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Campbells of
Loudoun are the oldest branch of the house of Argyll, and are
descended from Donald, second son of Sir Colin Campbell of Lochaw,
and brother of Sir Neil Campbell, the friend of King Robert Bruce.
The barony in Ayrshire, from which they derive their title, was
originally the possession of the Loudouns of Loudoun, one of the
oldest families in Scotland. Margaret of Loudoun, the heiress of
the estate, married Sir Reginald Crawford, High Sheriff of Ayr,
and was the grandmother of Sir William Wallace, the illustrious
Scottish patriot. The barony passed to the Campbells in the reign
of Robert Bruce by the marriage of Sir Duncan, son of Donald
Campbell, to Susanne Crawford, heiress of Loudoun, and fifth in
descent from Sir Reginald Crawford. Sir Hugh Campbell, Sheriff of
Ayr, was created a Lord of Parliament by the title of Lord
Campbell of Loudoun, by James VI., in 1601. His granddaughter,
Margaret Campbell, who inherited his title and estates, married
Sir John Campbell of Lawers, a scion of the Glenorchy or
Breadalbane family. He was created—
EARL OF LOUDOUN,
and Baron Tarrynean and Mauchline by Charles I., 12th May, 1633;
but in consequence of his opposition to the measures of the Court,
the patent was stopped at the Chancery, and the title was
suspended until 1641. Following the lead of the chief of his
house, the Earl took an active part in the opposition to the
attempt of Charles I. to force the new Liturgy upon Scotland, and
was a member of the celebrated General Assembly which met in
Glasgow in 1638. In the following year he took and garrisoned the
castles of Strathavon, Douglas, and Tantallon for the Covenanters.
He was one of the seven Scottish noblemen who signed the letter
addressed to the King of France, entreating his assistance, and
was in consequence arrested on a charge of treason and committed
to the Tower. He regained his liberty through the influence of the
Marquis of Hamilton, and was permitted to return to Scotland. He
became one of the most active leaders of the Covenanting party,
commanded the van of their army at the battle of Newburn, and was
one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty of Ripon. He
presided at the opening of the Scottish Parliament, 15th July,
1641, and when the King visited Scotland in the following month
Loudoun’s title of Earl was allowed with precedence from 1633,
and he was appointed High Chancellor of Scotland and First
Commissioner of the Treasury. But these favours failed to win him
over to the royal side, and he continued to support with great
vehemence all the measures adopted by the Presbyterian party. He
took a prominent part in promoting the ‘Act of Classes,’
excluding all who had taken part in the ‘Engagement’ from
offices of trust and from Parliament. Much to his discredit, when
the Marquis of Montrose was brought to the bar of the Parliament
House to receive sentence of death, the Chancellor bitterly
upbraided him for his violation of the Covenant, his league with
Irish rebels, and his invasion of the country. The behaviour of
Loudoun on this occasion—so unbecoming his high office—and the
virulent abuse which he poured upon the great Royalist, may be
accounted for, but not justified, by the sanguinary defeat of the
clan Campbell at the battle of Inverlochy, where his elder
brother, the Laird of Lawers, fell. The Earl, however, after the
execution of Charles I., embraced the cause of his son, and was in
consequence, along with his son, Lord Mauchline, excepted out of
Cromwell’s Act of Grace and Pardon in 1654; but £400 a year was
settled out of his estates on his wife. At the Restoration he was
deprived of his office of Chancellor, and fined £12,000 Scots. He
died in 1663. His son—
JAMES, second Earl,
lived and died abroad.
HUGH, third Earl,
grandson of the Chancellor, was declared by the Earl of Argyll,
when recommending him to Carstares, to be ‘a mettled young
fellow. He has,’ added the Earl, ‘a deal of natural parts and
sharpness, a good stock of clergy [learning], and by being in
business he will daily improve.’ In consequence of this
recommendation, the young Earl obtained from King William the
appointment of Extraordinary Lord of Session. After the accession
of Anne, he held successively the offices of a Commissioner of the
Treasury, joint Secretary of State for Scotland, and Keeper of the
Great Seal. He served as a volunteer at the battle of Sheriffmuir,
under the chief of the Campbells, where he behaved with great
gallantry. He was six times appointed High Commissioner to the
Scottish General Assembly, and was for twenty-four years one of
the sixteen Representative Peers of Scotland. His only son—
JOHN, fourth Earl,
was one of the Representative Peers for the long period of
forty-eight years. He was distinguished for his military talents,
and held numerous important offices both at home and abroad. In
1745, when the Jacobite rebellion took place, he raised a regiment
of Highlanders for the service of the Government, of which he was
appointed colonel. He fought at the battle of Preston, and was
active and energetic in suppressing the rising in the northern
counties. in 1756 the Earl was appointed Captain-General and
Governor-in-Chief of the province of Virginia, and shortly after
was nominated Commander-in-Chief of all the British forces in
America. He was second in command of the British troops sent to
Portugal in February, 1762, when Spain declared war against that
country. He died in 1782, in his seventy-seventh year. ‘Loudoun’s
bonnie woods and braes’ were greatly indebted to this Earl, who
was the first to introduce extensive planting into this district.
During his long military services in foreign countries he sent
home specimens of every valuable kind of tree he met with, and he
especially formed a most extensive collection of willows, which he
interspersed in his plantations. As he died unmarried, his title
and estates were inherited by his cousin—
JAMES MURE
CAMPBELL, grandson of the second Earl of Loudoun. His father, Sir
James Campbell of Lawers, was a distinguished military officer,
who served under the Duke of Marlborough, and contributed greatly
to the victory of the allied forces at Malplaquet, 11th September,
1709. He distinguished himself also at the battle of Dettingen,
10th June, 1743, and was mortally wounded at Fontenoy, where he
commanded the British cavalry. His son James, the fifth Earl,
assumed the name of Mure on succeeding to the estate of his
grandmother, the Countess of Glasgow, heiress of the ancient
family of Mure of Rowallan. He attained the rank of major-general
in the army, and died in 1786, leaving an only child—
FLORA MURE
CAMPBELL, Countess of Loudoun, who married in 1804 the Earl of
Moira, created Marquis of Hastings in 1816, who was an eminent
statesman, and held for some years the office of Governor-General
of India. The Marquis died in 1826 at Malta, of which he was
governor and commander-in-chief. He had promised his wife that
they should lie in the same grave. As this could not in the
circumstances be carried into effect, he desired his right hand to
be amputated at his death and sent home, that it might be buried
with the Marchioness. It was deposited in the family vault in
Loudoun Kirk, and when she died in 1840 it was laid in the grave
beside her body. The eldest of her three daughters was Lady Flora
Hastings, and her only son became second Marquis of Hastings and
sixth Earl of Loudoun. His eldest son, an officer in the army, was
drowned at Liverpool in 1851 in his nineteenth year, and was
succeeded by his brother, a poor unhappy and misguided youth, who
made shipwreck of title, character, and estates. On his death in
1868, his sister, Edith Maude, wife of Charles Frederick Clifton,
a member of an old Lancashire family, became Countess of Loudoun.
She died in 1874 in her forty-first year, and directed by her will
that her right hand be cut off and buried in Donington Park, the
ancient possession of the Hastings family, which had been
alienated by her brother, and the spot to be marked by a stone
with the inscription, ‘I byde my time.’ Before her death she
had succeeded in proving her right to no less than four ancient
peerages—Botreaux, Hungerford, De Malynes, and Hastings, which
had fallen into abeyance. They have descended to her son, the
ninth Earl of Loudoun. Her eldest daughter married, in 1877, the
fifteenth Duke of Norfolk.
According to the
‘Doomsday Book,’ the Loudoun estate consists of 18,638 acres,
with a rental of £15,286 a year, and in addition the minerals
yield £2,259 a year.
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