LOCKHART, George (1681-1731), of Carnwath, Lanark., and Dryden, Edinburgh.

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

Family and Education

b. 1681, 1st s. of Sir George Lockhart, MP [S], of Carnwath, ld. pres. ct. of session [S] 1685–9, by his 2nd w. Philadelphia, da. of Philip, 4th Baron Wharton, sis. of Hon. Goodwin*, Hon. Henry† and Hon. Thomas Wharton*.  educ. privately (incl. John Gillane).  m. 30 Apr. 1697, Lady Euphemia (d. 1738), da. of Alexander Montgomerie, 9th Earl of Eglintoun [S], 7s.(1 d.v.p.) 8da. (4 d.v.p.).  suc. fa. 31 Mar. 1689.1

Offices Held

MP [S] Edinburghshire 1702–7.

Dir. Bank of Scotland 1702.2

PC [S] 1703–4; commr. Union with England 1706–7, public accts. 1711–14.

Burgess, Edinburgh 1709.3

Biography

One of the most famous Scottish Jacobites of his day, Lockhart achieved notoriety in 1714, when Hon. Sir David Dalrymple, 1st Bt.*, published a pirated edition of the anonymous Memoirs Concerning the Affairs of Scotland. That Lockhart was its true author was widely suspected, but he vehemently denied having written this abrasive indictment of the egotism and corruption that had brought about the Union. In addition to being an overtly Jacobite treatise, the Memoirs also contained such defamatory comments on leading members of the Scottish nobility that, if the author were to have been identified, he was liable to prosecution for scandalum magnatum. Dalrymple estimated that the penalties might amount to £30,000. Lockhart successfully distanced himself from the work, and charitably excused his fellow Tory John Houstoun* from any malicious intent in allowing the manuscript to fall into Dalrymple’s possession. Despite Lockhart’s denials at the time, however, there is no doubt that he was a major contributor to the Memoirs, although some parts may have been written in conjunction with fellow Jacobites. It was posthumously reprinted from a manuscript copy among his own papers (since lost), together with other memoirs, including Lockhart’s ‘Commentaries’ on parliamentary affairs from 1707 to 1714 and a number of his speeches in Parliament. These Lockhart Papers, therefore, provide one of the most important printed sources for Scottish politics in the reign of Queen Anne. Notwithstanding the author’s obvious political bias, the Papers are remarkable in terms of both accurate analysis and perceptive characterization, and are marred only by a vagueness of chronology which is indicative of retrospective composition. Lockhart, as is evident from his writings and correspondence, was a profoundly moral man, forced into conspiratorial politics by his overriding preoccupations with reclaiming Scottish independence and restoring the Stuart dynasty. His great skill, both as a debater and political observer, was in vividly exposing the fallacies of his opponents, a quality which has, moreover, made him a favourite source for the historian in search of a telling quotation.4

The Lockharts of Carnwath were a cadet branch of a well-established Lanarkshire family, the Lockharts of Lee. The Member’s father was a wealthy lawyer, who had succeeded in making the awkward transition from supporter of the Cromwellian regime to loyal servant of the crown. George Lockhart snr. had been appointed advocate-general in 1658 and also represented Lanarkshire at Westminster. He was pardoned at the Restoration, however, and obtained a knighthood in 1663. In the late 1670s he gained favour with the Duke of York, the future James II, and, after leading important government prosecutions, such as that of George Baillie’s* father in 1683, was made lord president of the court of session in 1685. His career was cut short on 31 Mar. 1689, when he was murdered by a disappointed (and mentally unstable) litigant.5

At the age of only eight years George Lockhart succeeded to a sizable estate. Although his inheritance was embroiled in early difficulties, not least because of the unscrupulous conduct of some of his guardians, it yielded him an income of over £2,000 p.a. by 1713. By the 1720s the family estates were worth £3,750 a year, the increase being attributable both to Lockhart’s skilful management and the exploitation of valuable coal reserves. He ranked, therefore, among the wealthiest of Scottish commoners, and possessed a significant electoral interest in two counties: Lanarkshire and Midlothian. Lockhart was connected, on his mother’s side, with the English nobility: his uncle was the future Junto peer, Hon. Thomas Wharton*. Shortly after his father’s death, Whiggish fears about Lockhart’s education had precipitated the summary removal of John Gillane, the family’s episcopalian chaplain. His upbringing was thereafter entrusted to the Presbyterian tutors of John Campbell, later 2nd Duke of Argyll. Having been ‘play-fellows together’, Lockhart and Argyll enjoyed in adulthood an ‘uninterrupted state of mutual, personal friendship’, notwithstanding their political differences. The educational experiment backfired, however, and Lockhart developed a hearty dislike of all things Presbyterian. By 1695 he had obtained the appointment of episcopalian guardians and had begun to manage his own financial affairs. In 1697 he married the daughter of a notable episcopalian peer, Lord Eglintoun, and, after entering the Scottish parliament in 1702, joined the cavalier wing of the Country party.6

Lockhart was made a privy councillor in 1703 as part of the Court’s attempt to woo the cavaliers. He was attracted towards a political alliance by the hope of a legal toleration for episcopalians. But the failure to convince existing supporters of the ministry of the benefits of toleration led to the collapse of this coalition in its infancy. Lockhart therefore went into opposition, and remained disaffected with the Court for the remainder of his Scottish parliamentary career. He entered into all anti-ministerial measures and denounced the defection from the Country party of the so-called ‘New Party’ (later Squadrone) in 1704. His closest ally among the Scottish nobility was the Duke of Hamilton, for whom he entertained a strong affection, despite his frustration at the Duke’s unwillingness to pursue Jacobite objectives with single-minded dedication. He naturally voted for Hamilton’s motion for deferring a decision on the succession, and was consequently removed from the privy council in December 1704. At the tail end of the 1705 session he was disappointed by Hamilton’s volte-face over the royal nomination of commissioners to treat for union with England, and to his further dismay found himself appointed to the commission, apparently by Wharton’s influence. ‘He had no inclination to the employment’, ran the explanation in the Memoirs, ‘and was at first resolved not to have accepted it. But his friends and those of his party, believing that he might be serviceable by giving an account of how matters were carried on, prevailed with him to alter his resolution.’ He deeply resented the ‘rash and unreasonable censures’ his participation elicited from those anti-unionists who were not in the secret, but proved an effective opposition spy. Unable to influence the outcome, he took care to avoid signing the treaty, and in the parliamentary session of 1706 emerged as one of the most vigorous opponents of the Union. Voting generally with the opposition, he nevertheless gave token support to the article on communication of trade; and he abstained, apparently in disgust, from voting on ratification. With his friend William Cochrane*, he explored the possibilities for armed rebellion, to this end advancing 50 guineas to one Major James Cunningham for an exploratory mission in the western shires. Meanwhile, they canvassed several anti-unionist peers, convincing the Duke of Atholl but failing to persuade Hamilton of the scheme’s viability. The caution of the latter saved Lockhart from disaster, however, for Cunningham was a double-agent.7

Lockhart claimed that his principal reason for seeking election to Westminster in 1708 was to serve the Jacobite cause, it being necessary to make a ‘bustle’ in order to distract the ministry from any suspicion about the intended invasion. He was certainly active enough, canvassing in two counties, Lanarkshire and Edinburghshire, and taking out the additional insurance of a return for Wigtown Burghs on the Galloway interest. In the event he gave his own interest in Lanarkshire to Lord Archibald Hamilton*, while carrying the Edinburghshire election against a split Whig vote. He was therefore able to surrender the burgh seat to Cochrane. Although there had been widespread arrests of suspected Jacobites during the invasion scare, Lockhart himself was not taken up because of fears that this might offend Wharton.8

Lockhart’s printed papers provide the principal source for his conduct during his first Parliament; the evidence from the Journals adds little of significance, though he recorded two tellerships that indicate a preference for English Tories over Whigs in election cases. With hindsight Lockhart became convinced that, apart from the notable exception of Westminster, the Scots had been naive about controverted elections for English seats. In Scottish election cases, his principal contribution was in arguing that the eldest sons of Scottish peers were incapable of election to Westminster. The Scottish peerage, in his view, ‘richly deserved such and worse usage, as they had been the chief instruments in selling and betraying their country’. There was a further danger that the Court might have gained a double influence in Parliament through co-ordinating elections to the Commons and the representative peerage.9

When it suited Scottish interests Lockhart made great play in his parliamentary speeches of the sanctity of the Union. He spoke, probably on 21 Feb. 1709, in favour of the bill authorizing payment of drawbacks on salt imported into Scotland before the Union:

The merchants have a right to demand these drawbacks . . . because on the very minute that the Union commenced there was an equality of trade . . . It was on the faith of the articles of the Union that the parliament of Scotland entered into this entire Union . . . Now that we are united, we should reckon ourselves one and the same people and shun every occasion to give jealousy to one another, and if we design to be happy, keep every article of the Union sacred and inviolable; the Union being like a vault which is a foundation very strong and capable to bear a mighty structure, but the alteration of the least stone looses and brings the whole to ruin.

Although this measure passed into law, Lockhart privately noted that the ‘ill grace with which even that was done was but a sorry omen of Old England’s inclinations to encourage and promote trade in Scotland’. On 10 Mar. he spoke against the ministry during the inquiry into the late invasion attempt, pointing out that transportation of prisoners to England was suspicious because under the terms of the Union their trials could only have taken place in Scotland. He alleged that the hidden agenda had been to intimidate or bribe the Scottish nobility into co-operating with the Court at the general election. There would be no justice in a united Britain, he argued, if the Scots were to be treated ‘like slaves unless they knock under to the ministry and choose such representatives to Parliament as the Court desires’. The Union as a debating point also made an appearance in Lockhart’s speech on the bill to standardize treason law throughout Britain. This proposal (which had originated in an earlier Commons inquiry into the failure to convict several Stirlingshire lairds for suspicious conduct at the time of the Jacobite descent) had nevertheless perished in committee because of Scottish opposition. In late March the measure reappeared as a new bill from the Lords. Lockhart’s account of proceedings is imprecise, and his own printed speech is undated. It was probably delivered at the bill’s second reading on 29 Mar. His opposition was founded upon the principle that the abolition of the Scottish justiciary court was a breach of the Union. He admitted that the treaty allowed that ‘all laws relating to public policy may be made to take effect over all Britain’, but stressed that this ‘general proposition’ could not override the ‘particular proposition’ that the justiciary court should be preserved. He denounced this English tactic of using ‘the article relating to public policy . . . as a backdoor to confound or overturn all the articles in favour of Scotland’, and raised such spectres as the possible abolition of the Scottish civil law and the establishment of a unified land tax:

Sir, if this is the footing we’re to stand upon, the greatest favour you can do Scotland is plainly to say so and then perhaps a proposal may be made . . . that the 45 Scots Commoners be directed to stay at home, and not attend the service of this House. I will readily go into this motion, for ’twill save our country so much money as must be spent by our annual attendance, and prevent some gentlemen’s being seized with the spleen when they hear anything mentioned with relation to Scotland.

The passage of the Treason Act caused sharp but fleeting resentment among the Scottish Members, whom Lockhart characterized as mostly ‘in such a state of dependence or so corrupted in their principles . . . that they could not or would not fly heartily in the face of the Court’. His own disaffection was indicated by a lack of urgency to return from Scotland for the second session of this Parliament. He was back at Westminster in early 1710, however, and duly voted against the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell. No particular admirer of the doctor, Lockhart thought his celebrated sermon contained ‘nothing remarkable . . . but a great deal of railing Billingsgate expressions’. Ministers were simply fools to victimize him and the managers of the impeachment behaved with ‘all the insolence imaginable’. Lockhart relished the backlash against the Whigs and was happy to bring his personal influence to bear upon the Duke of Hamilton in order to persuade him to desert the Court on this issue. Amongst the arguments employed was that Hamilton would appear ‘not fit to be trusted by his old friends’ if he voted against Sacheverell. In the remainder of the session, noted Lockhart, ‘nothing occurred which particularly related to Scotland’.10

Lockhart was re-elected after a contest in 1710. Although his opponent, Sir James Stewart, 1st Bt.*, made plain his adherence to the Revolution interest and Hanoverian succession, Lockhart did not respond by publicly emphasizing his own growing distaste for the consequences of the Union, or, for that matter, his continued adherence to the Jacobite cause. As an individual he adopted the same mode of canvassing that he attributed to the Scottish Jacobites as a whole, who ‘spoke little above board, but under hand represented that now or never was the time to do something effectually for the King [Pretender], and by restoring him dissolve the Union’. At Westminster Lockhart entered heartily into the investigation of the previous administration’s alleged misconduct, and was duly listed as one of the ‘worthy patriots’ pursuing this objective, a task which he described as ‘exposing the gross mismanagement of the public money and the nation’s being bubbled, cheated and imposed on by all the allies’. His attempts to ingratiate himself with the chief minister, Robert Harley*, were frustrated by the same difficulties that bedevilled other zealous Tories. The new ministers ‘not only neglected to confirm and establish the advantage which they had gained, but did many things to disoblige and discourage a great many who at first had very good intentions’; Harley in particular ‘never went into their measures, but when he was compelled and obliged thereto for keeping up the reputation of the [Tory] party and setting a good outward face on his correspondence and friendship with them’. Lockhart did his best to encourage concerted action by Scots Members on national issues, but unity could only be fleeting because of divergent attitudes towards the Kirk, the Union and the Hanoverian succession. His chief contribution was in establishing what one modern historian has styled a ‘steering committee’ of Scots Members. Lockhart, in conjunction with his fellow Tories, Sir Alexander Areskine, Sir Alexander Cumming, John Carnegie and Hon. James Murray, ‘engaged to stand firm to one another, to concert measures and prosecute them together . . . to shake off that servile dependence which the Scots peers . . . had too much enjoyed from the Commons’. Even within this small group, however, personal rivalries and tactical differences made unity of purpose difficult to achieve.11

Lockhart’s first recorded speech in this Parliament was on the Wigtownshire election on 20 Jan. 1711, when he spoke in support of the petitioner John Stewart*, a brother of his erstwhile electoral patron, Lord Galloway. He spoke next in the committee of ways and means, probably on 26 Jan., in opposition to imposing a 32-year duty on all linen exported from Britain. He took Harley to task for asserting that an unfettered right of taxation over Scotland had been purchased at the Union:

I took him up and said that I was glad to hear a truth, which I had never doubted, now publicly brought to light and owned, for the honourable gentleman acknowledged that Scotland was bought and sold; but I much admired to hear from one of his experience in business and who had so great a hand in the purchase, that the Equivalent was the price, it being as certain as it was no secret that the Equivalent arose and was paid to Scotland on account of a sum with which the Scots customs and excise were to be charged towards paying debts contracted by England before the Union, so that the English got an equivalent for this sum paid to Scotland, and therefore if Scotland was bought and sold, it must be for a price not yet come to light, and I would be extremely glad to know what this price amounted to and who received it.

This speech, according to the Tory peer, Lord Balmerino, ‘was much taken notice of by a House that loves free speaking’. As a result of Scottish opposition the duty was reduced pro rata on shorter lengths of linen, which were common in Scotland. Lockhart maintained that this concession was ‘looked upon by some of the English as a singular favour and remarkable instance of their impartiality and justice’. On 10 Feb. he voted against the Squadrone supporter Mungo Graham* in the disputed election for Kinross-shire. In the same month Lockhart published an anonymous pamphlet championing the episcopalian minister James Greenshield’s appeal to the Lords over his wrongful imprisonment by the magistrates of Edinburgh: ‘truly a civil cause, arising from the natural rights of mankind to worship God after any form not expressly prohibited by the laws of the land’. Lockhart stated that Scottish law had been misapplied because the sanctions ‘against intruders into churches’ were not designed ‘to hinder an episcopal minister from preaching or praying in a private meeting house’. He took care to reassure his English audience that there was no danger of a Scottish backlash:

The spirit of Presbytery does not rage as it did, the interest of the Presbyterian clergy is much diminished . . . Had it not been supported from England, it had long ere this dwindled into nothing in Scotland; and how could it be otherwise when not a tenth part of the nobility and a third of the commons are thus affected? Presbytery . . . was established in Scotland in a time of confusion, and hath since been protected and cherished by our statesmen, whom the Presbyterians supported in their managing of the nation . . . But . . . there is not one or at least very few that would leave their ordinary callings to show resentments against any measures to the prejudice of Presbytery; so that all these stories of danger are nothing but bugbears to frighten children and amuse strangers.12

In the aftermath of Greenshield’s successful appeal, Lockhart was involved in various private meetings of Scots lords and commoners in order to plan legislative initiatives. Toleration for episcopalians was a favourite project for the ‘steering committee’, and Lockhart himself advocated a further measure of relief, the restoration of lay patronage. He spoke on 22 Feb. 1711 on the merits of the Dumfriesshire election, clashing with the Presbyterian Whig Thomas Smith II* over episcopalian baptisms. In defence of the age-qualification of Hon. James Murray*, he argued that although episcopalians did not have ‘their children baptized by the Presbyterian clergy, yet upon the payment of half a crown to the clerk, they had their child registrated [sic]’. He thought it unsurprising that Smith knew nothing of this practice because ‘the town he represented [Glasgow] would not permit an episcopal minister so much as to preach in it’. His support for Murray was a natural consequence of their political association, but his opposition to a fellow Jacobite, the sitting Member William Grierson, was predicated on the latter’s association with the Duke of Queensberry. Lockhart took a leading role in the Scottish Tories’ demonstration of ‘how much they resented the Duke’s having been the chief instrument in carrying the Union’. On 1 Mar. Lockhart supported the October Club’s motion for a bill to resume William III’s grants and was appointed with two club members, William Shippen and Thomas Strangways II, to draft the bill. He was not himself a member of the Club, but was closely associated with its aims and objectives. According to Sir James Dunbar, 1st Bt.*, Lockhart’s name was ‘in all the lists, both of English and Scots’ prior to the ballot for commissioners of public accounts. ‘I was very averse to engage in this affair’, Lockhart later stated. ‘I foresaw it would tie me down to a close attendance and almost constant abode in London, and expose me to . . . malice and revenge.’ It was a matter of national pride, however, that at least one Scot was appointed to this commission, and Lockhart consented to nomination because of the recalcitrance of the only other acceptable candidate, John Houston. Lockhart was elected in second place on 19 Mar. His duties did not begin in earnest until after the session, when his investigations contributed significantly to the charges against Robert Walpole II* and the Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill†).13

The investigation of Scottish affairs was Lockhart’s main responsibility as a commissioner, and for this reason he was appointed on 4 Apr. 1711 to the committee to examine a petition from the Equivalent commissioners. In his report on 14 May, Lockhart endorsed their request for their accounts to be examined in Edinburgh rather than London, pointing out that ‘great inconveniences and charges’ would ‘arise if the vouchers of these accounts were brought from Scotland’. He therefore recommended that the Scottish barons of exchequer should be empowered to examine the accounts, and was immediately appointed to draft a bill for this purpose, managing it successfully through the Commons only to witness its failure in the Lords. He also met with frustration over his initiative for the better regulation of Scottish elections, a measure designed ‘to prevent the tricks and frauds which had been practised since the Union’, in particular the creation of fictitious freeholders by the splitting of superiorities. He was responsible for drafting and presenting this bill in April, also chairing the second-reading committee. But

the Scots could never prevail, though they often required that the House would resolve itself in a committee of the whole to take it into consideration, the order for that purpose being postponed from day to day, and every little trifling affair relating to England preferred to it, and the bill left unfinished.

On 9 May Lockhart opposed William Lowndes over the introduction of a clause to the lottery bill giving priority of payment to Scottish official salaries over drawbacks and premiums on trade:

We the Scots, not being apprised of his motion, were surprised at it and knew not what to make of it; but as we had reason to dread whatever came from that quarter, I first of all opposed the clause, affirming that if it passed, the Scots fishing was undone . . . for as the Scottish customs were managed, what by superfluous offices, exorbitant salaries, and frauds committed by the officers, the produce thereof was so little that if the salaries of the judges were preferred there would be little or nothing left for drawbacks . . . I added that by this clause the salaries were left in the crown’s power to be increased without limitation, and a bad ministry might easily swallow all up to gratify their friends; or if some people who showed very little inclination to do favour to Scotland . . . should happen to get into the ministry . . . this power might be extended with a view to . . . ruin trade.

A combined opposition of Scots and English Members led to the subsequent withdrawal of the obnoxious clause. Lockhart probably spoke more than once on this topic, but no further details of his speeches are known. On 19 May Lockhart supported George Yeaman’s linen bill, approving in particular the clause confirming the Scottish ban on the export of flax and linen yarn to Ireland. Although the relevant act of the Scottish parliament was still in force, it had been tacitly ignored because

the Scots customs since the Union had been chiefly in the hands of English officers, who for the most part were such a scandalous crew . . . that few or none of them did understand or would take notice of a Scots law, and it was to be hoped they’d show some regard to a British act of Parliament . . . I admired to see so small and withal so just a demand meet with such opposition; that I always knew and believed that Scotland must yield to England her elder sister, but expected she might have stood her ground against Ireland.

In the same debate he called John Manley to order for arguing that Ireland must not be ruined to placate a few Scots Members. ‘Scotland never was nor never would be subject to the sovereignty of England’, declaimed Lockhart, ‘since the Union there was no more a sovereignty of England than of Scotland subsisting, both these . . . being now consolidate[d] into the sovereignty of Great Britain’. Through ‘custom and inadvertency’ English Members naturally employed the synecdoche ‘the interest of England’, but it was becoming increasingly clear that ‘some gentlemen did think the interest of England comprehended that of Great Britain’. The linen bill perished in the Lords, and was duly cited by Lockhart in an anonymous pamphlet that catalogued all the reverses suffered by Scotland in this parliamentary session. He demonstrated that there was ‘not a bit of odds betwixt’ Whigs and Tories in terms of their underlying hostility towards Scotland, and left his readers in no doubt that the only logical response to such treatment was to break the Union.14

Somewhat hypocritically, Lockhart assured Lord Oxford (Harley) upon returning to London in September 1711 that he was

infinitely surprised . . . that some people had industriously misrepresented me to your lordship . . . alleging that I talked oddly and had been much at pains in endeavouring to persuade my countrymen that your lordship was a professed and inveterate enemy to the interest of Scotland . . . I’m very happy that in this particular instance of their malice I can give the defiance to them and all the world to condescend upon any one particular wherein I did not, ever since I had the honour to be first known to your lordship, mention you with all imaginable respect and honour . . . I did on all occasions, and particularly when I was last in Scotland, lay myself out to expose those, of all factions, who pretended to accuse the present administration.

Shortly after the opening of the second session Lockhart was given the honour, on 21 Dec., of presenting to the House the first report of the public accounts commission. He told on 16 Feb. 1712 in favour of the resolution that the Barrier Treaty was ‘destructive to the trade and interest of Great Britain’. Despite his increasing prominence in Tory ranks, his dissatisfaction with English politics continued and he naturally regarded the rejection of the Duke of Hamilton’s claim to a seat in the Lords, despite his recent elevation to the British peerage, as further proof of ‘how little reason there was to imagine that this Union had effectually reduced the two kingdoms into one and the same nation’. He was lukewarm about a projected Scottish parliamentary boycott, but was prepared to join on condition that every Scottish peer gave ‘his word of honour not to return without the approbation of the majority of our lords and commons as one body’. This plan came to nothing but established a recurring theme in Lockhart’s anti-Union strategy. Although absent on 7 Feb. for the division on the Scottish toleration bill, Lockhart had been closely involved with the formulation of this measure. He had helped draw up a bill at the end of the previous session, but reluctantly consented not to introduce it then because of tactical disagreements within the ‘steering committee’. A compromise solution had been adopted, namely that the Queen and the ministry had promised to support the bill in this session. Its passage into law was not, however, straightforward, and Lockhart played an important part in combating Presbyterian-inspired wrecking amendments. On 7 Apr. he told in favour of the bill restoring lay patronage in Scotland. And, having supported in late March the revived attempt to resume William III’s grants, Lockhart moved with Shippen on 21 Apr. for the tacking of the bill for an investigative commission to the lottery bill, and opposed the reversal of the tack on 6 May. He resented the unfairness of the paper duty bill, which threatened to raise £6,000 p.a. from Scotland, and privately suggested in early May that the Scots now ‘might in everything thwart the Court’ or, if this was not acceptable, instead ‘they should leave the House in a body, and protest the Union was broke’. Not only was this secession opposed by influential Members such as Baillie, but a compromise solution offered by the ministry rendered it superfluous. After obtaining a month’s leave of absence on 12 May, Lockhart departed for Scotland. He remained there until summoned south in November by Hamilton, who wished to discuss some unspecified business relating to the Duke’s appointment as plenipotentiary to France. Before Lockhart had left London Hamilton hinted that he should hold himself in readiness for any confidential missions that might be required. Lockhart inferred that these must be Jacobite in nature, though Hamilton cautiously avoided spelling this out. News of Hamilton’s death in a duel reached Lockhart as he was travelling down for their meeting. It came as a bitter blow, the more so as Lockhart came to suspect this had been a deliberate Whig plot to prevent the Duke from advancing the Jacobite cause by means of his diplomatic appointment.15

In the 1713 session Lockhart went against his normal political allegiances by opposing Cumming and Murray over the question of apportioning cess among the royal burghs. Motivated by a desire to defend the interests of Edinburgh, he was instrumental in preventing the reinstatement of a controversial clause in the land tax bill on 29 Apr. On 4 May he reintroduced his bill to regulate Scottish elections, managing it successfully through the Commons. Both of these measures had obvious relevance to his electoral interest. The issue which principally engaged Lockhart’s attention in this session, however, was the imposition of the malt tax on Scotland. He was a teller on 19 May against recommitting the proposal for a 3d. duty on malt produced in Scotland, and two days later opposed the fateful clause that imposed the full rate of 6d. per bushel. ‘I believed this affair’, he later wrote, ‘as it touched every man’s copyhold and was a general grievance, would be the best handle to inflame and keep up the spirit and resentment of the Scots against the Union.’ He placed himself at the forefront of the campaign, organizing joint meetings of Scots Members and peers. At an informal meeting in late May on the malt tax, which was attended by 10 or 12 Scots Tory Members, Lockhart emphasized the benefits of their consistent opposition to the Union, which ‘had gained the esteem of a great many’ in Scotland. He suggested that ‘if they should now evidence to the world that . . . it was destructive and dishonourable to their country . . . and did what in them lay to restore the ancient constitution, it would infallibly strengthen their party’. In order to prevent this matter from appearing a mere ‘party business’, Lockhart was entrusted with the task of inviting all Scots Members to a meeting on 23 May, at which he proposed

that it was necessary they should show their resentment of such usage and endeavour to get free of the Union, and . . . should move for leave to bring in a bill to dissolve it and added that though he did not think it could carry at this time yet it would leave on record their sense of the usage they had received and show to . . . their next Parliament what their sense of matters were [sic] and it was to be hoped they would begin where they left off and join with any party that would come into any measures for their relief.

It was decided to hold a joint meeting with the Scottish peers on 26 May. At this second meeting Lockhart exchanged heated words with Baillie, who was seeking to create obstructions by questioning their mandate for action. Lockhart forcefully reminded him that ‘the minds of their constituents were not asked in making the Union, and there was no need of asking it to dissolve it’. He also opposed the suggestion from Hon. Charles Rosse* and George Douglas* that if the motion failed the Scots should boycott the next general election. ‘Once the Parliament was deserted’, Lockhart maintained, ‘no Scotsman could think of returning there and yet if the Union was not dissolved writs may be issued . . . and the sheriffs obliged to execute them and . . . in each county there might be some few false gentlemen who might out of personal view get themselves elected.’ His opinion that ‘they could do more service in Parliament than by leaving it’ prevailed. He was naturally appointed to the Scots delegation to the Queen advising her of their intention to move for a dissolution of the Union. At a second joint meeting of Scots representatives on 27 May to discuss her response, Lockhart perceived that ‘some people’s zeal cooled’. Although he endorsed the commonsense tactic of bringing forward their motion in the Lords, where the ministerial majority was narrower, he did not intend the Commons to remain passive. He therefore advocated an immediate attack on the Court, and that all ministerial measures should be opposed by the Scots, irrespective of individual differences of opinion on the merits of any particular question. Nothing could be agreed on this score, however, principally because of Baillie’s aversion towards Lockhart’s cynical and opportunistic approach. Baillie’s conscience, paradoxically, saved Lockhart from a degree of embarrassment. If a unified Scots opposition had been agreed upon, then Lockhart would have found himself in an invidious position when he received instructions from the Pretender that the Jacobites should support the ministry. The exiled court wrongly believed that Lord Oxford was on the verge of negotiating a peaceful restoration. Lockhart made a swift volte-face: on 4 June he had abstained on the second reading of the bill confirming the 8th and 9th articles of the French commercial treaty, but, after receiving the injunction to co-operate, voted in favour of it at the engrossment on 18 June. It was a measure of his growing status within Scottish Jacobite circles that Father James Carnegy suggested later in the year that the Pretender should make Lockhart a peer in order to allow him, in some measure, to fill the political vacuum created by the death of Hamilton.16

Lockhart was re-elected without a contest in 1713, though he had worked hard to neutralize a challenge from Sir David Dalrymple. In an analysis of the Scottish returns by Lord Polwarth he was classified as a ‘Jacobite’, a catch-all description for Scottish Tories. Father Carnegy reported in January 1714 that while most Jacobites were ‘pusillanimous and inactive’, Lockhart continued ‘active and indefatigable’. It was nevertheless predicted that he would probably ‘sit still and do nothing’ to prevent a peaceful Hanoverian succession. He departed for Westminster in February 1714, and maintained a regular correspondence with the Scottish Jacobite Harry Maule of Kellie. The key to these letters not having survived, the cant names employed can only be provisionally identified. On 7 Mar. Lockhart gave the following account to Maule of the current state of politics:

The night before Water [Parliament] met, about 40 of his friends [MPs] were together at Cherry’s [William Bromley II] desire, where we had under consideration what return to make to the Frog’s harangue [Queen’s speech] . . . Remus [Sir Thomas Hanmer II*] opposed it . . . and insinuated an approbation of sending for the Chamberpot [Electress Sophia] or at least the Chimney [Duke of Cambridge] . . . [Hanmer] had none to stand by him, so Tiberius [Whigs] did not venture next day to make opposition . . . Since [then] matters, ’tis said, have taken another turn, by the Haddock [Oxford] compromising . . . with [Hanmer], viz. that nothing shall be moved or done to the prejudice of . . . Baker [Hanoverian succession] . . . The Spider [Lockhart] was and is of opinion that the Shoemaker [Jacobites] should and might be uneasy to [Oxford] till he mended his manners, but those few intimate friends [Lockhart] formerly used to consult and concert with have entirely abandoned him, being absolute slaves to Ash [the ministry] . . . so that he can’t spur them up to do as he and all their friends would expect.

Apart from such local initiatives as the Edinburghshire highways bill, which Lockhart presented on 15 Mar. and thereafter managed successfully through the Commons, this proved an exceedingly frustrating period in his career.17

As a Jacobite, Lockhart naturally approved of the idea of forcing the Court to reveal the identity of those who had been nominated to the council of regency that would be instituted at the Queen’s death. He was deputed with the English Jacobite Sir John Pakington, 4th Bt.*, to make representations to Lord Bolingbroke [Henry St. John II*] that the ministry should abandon its ambivalent stance on the succession and take positive steps, such as a purge of the army, to pave the way for a Jacobite restoration. They were reluctantly persuaded that Bolingbroke needed further time to outmanoeuvre Oxford before any decisive action could be taken. Also, Lockhart noted that at the outset of the session, ‘the Scots Tories . . . had their own particular meetings and projects . . . and the five gentlemen I took notice of before met as formerly’. The ‘steering committee’, however, swiftly collapsed because three of its members, Murray, Carnegie and Cumming, had fallen completely under Bolingbroke’s influence. As a result, ‘there was no appearance of any design with respect to Scots affairs’. Lockhart remained on good terms with Areskine and other Scots Tories such as Sir James Hamilton and John Houstoun, supporting the last of these as a teller on 12 Apr. over the disputed election for Linlithgowshire. He spoke on the Court side in the ‘succession in danger’ debate on 15 Apr., making light of alarmism about the alleged increase in Roman Catholicism in Scotland:

I know indeed some of our zealous Presbyterians make little or no distinction ’twixt the Church of Rome and the Church of England; they call the former black popery, and the latter white popery . . . and if ’tis in this sense that gentlemen say popery is on the increase, I will freely own it, it being in truth very certain that a great many come over daily to the service and liturgy of the Church of England; but I can apprehend no sort of danger to the Protestant succession from this sort of popery.

He also commended the longstanding policy of making small donations to the Highland clans, which had served since King William’s reign ‘to gain them over and keep them in a good disposition . . . after other severe courses failed’. On the other hand, he drew attention to the far greater danger to be apprehended from the spate of voluntary arming in the Presbyterian strongholds of western Scotland:

I’m sure ’tis against the law to list officers and soldiers and to rendezvous and muster publicly without any authority from the crown; and yet these are daily and avowedly done; nay her Majesty’s troops have lately been obliged to give up the guardhouse in Glasgow, where in their stead the trainbands [sic], or rather the mob, keep guard. Had anything like to this been done in the Highlands, we should have had a fine story of it; but there are a certain sort of people in the world who presume to censure others while they do 20 times worse themselves. To conclude; if the Protestant succession is in any kind of danger . . . ’tis not from the Highlanders, but from those men who are by principles enemies to the monarchy, and never to be more dreaded than when they pretend respect and zeal for the crown.

This peroration led, inevitably, to a clash with the Member for Glasgow Burghs, Thomas Smith II. Notwithstanding the effectiveness of his own speech and the ministerial victory, Lockhart was disappointed at the general impression created by the debate. He reported to Maule on 17 Apr. that ministers had clearly ‘ruined themselves and their friends’ and held ‘this ministry’s days to be few and evil’. On 29 Apr. he supported George Hamilton*, the future Jacobite military commander, in the disputed election for Anstruther Easter Burghs, and was disheartened by the failure to obtain sufficient support. He remained willing to support the government if its measures were designed to favour the High Tories, supporting the schism bill on 12 May by voting against the Whig wrecking amendment that sought to extend its provisions to cover Catholic education. He also spoke in support of this bill, probably at second reading on 24 May. Not having intended to deliver a speech, he was spurred to action by Sir David Dalrymple’s disingenuous comments about the traditional role of Protestant rulers in defending the natural right of parents to educate the children in accordance with their own religious beliefs. He contrasted this abstract theory with the reality of Catholic persecution in England, and went on to demonstrate that even fellow Protestants had suffered at the hands the pre-Union government of Scotland. He cited his own childhood experiences as proof of how the state interfered with private education, and exchanged heated words with Sir James Stewart, 1st Bt. (whose recent dismissal as lord advocate Lockhart himself had urged upon the ministry). He impugned Stewart’s character after exposing his ‘ignorance and disingenuity’ in denying the existence of a Williamite act of the Scottish parliament that effectively disbarred non-Presbyterians from the teaching profession. After the relevant act was read to the House by the clerk, Lockhart concluded:

I do submit to you, Mr Speaker, how far this gentleman’s knowledge and candour deserves credit after this in other matters . . . I will add no more but that the bill under consideration doth vest no persons with such unlimited powers as are contained in the act lately read and which besides is of much greater consequence than this bill, for this may be rescinded by a subsequent Parliament, whereas the other is a perpetual law established . . . by the Union.18

The growing stature of Lockhart as a debater appears to have encouraged the Court to make a renewed attempt to gain his more thoroughgoing support. Shortly before Lockhart spoke on the schism bill he had been approached by Carnegie, Cumming and Murray, who suggested that a bill should be introduced for resuming the bishops’ rents in Scotland in order to re-apply them for the relief of episcopalian clergy. Lockhart had long favoured such a scheme, even to the extent of preparing a draft bill. He was understandably suspicious of ministerial motives, however, and doubted if there was sufficient parliamentary time to carry such a measure through both Houses. Lockhart was by no means convinced by second-hand promises of support from Bolingbroke and Lord Mar.

I answered that . . . I had the bill ready . . . and that it was at their service if it could be of any use to them, but as for making the motion and presenting the bill, I hoped they would excuse me . . . They pressed me again and again . . . and upon my still declining it, they told me that the ministry expected it of me, and if I persisted in refusing it the design would probably be dropped, and that people . . . would believe I was not firm to the party and principles I had heretofore adhered to and professed.

Lockhart finally succumbed to concerted pressure, and on 22 May moved for leave to bring in the bill. His speech descanted upon the sufferings of episcopalians since the Revolution. He argued that the beneficial effects of the recent Toleration Act

have so well answered gentlemen’s hopes and designs . . . that nothing seems wanting . . . but a fund for giving a reasonable allowance to such of the episcopal clergy as do comply with the terms . . . of the Toleration Act: and there being now no bishops in Scotland their revenues seem a proper fund and much better bestowed after this manner in grants to the laity and Presbyterian clergy . . . I take both, at least without controversy the first, to be nothing less than a sacrilegious misapplication; and the Presbyterian clergy being still allowed to enjoy the benefices appointed for their predecessors of the episcopal communion may be well satisfied . . . And there is nothing contained in what I am about to propose [that is] inconsistent with or contrary to the securities provided for the Presbyterian church government by the articles of Union.

Lockhart was appointed in first place to the bill’s drafting committee, but his worst fears about the pusillanimity of the Court were soon confirmed. The Queen was reportedly alarmed at the sweeping nature of his draft, which, by proposing to resume all grants, removed some funds from Scottish universities. Although Lockhart had no compunction about taking money away from these ‘seminaries of rebellion and schism’, Bromley advised him in the Queen’s name ‘not to push the bill any further at this time’. Lockhart knew that pressure had been put on the government by well-connected members of the universities, but believed that the main difficulty stemmed from scaremongering reports that his bill would precipitate violent Presbyterian unrest. The Court’s change of heart was therefore attributable to a lack of ‘courage and resolution’ on the part of those whose duty it was to ‘undeceive’ the Queen. The leading courtiers were now so ‘accustomed to keep on the mask it was becoming habitual to them and as part of their natural bodies’. He disapproved of the postscript to this affair, the successful passage through the Commons of a bill sponsored by his former allies appointing commissioners to inquire into episcopal revenues. ‘They themselves’, sneered Lockhart, ‘were appointed commissioners with salaries thereto annexed.’ He took sardonic pleasure in the bill’s failure to pass the Lords before the prorogation. This, at least, was how he portrayed the affair in his ‘Commentaries’. His contemporary letters to Maule make it clear, however, that he regarded the alternative bill as ‘the handsomest way of coming off, but ’tis a very precarious and uncertain one’. He expected, moreover, to have been nominated to the commission.19

The schism within Scottish Toryism baffled some observers. It was reported to the Presbyterian divine Robert Wodrow in June 1714 that Lockhart had brought forward an unusual clause to be added to Carnegie’s Scottish militia bill, which was ‘opposed by Sir John Erskine, Mr Murray and others of that kidney . . . this makes me fancy that he made the motion that the debate might be brought in . . . and the Commons might vote that such a clause should be left out’. In fact Lockhart’s action was a deliberate act of sabotage. After Carnegie had presented the bill on 26 May, Lockhart ‘seriously perused and considered it’, concluding that the method of raising ‘the English militia was calculated for England, which no more suited the circumstances and abilities of Scotland, than the English maxims and regulations of trade’. He estimated that ‘the number of men that would be raised by this new scheme would not amount to the half, and yet cost treble the expense.’ He felt it his duty to protect his constituents from such arbitrary innovations, and privately ridiculed the idea that the bill would be useful in ‘disarming the Whigs’ because the new appointees ‘might be friends now, but we did not know how long’. In any event, it was more desirable for the Scots to combine against the Union rather than fall out among themselves: ‘I did firmly believe, if right measures were taken, almost all Scotsmen would unite against . . . oppressions and hardships . . . and therefore wished every Scotsman was armed, being persuaded that sooner or later both the King [Pretender] and country would find the benefit of it.’ He therefore took advantage of the qualms voiced by the Duke of Argyll about the abolition of hereditary lieutenancies. To this end Lockhart sought a private audience with Bolingbroke, Mar, and Sir William Wyndham, 3rd Bt.*, from which they ‘flew out in a passion, telling me they wondered how I came to set up for my Lord Argyll against the public interest’. He particularly infuriated Mar by pointing out that there was little difference in principle between Argyll’s hereditary lieutenancy and Mar’s governorship of Stirling Castle: ‘his lordship would do well to consider what was sauce for a goose would be sauce for a gander’. Lockhart was told, nevertheless, that any amendment was unacceptable and that there was nothing further to be gained by him except the creation of an impression that he had ‘gone over to the other side’. Lockhart countered by canvassing his Jacobite friends in Parliament and succeeded in convincing them that the ministry was motivated by personal spite against Argyll. He suggested also that such ill treatment was the root cause of the Duke’s defection to the Whigs, and that favourable treatment might yet convert him to the Stuart cause. Having succeeded on 10 June in carrying a resolution instructing the committee of the whole to consider ‘a clause for preserving . . . hereditary lieutenancies in any county, city, or place, in Scotland’, Lockhart carefully observed the subsequent pattern of parliamentary business. At a late sitting on 30 June he proposed on the order of the day for going into committee that

the day was so far spent and the House so thin, that it was not proper to take an affair of such moment into consideration, and I moved that it might be delayed till that day fortnight . . . My design was to cast out the bill altogether because the Parliament would be prorogued before the day I proposed . . . Those who seconded my motion calling aloud for the question, it was at length put and on a division carried in the affirmative . . . and what more chagrined the ministry, while the door was shut on the division, there came 12 or 15 of their friends, who by being there some five or six minutes earlier would have turned the scales.

Lockhart himself told in the majority, and the bill duly fell by default.20

On 18 June 1714 Lockhart had been re-elected as a commissioner of accounts. He survived an attempt by Whigs and ‘whimsical’ Tories to carry an alternative list of candidates, having been included in the exclusively Tory list that was prepared at a meeting on the day before the ballot. As a commissioner he felt obliged to demonstrate his independence by opposing the ministry on 22 June over the address of thanks to the Queen for bestowing the asiento contract on the South Sea Company. He believed that the address compromised his own principled stance against crown grants:

It is not any particular grant . . . that I aim at reducing; for if each party be allowed to support and maintain the grants bestowed under their own influence, the evil will never be remedied, for though they should reduce what was granted by their predecessors, they will enhance the same to themselves . . . I am for wholesale work, by resuming all that have passed and discouraging all that may pass for the future.

He disagreed with Bromley’s interpretation of the address, rejecting the notion that it was merely complimentary, maintaining rather that the net effect was to deprive the public of £50,000 that might otherwise have been paid by the company for the privilege of obtaining the contract. On 24 June he led an attempt by a number of Scottish Members to force the commissioners of the Equivalent to ‘be accountable for the £14,000 appropriated for the wool with interest for it at 4 per cent, or that they should consign it in the town of Edinburgh’s hands, there to remain till the application was agreed upon’. Despite Lockhart’s adjustments to the proposal, in order to accommodate some ingenious objections by Sir John Erskine and Alexander Abercromby, the clause was rejected. In Lockhart’s opinion this was done not on its merits but on a procedural misfortune: ‘by the rules, those who are for approving a clause are on the division to go out of the House and indeed the English gentlemen did not think it worth their pains to rise off their arses to do Scotland justice, so that, except the Scots, we had not 20 votes’.21

On 26 June Lockhart wrote to Maule concerning the recent proclamation of a reward for the capture of the Pretender. This had been set originally at £5,000, but was raised by the Commons to £100,000 on a combined vote of Whigs and Hanoverian Tories. In some respects this affair was ‘still a mystery’, he reported, but in other ways ‘it rather unfolds a mystery and shows us we can expect no good from [the ministry]’. Consequently, Lockhart and Pakington considered taking the paradoxical expedient of inviting a member of the Hanoverian royal family to England:

Such a step and seconded by a certain set of men, will let [the Queen] and [Bolingbroke] see they resent such odd proceedings and . . . if the proposal be agreed to, it will bring matters to some clear light or another, which they think better [than] . . . to be ruined by degrees . . . Nobody now doubts but [Oxford] will soon fall and [Bolingbroke] succeed him.

The risks in this strategy appeared too great, however, and instead a campaign of obstructing supply was instigated. In late June and early July Lockhart placed himself at the forefront of the attack. He was swiftly summoned to a confidential meeting with Bolingbroke:

I . . . no sooner entered his room than he asked me what in the name of God moved me . . . to act so unaccountable part . . . Affairs were now come to a crisis . . . and such alterations made and measures laid down that they might safely venture to undertake . . . what was intended . . . His lordship did not particularly name the King’s restoration, yet . . . gave such hints and innuendoes that it was obvious he intended I should understand . . . the great thing he aimed at . . . And he concluded his discourse by beseeching me to speak to these other gentlemen, with whom I was in concert, to dispatch the supplies that so the Parliament might be prorogued, till which nothing of consequence could be done.

He therefore abandoned the policy of obstruction, and with the close of the session departed for Scotland. Lord Oxford’s rearguard action against Bolingbroke and the Queen’s sudden death, however, dashed Jacobite expectations. And Lockhart declined even to attend the brief parliamentary session held after the sovereign’s death.22

The publication in August 1714 of the Memoirs created considerable political embarrassment for Lockhart. Although never formally accused at law, he remained open to other forms of retribution. At least two duels are known to have been threatened on this score. The Hanoverian accession, moreover, terminated Lockhart’s parliamentary career. He entertained pious hopes that a bloodless separation of the kingdoms might yet be effected. In January 1715 he told Lady Mary Hamilton that

nothing is so surprising as to see that the unhappy circumstances of this poor country has [sic] not yet awakened people from that lethargic distemper which has seized upon and deceived them these several years, and that though everybody finds the bad consequences of the Union, such numbers should be prevailed on with shams and stories to neglect this opportunity of applying for, and perhaps obtaining a dissolution of it.

He made a serious canvass in Edinburghshire, but in the face of almost certain defeat decided to withdraw before the poll. Although Lockhart had been involved in the plotting which had preceded the last Jacobite invasion attempt, he was by no means an experienced conspirator. The controversy surrounding the Memoirs also made him a natural target of suspicion, and those who planned the 1715 rising largely excluded him from their designs. He received some hints that a rebellion was in preparation and accordingly began collecting arms and horses. He knew nothing, however, of Lord Mar’s flight from London and was therefore caught unprepared, becoming one of the first detainees of the emergency. On application to Argyll he obtained release from Edinburgh Castle, and was permitted to go to his Lanarkshire estate on payment of a surety of 6,000 merks (c.£300). During his incarceration, he had assisted in clandestine preparations to seize the Castle, but, having been released prior to the abortive coup, avoided any retribution. At Carnwath he liaised with fellow Jacobites such as Sir James Hamilton, 2nd Bt.*, and was making preparations to join Mar’s forces when he was summoned back to Edinburgh by Argyll. Given sufficient liberty to engage in further plotting, Lockhart dispatched his brother, Philip, to join Lord Kenmuir, but was arrested himself at Dryden on 13 Oct. while awaiting news of the Jacobite army’s approach. He was again imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, but was eventually released without trial. His unfortunate brother, a retired army officer on half-pay, was summarily executed after being captured at the battle of Preston. ‘I cannot say I am so good a Christian’, wrote Lockhart subsequently, ‘as not to long for a fair occasion to revenge what [Philip] . . . did meet with, which I cannot nor never will think of but with warm blood. And come of me what will, I hope I shall leave those behind me full of the same resentment and ready to embrace every occasion to prosecute it’.23

Lockhart was involved in the Jacobite schemes of 1717 and 1719, and the following year was appointed to the ‘board of trustees’ charged by the Old Pretender with the management of his Scottish interests. Most of Lockhart’s energies thereafter were devoted to resolving internal dissension within Jacobitism, rather than active conspiracy. He contemplated retirement in 1725, being demoralized at the public row between the Pretender and his wife. In 1727 he was forced into exile, following the government’s seizure of incriminating correspondence. Two Jacobite agents were arrested, but Lockhart, apparently tipped off by Argyll’s brother Lord Ilay, made his escape. During his period abroad, Lockhart helped re-organize Jacobite communications and gave wise counsel against any unsupported rising after George I’s death. He was appalled at the useless sufferings that would result from a Scottish rebellion without foreign military aid. Lockhart characterized an audience with George II, to which he submitted upon his return to Britain, as ‘bowing the knee to Baal’. Thereafter he lived quietly on his estates, until his abrupt and unexplained death by duelling on 17 Dec. 1731. Neither the name of the challenger nor the location of the duel is known. The cause at issue is also obscure. The silence surrounding this affair nevertheless points towards a shameful family dispute.24

At the time of his death Lockhart is known to have been embroiled in two family quarrels. One dispute concerned the clandestine marriage of Lady Mary Montgomerie, a daughter of the late Lord Eglintoun. As one of the Earl’s executors, Lockhart had a particular interest in her future. He roundly condemned the use of an episcopalian chaplain for the ceremony, which was contrary to law and might entangle the family in future difficulties. He also denounced the match as ‘rash’ and ‘unequal’. The bridegroom, Captain David Craig of Milnhall, may therefore have been the unknown duellist. An alternative explanation may be found in a longstanding rift between Lockhart and Lord Galloway. Some years previously, Galloway had made the scurrilous assertion that Lockhart’s eldest son, George, had himself avoided a duel through indisposition with syphilis. Lockhart had rebuked Galloway, and is not known subsequently to have made his peace. The insult which led to the duel, whether involving Craig, Galloway or some other party, was probably made on 13 Dec. 1731 at the funeral of Lady Panmure. The following day Lockhart made an addendum to his will, a common act of preparation before duelling. His death passed without notice at the Stuart court. He had fallen from favour at the time of his retirement. Indeed, one of his last acts on behalf of the Jacobites had been to write, in December 1727, a lengthy letter to the Pretender that was highly critical of the misjudgments of the past 12 years. The family remained true to its traditions, however. Lockhart’s eldest son and grandson, both named George, appeared in arms prior to the battle of Prestonpans in 1745, the elder swiftly surrendering but the younger remaining with the Jacobite army until Culloden and later escaping to France.25

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: David Wilkinson

Notes

Unless otherwise stated this article is based on an unpublished biography of Lockhart by Dr D. Szechi.

  • 1. Lockhart Letters ed. Szechi, p. xiv.; Hist. Scot. Parl. 433; S. Macdonald Lockhart, Hist. Lockharts of Lee and Carnwath, 71, 81, 241; Scots Peerage, iii. 457; W. Fraser, Mems. Earls of Eglinton, i. 103; NLS, ms 1301, ff. 53–61.
  • 2. C. A. Malcolm, Bank of Scotland, 298.
  • 3. Scot. Rec. Soc. lxii. 123.
  • 4. Lockhart Mems. ed. Szechi, p. v; Lockhart Letters, pp. xxvii–xxviii, 110–16.
  • 5. Macdonald Lockhart, 10, 55–69; DNB (Lockhart, Sir George); SHR, xlvi. 110; Hist. Scot. Parl. 433–6; G. V. Irving and A. Murray, Upper Ward of Lanark. ii. 518–20.
  • 6. Add. 22229, f. 7; Lockhart Pprs. i. 394; SRO, Hamilton mss GD406/1/4054, declaration of curators, n.d. [1695] (ex inf. Dr Szechi).
  • 7. Lockhart Mems. 39–40, 119, 180–3; info. from Dr P. W. J. Riley on members of Scot. parl.; APS, xi. 72, 102, 222, 236–7; Crossrigg Diary, 140; Boyer, Anne Annals, iii. app. 41; Lockhart Letters, 12–13, 17–19, 32–36; P. W. J. Riley, Union, 333.
  • 8. Lockhart Pprs. 292–4.
  • 9. Ibid., 297–8; NLS, ms 14415, f. 163.
  • 10. Lockhart Pprs. 300–1, 314–16, 504–7; Scottish Catholic Archs. Blairs Coll. mss BL2/158/3, James Carnegy to Scots Coll. n.d. [1709]; Hamilton mss GD406/1/5585, John Hamilton to Duke of Hamilton, 27 Dec. 1709.
  • 11. Lockhart Pprs. 319–24, 338; Lockhart Letters, 41–44, 51, 56–57, 59, 61–65; D. Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Pol. 102.
  • 12. NLS, Advocates’ mss, Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 5, f. 105; SRO, Mar and Kellie mss GD124/15/1020/7, Sir James Dunbar to Ld. Grange (Hon. James Erskine†), 20 Jan. 1711; Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 125; Blairs Coll. mss BL2/168/4, Carnegy to Scots Coll. 4 Feb. 1711; Lockhart Pprs. 327–8, 521–9; Studs. in Ch. Hist. xxi. 280–1.
  • 13. Mar and Kellie mss GD124/15/1020/15, Dunbar to Grange, 6, 17 Mar. 1711; Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 5, ff. 138–9; Lockhart Pprs. 325–6, 349–63; Boyer, Pol. State, i. 249; SRO, Clerk of Penicuik mss GD18/5174/1, John Clerk* to Sir John Clerk, 29 Mar. 1711.
  • 14. Pittis, Present Parl. 170; Lockhart Letters, 45–50, 66; Lockhart Pprs. 329–30, 333–4, 339–40, 529–48.
  • 15. Lockhart Letters, 51–52; Lockhart Pprs. 339–40, 344, 366–7, 408–9; Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. 127, 129, 149; Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 6, f. 119; Wodrow, Analecta (Maitland Club lx), ii. 44–45, 113–14; BL, Trumbull Alphab. mss 54, Ralph Bridges to Sir William Trumbull*, 25 Apr. 1712.
  • 16. SRO, Seafield mss GD248/566/84/50, Alexander Reid* to [Findlater], 27 [Apr. 1713]; Aberdeen Univ. Lib. Duff House (Montcoffer) mss 3175/2380, ‘Resolution of the Commons to Call a Meeting of the Lords’, [23] May 1713; Lockhart Letters, 72–79; Lockhart Pprs. 418–37; Boyer, v. 348; Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 7, f. 158; SRO, Dalhousie mss GD45/14/364/1–2, Alexander Murray* to [Maule], 2 June 1713; Parlty. Hist. i. 69; Orig. Pprs. ed. Macpherson, ii. 416; Szechi, 137–8; Blairs Coll. mss BL2/181/16, Carnegy to Thomas Innes, 4 Nov. 1713 N.S.
  • 17. Blairs Coll. mss BL2/188/3, Carnegy to Scots Coll. 19 Jan. 1714; Lockhart Letters, 89, 92–93.
  • 18. Lockhart Pprs. 441–3, 561–4; Douglas diary (Hist. Parl. trans.), 15 Apr. 1714; Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 8, ff. 95–96; Lockhart Letters, 72–73 (misdated), 98–99.
  • 19. Lockhart Pprs. 444–58, 559–61; Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 8, f. 126; HMC Portland, v. 449, 461; Lockhart Letters, 101–4.
  • 20. Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 8, ff. 133–4; Lockhart Pprs. 452–8; Lockhart Letters, 103.
  • 21. SRO, Eglinton mss GD3/5/899, Lockhart to Eglintoun, 17 June 1714; Lockhart Letters, 105–7; Lockhart Pprs. 564–9.
  • 22. Lockhart Letters, 108–9; Lockhart Pprs. 476–7.
  • 23. Lockhart Letters, 117–18, 124; Lockhart Pprs. 484–7, 491–4.
  • 24. Lockhart Letters, pp. xxxi–xxxvi; Lockhart Pprs. ii. 397.
  • 25. Lockhart Letters, 186, 337–40; DNB; Lockhart’s will, 14 Dec. 1731 (ex inf. Dr Szechi); Macdonald Lockhart, 222–33.