KELLIE, Earl of,
a title in the peerage of Scotland (claimed in 1829, from failure of
other heirs, by the earl of Mar,) conferred in 1619, on Sir Thomas
Erskine of Gogar, first viscount Fenton, eldest surviving son of the
Hon. Sir Alexander Erskine of Gogar, fourth son of the fourth Lord
Erskine. Sir Alexander, the father, was born about 1521. On the death
of his brother, the regent, in 1672, the lords of the secret council,
by the admonition of the estates of parliament, gave to him the charge
of the education of the young king, James IV., George Buchanan, David
Erskine, commendator of Dryburgh, Adam Erskine, commendator of
Cambuskenneth, and Peter Young, acting as his preceptors. He was also
governor of the castle of Stirling, the residence of King James during
his minority. In the beginning of 1578, he favoured the party which
opposed the regent Morton, and at the instigation of that nobleman,
the earl of Mar, in April ov that year, seized upon the castle of
Stirling, turned his uncle out of that fortress, and became master of
the king’s person. Sir Alexander’s eldest son, Alexander Erskine, died
during the siege. One account states that he was killed; according to
another he died of grief for the indignity done to his father, in
depriving him of the government of Stirling castle.
The same
year, Sir Alexander was appointed governor of the castle of Edinburgh,
sworn a privy councillor, and in 1580 he became vice-chamberlain of
Scotland. He died before 1595. His portrait is in Pinkerton’s Gallery
of Scottish Portraits, from an original painting in possession of
Erskine of Alva. He was twice married, but had issue only by his first
wife, Margaret, only daughter of the fourth Lord Home, three sons and
three daughters. His third son, Sir George Erskine of Innerteil, was a
lord of session from 15th March 1617 till his death in
1646.
Sir Thomas
Erskine, the second but eldest surviving son, and first earl of
Kellie, was born in 1566, the same year as James VI. With his younger
brother, George, afterwards Lord Innerteil, he was educated with that
monarch from his childhood, and in after life received many signal
marks of his favour. In 1585 the king appointed him one of the
gentlemen of his bedchamber. He was one of the king’s retinue at
Gowrie house, Perth, on 5th August, 1600, during the
enactment of what is called the Gowrie conspiracy, and as James passed
from the dining-room through the hall where his attendants were, he
desired Sir Thomas Erskine to follow him. After Alexander Ruthven had
been stabbed by Sir John Ramsay, and thrown down the stairs by the
king, his body was found by Erskine, Herries, and others, who speedily
despatched him. With Herries and Ramsay he attempted to prevent the
entrance of Gowrie and his armed servants into the apartment where the
king was, and in the scuffle that ensued he was wounded in the hand.
For his conduct on this occasion, he received the third part of the
lordship of Dirleton, belonging to Gowrie, by charter dated 15th
November, 1600. In the following July he accompanied the duke of
Lennox (son of Esme d’Aubigny, cousin of the king’s father, Lord
Darnley) in his embassy to France.
On King
James’ accession to the English throne in 1603, Sir Thomas Erskine was
one of those whom he selected to attend him to London. The same year
he was appointed captain of the yeomen of the guard, in the room of
Sir Walter Raleigh. Three years afterwards he was, by patent, dated 18th
May, 1606, created Viscount Fenton in the Scots peerage, (being the
first person raised to that degree of nobility in Scotland,) to him
and the heirs male of his body, whom failing, to his heirs male
whatsoever. Besides other lands conferred on him at various times, he
had charters of the barony of Kellie, in Fifeshire, 13th
July 1613, and of that of Fentontower and Dirleton, united into the
lordship of Fenton, 9th July 1618. The following year he
was created earl of Kellie, in the Scots peerage, by patent dated 12th
March 1619, to him and his heirs male, bearing the name of Erskine.
Subsequently he was invested with the order of the Garter. He died at
London, 12th June 1639, in his 73d year. With a daughter,
he had one son, Alexander, Viscount Fenton, who predeceased him in
February 1633, leaving, by his wife, Lady Anne Seton, eldest daughter
of the first earl of Dunfermline, high chamberlain of Scotland,
Thomas, second earl of Kellie; Alexander, third earl; Sir Charles
Erskine of Cambo in Fife, baronet, the founder of that branch of the
family, of whom immediately, another son, and three daughters.
The third
son, Sir Charles Erskine, just mentioned, joined the royalists under
Middleton in 1654, and was taken prisoner in the Braes of Angus, in
November of that year. Installed lord lyon king at arms, 25th
September 1665, he was crowned by the earl of Rothes, his majesty’s
commissioner, and, on 20th August 1666, was created a
baronet of Nova Scotia, by Charles II. Two years afterwards, he
purchased, from Sir Thomas Morton, the estate of Cambo, parish of
Kingsbarns, Fife, which originally belonged to the Camboes of that
ilk. His only son, Sir Alexander Erskine of Cambo, second baronet,
received the appointment of lord lyon, on his father’s death in 1677,
and was crowned king at arms at Holyrood-house, in presence of James,
duke of Albany and York, his majesty’s high commissioner, 27th
July 1681. He was appointed joint-keeper of the signet in 1711, and
chosen M.P. for the county of Fife, at the general election in 1713.
In August 1715, when the earl of Mar landed on the Fife coast, to
raise the clans for the Pretender, Sir Alexander Erskine joined him at
Crail, with other friends of the Jacobite interest; and he was one of
the persons summoned by the lord-advocate to appear at Edinburgh
within a specified period, under the pain of a y ear’s imprisonment
and other penalties, to give bail for their allegiance to the
government. He complied with the summons on the 17th
September, and was committed prisoner to the castle of Edinburgh, but
on the suppression of the rebellion he was released from custody, and
died in 1735. He had six sons, three of whom, named Charles, John, and
William, who all died unmarried, successively inherited the title and
estate. The fourth son, David, predeceased his immediate elder
brother, Sir William, the fifth baronet, leaving six sons. The eldest,
Sir Charles, succeeded as sixth baronet in 1780. Thomas the fifth son,
became ninth earl of Kellie, and Methven, the youngest son, tenth
earl. Sir Charles’ eldest son, Sir William, succeeded as seventh
baronet, and dying unmarried, his brother Sir Charles became eighth
baronet, and subsequently eighth earl of Kellie.
Colin, the
sixth and youngest son of Sir Alexander Erskine, lord lyon, went, when
very young, to Rome to study painting, and marrying there a lady of
distinction, he settled in that city, and had a son, Charles Erskine,
born at Rome, 13th February, 1753, who was much patronised
by Prince Charles Stuart. Admitted on the foundation of the Scots
college at Rome, he studied the canon law under the first lawyers in
Europe, and by Pope Pius VI. was appointed to the office of Promotore
della fide, commonly called the Advocato di Diavolo, it being the
province of that officer to dispute the claims of the saints to
canonization. In 1792 he was sent to England by the Pope, but though
not recognised by the government in a public capacity, he was
presented at court as a private gentleman. In 1801 he was raised to
the rank of cardinal deacon, and when the Pope (Pius VII.) And his
college were driven from Rome by the French in 1809, Cardinal Erskine
went, like the others, to Paris, where he was compelled to reside till
his death, on 19th March 1811. As he had been deprived of
all his revenues, he was generously allowed by George III., a pension
of £200 per annum.
To return to
the earls of Kellie. Thomas, the second earl, succeeded his
grandfather in 1639, and died, unmarried, 3d February 1643.
His brother,
Alexander, succeeded as third earl. He was a staunch royalist, and
colonel of foot for the counties of Fife and Kinross, in the
‘Engagement,’ for the rescue of Charles I. in 1648. Indeed, his
loyalty was so conspicuous that a patent was made out, creating him an
English baron, but before it could pass the great seal the king was
decapitated. Immediately after that event he waited on Charles II. at
the Hague, and returned to Scotland on 12th June 1649, with
the commissioners who had been sent by the Scots estates to the king
in the previous month of March. He was with the army which marched
with Charles, on his invasion of England in 1651, and having been
taken prisoner after the battle of Worcester, was sent to the Tower of
London, Although soon allowed to retire to the Continent, he was
excepted out of Cromwell’s act of grace and pardon in 1654, and
deprived of great part of his extensive estates. After the
restoration, he returned to Scotland, and died in May 1677. He
married, first, Mary, daughter of Colonel Kilpatrick, governor of
Bois-le-Duc in Holland, and by her had one daughter, Lady Anne, who
became the wife of her cousin, Sir Alexander Erskine, second baronet,
of Cambo, lord lyon king at arms. By a second wife, Mary, daughter of
John Dalzell of Glenae, Dumfries-shire, he had, with a daughter, an
only son, Alexander, fourth earl, who died 8th March, 1710.
The latter married Lady Ann Lindsay, eldest daughter of the third earl
of Balcarres, and had a son, Alexander, fifth earl of Kellie, and a
daughter, Lady Jean, the wife of John Scott of Harden, and the mother
of the celebrated beauty, Mary Scott. The fourth earl’s widow took,
for a second husband, James, Viscount Kingston, attainted after the
rebellion of 1715.
Alexander,
fifth earl, hd very nearly lost his title and estates by joining
Prince Charles at Edinburgh, after the battle of Preston, in 1745.
Included in the act of attainder of the following year, he surrendered
himself to the lord-justice-clerk at Edinburgh, 11th July
1746, and was committed prisoner to the castle of Edinburgh. After
having been detained there three years and a month, on 8th
August 1749, he presented a petition to the high court of justiciary,
praying to be brought to trial within sixty days, or to be set at
liberty, a process which in Scotland is called “running a prisoner’s
letters.” He was accordingly liberated on the 11th October.
He appears to have been a person of rather weak intellect. It is
related of him that one morning during his confinement, he entered the
room of his fellow-prisoners, with a list in his hand of the persons
whom the government had resolved not to bring to trial, for their
concern in the rebellion. This list commenced with his own name, and
closed with that of a Mr. William Fidler, who had been an auditor in
the Scottish Exchequer. “Oh! Is it not a wise government,” exclaimed
the earl, “to begin wi’ a fule, and end wi’ a fiddler?” He died at
Kellie, 3d April, 1756. Twice married, by his second wife, Janet,
daughter of Dr. Archibald Pitcairne, the celebrated Jacobite
physician, poet, and wit, with three daughters, he had three sons,
Thomas Alexander, sixth earl, called the musical earl of Kellie, a
memoir of whom is given above [this earl found himself under the
necessity of selling the estate which gave him his highest title; but
to gratify some of his relations he reserved Kellie castle and a few
enclosed fields about it;] Archibald, seventh earl; and the Hon.
Andrew Erskine, a minor poet, born about 1739. Having entered the
army, he held a lieutenant’s commission in the 71st
regiment of foot as early as 1759. On its reduction in 1763, he
exchanged from half pay into the 24th regiment of foot,
then quartered at Gibraltar. He had previously carried on a kind of
literary correspondence, in verse as well as prose, with Mr. James
Boswell of Auchinleck, the friend and biographer of Johnson, which was
published by Boswell at London, in 1763, in one volume 8vo. Mr.
Erskine was the author of the song beginning “How sweet this lone
vale.” He was a principal contributor to Donaldson’s collection of
‘Original Poems, by Scots Gentlemen,’ published at Edinburgh, in 1760
and 1762, in two volumes 12mo. His ‘Town Eclogues,’ and other poems,
appeared in 1773. Like his brother, Lord Kellie, he was remarkable for
his social feelings and witty conversation. He died suddenly in the
neighbourhood of Edinburgh about the end of September 1793.
The
daughters were, Lady Elizabeth, who married, first, the eminent
antiquarian, Walter Macfarlane, of Macfarlane, and after his death,
the fourth Lord Colville of Culross; Lady Jane, and Lady Janet, wife
of Sir Robert Anstruther of Balcaskie, baronet, and mother of the
gallant brigadier-general, Robert Anstruther, who fell a sacrifice to
his unwearied exertions in bringing up the rear of the British army
under Sir John Moore, in the disastrous retreat to Corunna in January
1809.
Archibald,
seventh earl, born at Kellie castle, 22d April 1736, entered the army
when very young, and was major of the 11th regiment of foot
on his accession to the title, on the death of his brother in 1781. In
the following year he was promoted to the lieutenant-colonelcy of the
104th foot, and soon after quitted the army, after serving
for twenty-six years, and devoted himself chiefly to rural
occupations. The known attachment of his family to the exiled house of
Stuart is supposed to have retarded his promotion, as he was not
raised to that rank in the army to which, by his long service, he was
so well entitled. At the general election in 1790, he was chosen one
of the sixteen Scots representative peers. To his unwearied exertions
it was chiefly owing that, in 1792, the restraints which, by the acts
of 1746 and 1748, had been imposed on the Scots Episcopalians, were
removed by act of parliament. He also used his utmost efforts to
procure a modification of the penal laws affecting the Scots Roman
Catholics, for which he received various medals, letters, and other
testimonials of gratitude from the pope and other Italian
ecclesiastics of high rank. He died at Kellie, 8th May
1797, in his 62d year. As he was unmarried, the title devolved on Sir
Charles Erskine of Cambo, seventh baronet of Nova Scotia of that
family, as above mentioned.
Charles,
eighth earl of Kellie, was a captain in the Fifeshire light dragoons,
and died at Folkestone in Kent, 28th October 1799,
unmarried, aged. 35. The titles then devolved on his uncle, Thomas,
ninth earl, born about 1745, and appointed in 1775, British consul at
Gottenburgh, Marstrand, and other ports on the western coast of
Sweden. He was elected on the sixteen Scots representative peers, 14th
November 1804, on a vacancy, and rechosen at the general election in
1807. The following year he was invested with the insignia of a knight
commander of the royal Swedish order of Vasa. Dying without issue, he
was succeeded by his brother, Methven, tenth earl of Kellie, upon
whose death in 1829, with issue, the fifteenth earl of Mar, as
heir-male general, claimed the earldom of Kellie, with the minor
honours of Fenton and Dirleton, and his right was allowed by the House
of Lords. (See MAR, earl of.)
