[BITList] Bringing up Bonnie

[John Feltham]

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Drummond,  James, fourth earl of Perth and Jacobite first duke of Perth  (1648-1716), politician, born on 7 July 1648, was the elder son of James Drummond, third earl of Perth (d. 1675), and Lady Anne (1616?-1656), eldest daughter of George Gordon, second marquess of Huntly. Known by his courtesy title of Lord Drummond, he was educated at St Andrews University and at an academy in Angers. On 18 January 1670 he married his cousin Lady Jane Douglas (d. 1678), daughter of William Douglas, first marquess of Douglas  (1589-1660), with whom he had one son, James Drummond  (1674-1720), and two daughters, Mary Drummond  (1675-1729) and Anne. In 1675 he succeeded his father as fourth earl.

Perth was keen to restore his family's fortunes, which had suffered during the civil wars. He was also ambitious, and by the end of the 1670s was actively involved in Scottish politics. At first he offered his services to the duke of Lauderdale and was made a member of the Scottish privy council in 1678. But he soon joined 'the party', a group of noblemen under the leadership of his brothers-in-law William Douglas, third duke of Hamilton, and William Douglas, third earl of Queensberry, who opposed Lauderdale. During the exclusion crisis Perth and his brother, Lord John Drummond  (1649-1714), attached themselves to the interests of the duke of York, who was sent by Charles II to govern Scotland. In May 1682 Perth was made justice-general and an extraordinary lord of session, and later the same month was with the duke when his yacht the Gloucester was shipwrecked off Yarmouth. In August of the same year he was appointed one of the commissioners for the trial of Lauderdale's brother the treasurer-depute, Charles Maitland, for irregularities in the administration of the Royal Mint. When the latter was found guilty, Perth obtained the post for his own brother. The following year Perth and his brother became members of the 'secret committee' of the Scottish privy council. The other members included Queensberry and John Murray, first marquess of Atholl and fifth earl of Tullibardine. Perth had meanwhile married his cousin Lilias Drummond (d. 1685), the widow of James Murray, fourth earl of Tullibardine, in 1678 or early 1679, after his first wife's death in 1678. They had two sons, John and Charles, born in 1679 and 1681 respectively.

During the last years of the reign of Charles II, Perth and his brother became steadily more powerful and supplanted rivals such as Hamilton and Queensberry. In 1684, when they engineered the fall of Lord Aberdeen, Perth replaced him as lord chancellor, and also became sheriff-principal of the county of Edinburgh and governor of the Bass. Lord John Drummond (created Lord Melfort in 1685) became secretary for Scotland, an important appointment which ensured that Perth's interests were well represented at Whitehall. Both men were continued in office by James II when he became king in 1685. Although Perth's mother had been a Catholic, he had so far confessed himself a convinced episcopalian. The details of the deathbed conversion of Charles II, however, had a profound effect on him, particularly when supported by a private correspondence with Bishop Bossuet of Meaux. As a result Perth converted to Catholicism in June 1685 and persuaded his wife and his brother to do the same shortly after. When his wife died later the same year, he was free to remarry. His third wife, whom he married in January 1686, was his widowed first cousin Lady Mary Gordon (1653/4-1726), widow of Adam Urquhart of Meldrum, who was also a Catholic; they had two sons, William and Edward, born in 1687 and 1689 respectively, and a daughter, Theresa. Many people at the time, and subsequently, accused Perth and his brother of converting to Catholicism for purely political reasons, but their sincerity is no longer in doubt. Nevertheless, becoming Catholic did considerably increase their influence with the new king and when Queensberry, a protestant, was shortly after dismissed as lord treasurer, Perth and Melfort succeeded in gaining complete control over the government of Scotland. In 1687 they were among the original eight knights of the newly revived Order of the Thistle. In the same year Perth resigned his earldom and his heritable offices in favour of his thirteen-year-old son by his first marriage, Lord Drummond.

Until the revolution of 1688 Perth remained the chief agent in James II's administration of Scotland and made himself unpopular with many people because of his willingness to sanction the use of torture to obtain confessions. He was also responsible for extending there the king's policy of religious toleration and on one occasion there was rioting in Edinburgh against the Catholic chapel he established for the king in Holyroodhouse. When the news reached the city in December 1688 that James II had retreated from Salisbury before William of Orange, the mob, in the absence of troops whom Perth had unwisely disbanded, rioted. Perth retreated to Drummond Castle, but finding himself unsafe there fled in disguise to Burntisland where he boarded a vessel for France. He had, however, been recognized and his vessel was overtaken at the mouth of the Forth by some watermen from Kirkcaldy. He was then arrested and taken to Stirling Castle where he remained until March 1692. When the news of his arrest reached James II in Dublin in March 1690 the king issued a warrant whereby he was created duke of Perth, but this was not made public.

After an extended negotiation, during which he was allowed to live for most of the time in his country house at Stobhall, Perth was eventually released in June 1693 on condition that he went abroad permanently and persuaded his eldest son, who had been at the court of James II at St Germain-en-Laye, to return. Having written to his son, Perth left Scotland in September 1693 on a ship bound for Rotterdam. For the next year he lived mainly at Antwerp, but did not go to St Germain, where Melfort was secretary of state. For some reason Perth's letter had never reached his son and he blamed his brother for this. In July 1694 he discovered that his son's possessions in Scotland were to be seized. He then ordered him once more to return and the two men met briefly in Antwerp that September, when Lord Drummond was on his way to London. Perth's own possessions, and indeed those of his two daughters by his first marriage, the elder of whom had married the ninth Earl Marischal in 1691, had been entrusted to his sister the countess of Erroll at Slains Castle, and he now felt free to travel. He determined to visit Italy and particularly Rome, where he could also freely indulge his passion for music and painting. In March 1695 he reached Venice, where he received credentials from James II appointing him his ambassador-extraordinary to the pope. His instructions were to obtain political and financial support for the Jacobite cause, in liaison with Cardinal Caprara, who already represented James's interests at the Holy See. He remained ambassador at Rome from May 1695 to March 1696.

At St Germain the prince of Wales had celebrated his seventh birthday in June 1695 and James II needed to appoint a governor to supervise his education. It was decided to recall Perth from Rome and to give him the new post. Perth reached Paris in May 1696 and formally assumed his new duties at the end of July, when his wife was also appointed a lady of the bedchamber to the queen. The 'Rules for the family of the prince of Wales' had been drawn up the previous year, when the prince's tutors had also been appointed. Perth was not therefore responsible for the basic policy adopted in educating the prince. He was, however, in charge of the detailed management of that policy and probably exercised a determining influence on the development of the personality of the future James III. In particular he allowed the prince to be exposed to Jansenist thought to an extent which was later criticized by both Mary of Modena and Louis XIV.

Perth had considerable influence with James II and was with him when he died in September 1701. The two letters that he wrote to the abbe de La Trappe provide the best and most detailed account of the king's death. Perth then paid for an impressive monument to be erected to the memory of James II in the chapel of the Scots College in Paris where the king's brain was deposited. From this point onwards Perth, who was now finally declared a duke, began to feel neglected and unappreciated at court. This was partly because there were very few Scots at St Germain and Perth felt that the favour of Mary of Modena was reserved for the English. It was partly also because he wished to play a more important political role and found himself thwarted by the greater influence of the two secretaries of state, Lord Middleton and Lord Caryll. Two developments weakened his position. In 1703 he supported the intrigues of Lord Lovat and refused to believe that he was a traitor until he was finally exposed and imprisoned at the beginning of 1704. At the same time James III's preceptor John Betham was investigated for his suspected Jansenism and eventually ordered to resign. In the summer of 1704 Perth was reprimanded by Mary of Modena after he had engaged in a public dispute about Scottish affairs with his opponents at the court.

Perth was keen to organize an invasion of Scotland and became increasingly frustrated by what he regarded as the obstruction of Middleton and Caryll. In July 1705 he complained that he had not had any 'mark of favour' since his arrival at St Germain: 'I have not been kindly used ... Had I been an English man ... I had been more distinguish'd'  (Joly, 414). But in June 1706, when James III reached his majority, Perth was made a knight of the Order of the Garter, and in March 1708 he accompanied James on his unsuccessful attempt to invade Scotland. Perth had already been appointed gentleman of the bedchamber in February 1703, but he relinquished the post to his son Edward when the latter married one of the daughters of Lord Middleton in November 1709. Perth was then given the honorary title of first gentleman of the bedchamber, but he was in effect unemployed, so when James III and Middleton left in 1712 for Bar-le-Duc, Perth remained with Mary of Modena at St Germain and handled some of her secret correspondence. In 1711 he developed a stone in his bladder and in 1714 his health began to deteriorate. In December 1714 Mary of Modena appointed him to be her lord chamberlain and he held that post until his death, which occurred at the Chateau-Vieux de St Germain-en-Laye, as a result of an operation to remove his stone on 11 May 1716. He was buried the following day in the chapel of the Scots College at the foot of his monument to the memory of James II. He lived just long enough to witness the failure of the Jacobite rising of 1715, which resulted in the exile and attainder of his eldest son, Lord Drummond. The latter, however, had followed Perth's advice and handed over his title and estates to his own son in 1713. Perth's widow remained at St Germain with their son Edward until her death in 1726, their son William having died in 1703.

Perth was noted for his loyalty but he did not have good political judgement and Mary of Modena was wise to prefer the counsels of other men. He had a tendency to condemn moderation and caution as laziness or disloyalty and then to become over-pessimistic when his advice was not accepted. Posterity has judged him harshly because his administration of Scotland was unpopular and because Bishop Burnet's contemptuous opinion of him was given wide circulation by Macaulay. The publication of his biography in 1934 revealed the nobility of his character and should have laid to rest all doubts about the sincerity of his conversion to Catholicism.

Edward Corp 

Sources  A. Joly, Un converti de Bossuet: James Drummond, duc de Perth, 1648-1716 (1934) + D. Nairne, journal, 1655-1708, NL Scot., MS 14266 + G. Scott, 'John Betham et l'education du prince de Galles', Revue de la Bibliotheque Nationale, 46 (winter 1992), 32-9
Archives BL, corresp., Add. MS 19254 [copies] + Drummond Castle, Perthshire + U. Aberdeen, letters [transcripts] | Archives Diplomatiques, Paris, 'correspondance politique, Angleterre', corresp. + BL, Lauderdale MSS, Add. MSS + BL, corresp. with Lord Lovat and Cardinal Gualterio, Add. MSS 20296, 31253, 31256 + Bodl. Oxf., Nairne papers + NL Scot., corresp. mainly with first and second marquesses of Tweeddale + Scottish Catholic Archives, Edinburgh, Blairs MSS + W. Sussex RO, letters to marquess of Huntly
Likenesses  W. Faithorne, line engraving, 1679, BM, NPG · J. Riley, oils, 1680-84, Scot. NPG · G. Kneller, oils, 1682, Scot. NPG; version, priv. coll. · R. White, line engraving, 1682 (after G. Kneller), BM, NPG · R. White, line engraving, 1686 (after J. Riley), BM, NPG · oils, 1713 (after A. S. Belle), Scot. NPG · N. de Largilliere, oils, c.1714, priv. coll. [see illus.] · attrib. A.-S. Belle, oils, Scot. NPG · miniature (after J. Riley), NPG · oils (after N. de Largilliere), Musee d'Art et d'Histoire, Neuchatel