronology obscure: ‘I had the honour to be entrusted by that noble Duke to receive your lordship’s commands by your nephew last Parliament to be communicated to his friends.’13

Circumstantial evidence suggests that in the 1711–12 session Cumming may have become rather less amenable to Court direction. Admittedly his active involvement in Commons business was principally confined to Scottish affairs. The steering committee of Scottish Tory Members having been reconstituted, he played a key role in its promotion of the Scottish toleration bill, in the face of Oxford’s disapproval, and was listed as voting for the bill on 7 Feb. 1712. He also joined Lockhart, Carnegie and Murray in harrying the former Scots MP William Cochrane, who was labouring under accusations of corruption, and acted as a teller in two divisions: on 13 Mar., against the Squadrone Whig Sir John Anstruther, 1st Bt.*, in the disputed election for Anstruther Easter Burghs; and on 13 May, in favour of an additional clause to the soap and paper duties bill, to permit a drawback on the paper used by Scottish university presses (including, of course, Aberdeen) for printing books on classical, oriental and ‘northern’ languages (a proviso which attracted opposition from English Tories, probably acting on behalf of Oxford University). But his chief concern was to protect the burgh of Aberdeen from an increased contribution under the land tax. Acting in conjunction with Thomas Smith II, Member for Glasgow Burghs, Cumming was involved in bringing this matter before Parliament. He was responsible for drafting a clause that was inserted into the Land Tax Act of 1711 stipulating that the quota of cess payable by each burgh ought to be determined by its valued rent. The apportionment of the land tax (or cess) between the burghs had become a matter of some controversy in the convention of royal burghs in 1711, when it was asserted that Court influence had forced tax rises on a number of burghs for wayward votes in the last general election. This political dimension was paralleled by rivalry between Edinburgh and other prosperous burghs such as Glasgow and Aberdeen (see GLASGOW BURGHS). In the interest of improving his reputation locally, Cumming willingly courted the displeasure of ‘some leading men in the burghs’. His scheme was rendered unworkable, however, by Edinburgh’s influence in the convention, and the clause was discarded in the Land Tax Act of 1712. Cumming failed in his attempts to have it reinstated in 1713, not least because of opposition from his customary ally, Lockhart, a situation which was caused by a divergence in their respective local interests.14

The two addresses which Cumming presented in December 1712, from Aberdeenshire and from the burgh of Brechin, were supportive of the Court: both thanked the Queen not only for giving the royal assent to the Scottish Toleration and Patronage Acts, but also for the peace, and in doing so praised ministers and damned their critics. Then at the outset of the 1713 session Cumming joined other Scottish peers and MPs in a circular letter to Lord Dun SCJ to urge non-juring episcopalian clergymen to take the oaths, in order to qualify themselves for the benefits of the toleration, and to disprove the insinuations of disloyalty made against them by their Presbyterian enemies. He may have taken part in a Scottish Tory scheme to impose on the parliamentary electorate in Scotland an oath abjuring the Covenant, since a copy of the draft survives in his papers. Although Cumming clashed with some Scottish Members and incurred the displeasure of the Earl of Findlater (the former Seafield) for his continued support for legislation on burghal taxation, he stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellow countrymen when Anglo-Scottish relations reached a crisis over the malt tax and the motion to dissolve the Union. He drafted various papers against the imposition of the malt duty, signed the letter from Scottish MPs which called for a general meeting of the kingdom’s parliamentary representatives to concert a response, and indeed was one of the four Members sent for by ‘a great man’, presumably Oxford, in an attempt to stifle opposition, but who resisted all blandishments to let the motion fall. It is conceivable that Cumming’s stiffness on the issue may have owed something to Argyll’s support for the motion, but the greater likelihood is that he simply could not afford to appear lukewarm in defence of the vital interests of his country. Any thought that he was still acting as Argyll’s client should be dispelled by his subsequent support for the administration on issues of trade. On 2 June Cumming told for the bill to open up the African trade, a move from which Scottish merchants as well as ministerial allies would benefit. Two days later he voted for the Court over the French commerce bill, dividing from Lockhart and many Scottish Tories in so doing. He supported Oxford again in the crucial debate on the commerce bill on 18 June, both speaking and voting in favour of the treaty as ‘advantageous to Scotland’, and after the rejection of the bill was appointed on 23 June to prepare an address to request the Queen to appoint commissioners to renew negotiations. This defence of the treaty was continued outside the House, for he drafted various papers setting out the ministerial case against criticism from Scottish trading interests, and published two lengthy anonymous essays with the same message in the Mercator on 18 and 27 Aug. In his letters to Oxford he plumed himself on his contribution to the ministry’s propaganda campaign:

As for the commerce bill which I was so much blamed about, as being the author of all those Mercators said to be writ from Scotland, and the procurer of the letters signed by the merchants there, approving of our conduct in relation to that bill, though it was not fit for me to own those facts, yet I ventured to assert that those who afterwards opposed the commerce bill would be looked upon as enemies to Scotland.

Offsetting the loss of the treaty, to some small degree, was a minor triumph achieved some five days after the division of 18 June, when a modified version of a resolution originally devised by Cumming, calling for the Board of Trade to consider ways of advancing the fishing industry, was adopted by the House.15

Once the session was over Cumming renewed his applications to the lord treasurer for employment. The acquisition of his wife’s property had not cleared the problem of indebtedness into which his own personal extravagance constantly propelled him, and his circumstances were now desperate enough for his aspirations to extend to a governorship in the West Indies, where he would willingly have risked health for profit. That nothing came forth, in spite of his considerable services to the lord treasurer, he attributed to a ‘design’ framed by his enemies to make Oxford believe that he had ‘placed my dependence upon some other great men (in whose interest I was said to be)’, an accusation he vehemently denied:

I will never change my principles, desert my party, nor contribute towards the overturning a ministry who have done so glorious things [sic] for their country . . . though I have been told I have not only injured their party, but sullied the characters of several great men, in my voting within, and conversation without, doors, and laid myself out to make converts of others, and yet still may make my peace whereas I would find myself neglected by those I have served. Yet those things were so far from having weight with me, that I very frankly owned my resolutions to support the ministry in the public service.

The assumption must be that he had been suspected of following his friends Lockhart and Murray into the interest of Lord Bolingbroke (Henry St. John II*), rather than that he had turned back to Argyll, although it is unlikely that he had completely lost touch with the Duke at this stage.16

In the absence of any alternative employment, Cumming sought re-election for Aberdeenshire in 1713, in the hope that the next Parliament would ‘be more auspicious to me than this has been’. He defeated a powerful challenge from Findlater’s protégé Alexander Reid*, and was listed as a ‘Jacobite’ in an electoral analysis sent to Hanover by Lord Polwarth (whose categorization should not be taken literally). In contrast, Lockhart complained of his continued truckling to a Court interest, now specifically Lord Bolingbroke, with whom Cumming and others had allegedly been at ‘a good deal of pains to ingratiate themselves’. He and his parliamentary colleagues had as their chief project in this session a bill to resume the Scottish bishops’ rents, to relieve those episcopalian ministers who were willing to accept the terms of the 1712 Toleration Act: a move inspired by the Court, possibly as an initiative to woo the Scots Tories. Having taken the ministerial cue to promote the measure, and been appointed on 7 June 1714 to the drafting committee for a bill to state the revenues, Cumming then readily abandoned the idea when Lord Mar represented the Queen’s alarm at its likely repercussions. How closely Cumming was attached to Bolingbroke is open to question. He was still soliciting jobs from the lord treasurer as well, including once more ‘a government in the West Indies’, and Oxford was replying with generalized promises of goodwill. His parliamentary activity offers few direct clues, affected as he was by a dangerous illness and, when he did attend, confining himself once more to matters of Scottish interest. Having in the previous autumn sought to promote the linen industry in Scotland (and especially in the vicinity of Aberdeen) by means of a memorial to the Queen advocating the establishment of a network of charity schools to teach spinning, he spoke ‘very fully’ in the Commons in favour of the reintroduced linen bill, which had again angered Irish Members by a ban on exports of linen yarn from Scotland to Ireland. Towards the end of the session he participated in a Scots protest against a Treasury motion for a clause to be added to the lottery bill to use the drawbacks fund to pay administrative salaries in Scotland. What can be said, however, is that he remained committed to the Tory interest, as demonstrated by tellerships on the disputed elections for Anstruther Easter Burghs (4 Mar. and 29 Apr.) and Linlithgowshire (8 Apr.), and by his vote on 12 May against the extension of the schism bill to cover Catholic education. He was marked as a Tory on the Worsley list. This partisan loyalty, against whatever representations may have been made by Argyll and his brother Lord Ilay, was in all probability what Mar was alluding to when he wrote subsequently that Cumming had ‘behaved very well and tight the last session, notwithstanding of pressure upon him, which I confess has much recommended him to me’.17

The Hanoverian succession prompted an immediate attempt to recall not only the former pledges of the electoral family, but Cumming’s old connexion with Argyll. A petition to King George in November 1714 appealed for the belated fulfilment of a promise allegedly made by Queen Anne to appoint him as governor of the Leeward Islands. He recounted the story of his travails over the conservatorship, and the expenses incurred by a ‘close and constant attendance’ in Parliament; cited his qualifications by ‘education in the study of the civil and municipal laws at home and abroad, his knowledge of trade’ and, with rank disingenuousness, ‘his service for some years in the army’; concluding with the claim that he had ‘very much impaired his small fortune’ and that without some crown employment ‘his family will be in danger of being extinct’. On meeting a refusal he tried a different route, approaching the Hanoverian minister Bothmer through an old acquaintance of his, the former envoy Kreienberg, and leaning heavily on his own friendship with Argyll, but to no greater effect. However, he seems still to have attempted to resume relations with Argyll. He was classified as a Whig in a list of the Members of the 1713 Parliament re-elected in 1715, and although he himself remained unprovided for and in opposition, despite efforts to have him appointed a lord of session, his son was benefiting from Argyll’s patronage by 1719. At the same time Cumming did not abandon his Tory friends. Mar helped him again at the 1715 election and in the following summer he acted as a conduit for correspondence between the Jacobite 2nd Earl of Kintore and Hon. James Murray shortly before the latter’s flight to the Pretender. Even though he took no part whatsoever in the Fifteen or in subsequent Jacobite conspiracy, he included men like Kintore and the non-juring 5th Viscount Arbuthnott among a wide circle of correspondents which also encompassed Revolution-men like Sir David Dalrymple*. Arbuthnott for one refused to believe Whig-inspired rumours that Cumming had voted for the peerage bill in 1719 in hope of being made a baron of the Scottish exchequer, and praised his conduct, as ‘a man of honour’ whom ‘the frowns and menaces of the great, nor their undue methods of making votes, could never terrify or decoy . . . into unjust compliances against your country’. In fact he had been forecast by Lord Sunderland (Charles, Lord Spencer*) as a likely supporter of the bill and had tactfully absented himself from the division. What kept his reputation high among Scottish Tories was his staunch adherence to the Anglican cause: he voted in Parliament in January 1719 against the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, and made strenuous efforts, at considerable legal expense, to assist the episcopalian incumbent of Maryculter (a man allegedly implicated in the Fifteen) to retain the profits of his living. In consequence he was assured of the votes of the ‘honest party’ in Aberdeenshire should he have wished to put up again at the 1722 election, but, presumably because of deteriorating health, he did not do so.18

Once his father’s estate had come into his hands in 1715, Cumming’s finances took on a rosier complexion. He gave full rein to his zeal for ‘improvement’, reconstructing the ancestral seat at Culter, and seeking to develop the agricultural and industrial potential of his landholdings and mines. His extensive library contained works on mathematics, natural science, economics and commerce as well as the more usual collections of history, theology and contemporary political pamphlets. Unfortunately, he was also able to over-indulge his naturally litigious disposition in a series of expensive suits over property, and, worse still, to develop a new enthusiasm for investment. By some means he was able to realize over £16,000 in capital, with which he purchased South Sea and African Company stock at the height of the speculation in 1720, most of it disappearing when the Bubble burst. These heavy losses, aggravated by legal costs, and the utter ‘confusion’ which had, perhaps predictably, overtaken the affairs of his eldest son, broke his health. He died at Aberdeen on 7 Feb. 1725, and was buried at Peterculter. The newly built mansion at Culter had to be sold, and the 2nd baronet, in spite of a colourful career, the highlight of which was election as chief of the Cherokee nation in 1730, spent time in the Fleet before dying a ‘poor brother’ of Charterhouse. Cumming’s grandson, the last representative of the direct male line, was an army captain: he went mad, and died in Whitechapel, ‘in a state of indigence’.19

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

  • 1. H. B. Tomkins, Table Showing Fams. Descended from Sir Alexander Cumming (1877); Album Studiosorum Academiae Lugduno Batavae ed. Du Rieu, col. 739; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 628.
  • 2. CSP Dom. 1700–2, p. 339; 1702–3, p. 355; J. Davidson and A. Gray, Scottish Staple at Campvere, 246–8; HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 91.
  • 3. Scot. Rec. Soc. lxii. 48; Recs. Old Aberdeen (New Spalding Club), i. 280; Aberdeen Univ. Lib. Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2378, 2375, burgess tickets.
  • 4. APS, vi(1), 464; Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2384, inventory of Cumming’s personal estate, 10 Apr. 1725; Pollable Persons in Aberdeen. (Spalding Club), ii. 472; DNB (Swinton, Sir Alexander); N. and Q. ser. 1, v. 279; Tomkins, Table.
  • 5. APS, x. 53; Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2376, Cumming to father, 12 July, 26 Aug. 1703, 16 June 1704; 3175/F11/3, commn. 5 May 1702; Argyle Pprs. 93–95, 97–98, 101–2, 120; Carstares, State Pprs. 704; Add. 39855, f. 11; 28055, f. 41; 70221, Cumming to Oxford, 17 June 1712; SRO, Ogilvy of Inverquharity mss GD205/33/3/10/24, William Jamisone to William Bennet*, 29 Jan. 1705–6.
  • 6. Davidson and Gray, 233, 246–7; Add. 61631, ff. 86–95, 177–9; Recs. R. Burghs Scotland, iv. 374–5, 378–9; Baillie Corresp. 57, 61, 71; HMC Lords, 91; Cal. Treas. Bks. xxii. 267; xxiii. 64.
  • 7. Add. 39855, ff. 10, 41–42.
  • 8. Ibid. f. 12; Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2377, Leven to Cumming, 26 Apr. 1709, Cumming to Hon. Sir Andrew Hume, 31 Mar. 1709.
  • 9. Duff House (Montcoffer) mss, 3175/F11/3, Mar to Cumming, ‘Sunday morning 12 o’clock’; 3175/2377, James Cumming to Cumming, 24 Mar. 1709; Cal. Treas. Bks. xxiv. 47–48; Aberdeen City Archs. Aberdeen burgh recs. 8/1/8/145, council to Cumming et al. 27 Feb. 1710.
  • 10. Lockhart Mems. ed. Szechi, 287; Add. 70221, Cumming to Oxford, 17 June 1712.
  • 11. Clavering Corresp. (Surtees Soc. clxxviii), 50–51; Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/F11/3, Mar to Cumming, ‘Sunday morning, 12 o’clock’; 3175/2375, ‘A Survey of the Tenants in Glos. . . . 1710’, ‘Acct. of Purchase Money Due . . . 1714’; Luttrell, 628; Clarke thesis, 299, 522; The Gen. iii. 7–8; PCC 170 Romney.
  • 12. Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2382, ‘The Case of Several Merchants and Others Concerned in the Fishery of N[orth] B[ritain]’, 1711, ‘Representation for Several of the Merchants and Masters of Ships in Scotland, Concerning the Staple Port’; SRO, Mar and Kellie mss GD124/15/1003, Thomas Erskyne to Ld. Grange (Hon. James Erskine†), Aug. 1710; SHR, lx. 63; NLS, Advocates’ mss, Wodrow Pprs. letters Quarto 5, f. 128; NLS, ms 16503, ff. 1–2; NLS, ms 25276/56, Dalrymple to Cumming, 9 Apr. 1719; Cromartie Corresp. ii. 122; Lockhart Pprs. i. 329, 338–9.
  • 13. Davidson and Gray, 248; HMC Lords, 92–94; n.s. x. 361–2; HMC Portland, x. 301–2, 417–18, 474–5; Cal. Treas. Bks. xxv. 543–4; xxvi. 388; Add. 70221, Cumming to Oxford, 17 June 1712, 21 Dec. 1713, 8 June 1714.
  • 14. Lockhart Pprs. 378; SRO, Montrose mss GD220/5/283/1, Cochrane to Montrose, 1 Apr. 1712; Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2380, John Ross et al. to Cumming, 3 Aug. 1711, ‘Some Reasons for a Clause to be Inserted in the Land Tax Act’, ‘A Copy of a Clause to be Added Concerning the Tax Roll of the Royal Burghs’, 19 Dec. 1711; Case of the Royal Burghs [1712]; SRO, Seafield mss GD248/566/84/50, Reid to [Findlater], 27 [Apr. 1713]; T. Pagan, Convention of R. Burghs, 64–65.
  • 15. Scots Courant, 22–24 Dec. 1712; Spalding Club, Misc. iv. 83–87; Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2380, draft clause against the Covenant, 1713, ‘Reasons against Laying a Duty on Malt in Scotland’, ‘Scrolls Concerning the Malt Tax’, ‘Resolution of the Commons to call a Meeting with the Lords, [23] May 1713’, ‘Scrolls in Relation to Trade for the Mercator’, 18, 27 Aug. 1713; 3175/2382, ‘Resolve Fishery, June 1713’; Mar and Kellie mss GD124/15/1099/5, Alexander Reid to Thomas Erskyne, 7 May 1713; HMC Laing, ii. 168; SRO, Seafield mss GD248/566/84/50, Reid to [Findlater], 27 [Apr. 1713]; Parlty. Hist. i. 65, 69; Chandler, v. 41; SRO, Cromartie mss GD305 addit./bdle. 15, [–] to [?Cromarty], 20 June 1713; Add. 70221, Cumming to Oxford, 21 Dec. 1713.
  • 16. HMC Portland, 301–2; Add. 70279, Cumming to Oxford, 13 Aug. 1713; 70221, same to same, 21 Dec. 1713; Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2376, Cumming to father, 26 Mar. 1708, 26 Jan. 1711–12, tailor’s bill, 6 Oct. 1708; 3175/2377, Lockhart to Cumming, 23 July 1713, William Bromley II* to same, 18 Nov. 1713.
  • 17. SRO, Grant of Monymusk mss GD345/1138/2/5, Cumming to Sir Francis Grant, 8 Jan. 1713; HMC Portland, 212; Mar and Kellie mss GD124/15/1099/1, Thomas Erskyne to Grange, 4 Apr. 1713; GD124/15/1129/6, Mar to same, 7 Aug. 1714; Orig. Pprs. ed. Macpherson, ii. 559–61; Lockhart Pprs. 443–5, 447, 449, 536, 542; P. W. J. Riley, Eng. Ministers and Scotland, 253; Lockhart Letters ed. Szechi, 101; Add. 70221, Cumming to Oxford, 8 June 1714; Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2382, ‘Memorial for Setting up a Linen Manufacture’, 1 Sept. 1713, ‘Memorial Concerning the Linen Manufacture’, 1713.
  • 18. Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2382, petition to George I, Nov. 1714, Kreienberg to Cumming, 14 Nov. 1714; 3175/F11/3, Mar to same, 18 Jan. 1714–15; 3175/F51/4, Kintore to same, 30 June 1715, Arbuthnott to same, 4 Feb., 18 Dec. 1719, 5 July 1720, Dalrymple to same, 19 Oct. 1719; 3175/2375, Alexander Cumming to Cumming, 25 Apr. 1723; Add. 39855, ff. 9, 13; 61632, ff. 193, 196; Sir Alexander Cumming, Bart, Appellant, the Moderator and Presbytery of Aberdeen, Respondents: The Respondents’ Case [1721].
  • 19. Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2384, inventory, 12 Apr. 1725; 3175/2379, catalogue of Cumming’s library, 1718; 3175/F29/4, Cumming’s diary and memo. bk. 1715–19; 3175/2375, Alexander to Sir Alexander Cumming, 25 Apr., 31 Dec. 1723; NLS, Crawford mss 47/2/258, John Daye to Sir Roger Bradshaigh, 3rd Bt.*, 2 Feb. 1720; Boyer, Pol. State, xxix. 179; Tomkins, Table; Rogers, Scottish Monuments and Tombstones, 339; Colls. Aberdeen and Banff (Spalding Club), i. 42; DNB (Cumming, Sir Alexander, 2nd Bt.).