MONTGOMERIE, Alexander (c. 1660-1729)

Although Eglinton came from staunch Presbyterian stock he was himself of a very different religious and political persuasion: an ardent Episcopalian, with pronounced Jacobite sympathies. A good speaker, with strong views, he was one of the leading lights on the Tory side in Scottish politics after 1710, but his passionate nature was restrained by the family responsibilities which weighed heavily on him and which could on occasion cause him to lose his nerve. His grandfather had taken up arms for the covenant in 1639 and after association with the Engagers suffered a heavy fine under the Protectorate. Eglinton’s father did nothing to relieve his estate from debt, and it took Eglinton himself years of ‘prudent and judicious management’ to recover stability, and even extend his holdings by purchase. Fraser, Mems. Montgomeries, i. 97–8, 101–2. The 8th earl had maintained his own father’s devotion to the Kirk and had gained political capital at the Revolution through fighting on the Williamite side, and a tangible reward in 1692 with appointment to the Scottish Privy Council and the exchequer commission, and later a pension of £200 p.a. Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xi. 244; CSP Dom. 1691–2, p. 167; Seafield Corresp. 130–31. This brought his son some benefit: Lord Montgomerie (as he was then styled) was appointed to the Privy Council at the same time. However, he only lasted a few months before being removed for non-attendance.

Mongomerie had a difficult relationship with his father, who had made over the family property to him after his first marriage: there were disputes over money, and in consequence, other family influences predominated. Fraser, Mems. Montgomeries, i. 101–2; Seafield Corresp. 60–61. Montgomerie’s reinstatement as a privy councillor in 1696, his appointment to the commission for auditing the treasury accounts, and then to the treasury itself, may well have been owing to the influence of his uncle, James Ogilvy, earl of Seafield [S] (later 4th earl of Findlater [S]). By the time Montgomerie succeeded his father in 1701 he was, together with Seafield, firmly attached to the court party led by James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S]. Not only did he hold office; his father’s pension was also continued to him. CSP Dom. 1696, p. 167; CSP Dom. 1698, pp. 403, 407; CSP Dom. 1702–3, pp. 421, 460. But he was on the Episcopalian wing of the court party, and when dismissed from office with Queensberry in 1704 he seems to have aligned himself more closely with the ‘cavaliers’, or, as Seafield called them, ‘our Tory party’. According to a Jacobite agent, Eglinton made frequent professions of loyalty to the Pretender’s cause. Bodl. Carte 180, f. 216. He was particularly bitter at the ‘New Party’ (or Squadrone Volante), his resentment only partially assuaged by the ongoing payment of his pension, so that for a time he joined James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], later duke of Brandon, in refusing to settle the succession. P.W.J. Riley, Union, 75; Seafield Letters , 4, 57; Lockhart Mems. 48; Lockhart Letters, 6, 14; Seafield Corresp. 382-3. But gradually Seafield was able to bring him and other ‘moderate Tories’ round to supporting the Union, presumably by holding out the prospect of restoration to the treasury commission. Seafield Letters , 64, 66, 94; NAS, GD 124/15/247. The fact that Eglinton’s uncle Francis Montgomerie^‡ was a treaty commissioner was irrelevant, for although the two men were on cordial terms, their political views were different. Eglinton voted for Union in the crucial division on the first article, but otherwise split his votes and joined his great-uncle by marriage John Elphinstone, 4th Lord Balmerino [S], in protesting against the method of selecting Scottish representatives to the first Parliament of Great Britain. Riley, Union, 330; C.A. Whatley, Scots and Union, 267; Lockhart Mems. 203. He benefited financially from the Union, but not as much as he thought he deserved. The queen had signed a letter in 1706 for his reappointment as a treasury commissioner, but it was never officially recorded, and when the Union extinguished the commission, the salary of £500 that he should have been paid was lost. It was a sore point ever after, even though he accepted £200 in the infamous ‘bygones’ settlement (a fact noted without comment by his son-in-law, the Jacobite anti-Unionist George Lockhart^‡), and in 1708 received an increase to his pension (to £700 p.a.). HMC Portland, x. 479; Lockhart Mems. 257; CTB xxii. 113.

Eglinton was not included on the court list of peers to sit in the first Parliament of Great Britain and seems to have felt neglected. NAS, GD 3/5/867. He became unhappy at the increasing dependence of the ministry in London on the Whig Junto, and his correspondence to his uncle Francis also indicated a growing disenchantment with the Union. Fraser, Mems. Montgomeries, i. 327. In a letter of 19 Feb. 1708 he deplored the measures promoted by the Whigs and the Squadrone in the winter of 1707–8:

I never doubted our government here would be demolished, and our heritable jurisdictions, and that the power of the justices of [the] peace and in everything also, in process of time, will be the same with England; but I think since they have enlarged the powers of the justices, they will appoint new ones, and not allow us to be maltreated by the canaille of the country, for you know in the last nomination the most considerable of the gentry were kept out, for being against the Union.

His view of the Scottish court party was now astringent:

those who used to dictate here will think it a great change from threatening to take away or give places, and pensions, to be reduced to a humble entreaty at the next elections, and perhaps be less regarded than those who never had their powers, for nothing is so despicable as a cassen [thrown over] courtier. NAS, GD 3/5/867.

In the elections of 1708, although he had been counted on by the Scottish court party, he shifted his position late in the day: in Ayrshire he abandoned his uncle Francis, who was supported by the Queensberryites, in favour of an anti-Union candidate, and in the representative peers’ election he voted with Hamilton, even though this meant also voting for the Squadrone. Hamilton credited William Johnston, marquess of Annandale [S], for bringing over Eglinton (and two others) to ‘our interest’. Eglinton held the proxy of one of these, his brother-in-law, James Stewart, 5th earl of Galloway [S], and was also entrusted by his father-in-law Aberdeen, to present the latter’s list for him. HP Commons 1690–1715, ii. 831–2; Add. 61628, ff. 102-7; NLS, ms 1026, ff. 7-8, 24, 29. Eglinton had been thought of as a possible candidate himself but seems to have been dropped from the Hamilton-Squadrone list because of uncertainty over the line he would take in his own county. NAS, GD 112/39/216/1; Annandale mss at Raehills, bdle 826, Wigton to Annandale, 9 June 1708. So his final decision to go against the court party was hard to fathom: the view of Queensberry’s lieutenant, John Erskine, 22nd earl of Mar [S], was that Eglinton panicked, having been desperate to appear on the winning side. P.W.J. Riley, Eng. Ministers and Scotland, 108. Nevertheless, having polled 42 or 43 votes (subject to protests), there seems to have been some expectation that if several other peers were excepted against, Eglinton might come in by default. If so, William Ross^† 12th Lord Ross [S], expected him to be ‘hearty with us’. NLS, ms 1026, ff. 39-40; NAS, GD 158/1174/16; Add. 61628, ff. 174-5. In the event he was not so fortunate.

The disintegration of the Whig administration during 1710 reawakened his active interest in public affairs. Eglinton wrote to Colin Lindsay, 3rd earl of Balcarres [S], on 28 Aug.:

Though I was resolved never to have troubled myself about politics, yet the change of the ministry and the noise of a new Parliament has made me alter my resolutions, for I think something may chance to occur wherein I may be serviceable either to church or state and could I contribute to the good of either I would judge my time and money well bestowed, wherefore intend to use my interest that I may be elected one of the sixteen. NLS, Crawford and Balcarres mss, 9769/19/25.

In the Ayrshire election he found it easy this time to revert to family loyalty and give his interest to his cousin John Montgomerie^‡, Francis’s son, who was standing with the support of Queensberry’s court party and when elected showed himself at first to be a Tory, albeit a moderate one. HP Commons 1690–1715, ii. 832; iv. 904–5. He himself was included on the slate of candidates agreed by the new Tory administration of Robert Harley, (later earl of Oxford) with Mar, Hamilton, and John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S] (earl of Greenwich), and elected unanimously. Riley, Eng. Ministers and Scotland, 157; NLS, ms 1026, f. 62. He was classified by the duchess of Buccleuch’s chaplain Richard Dongworth as a ‘Court Tory’, with an income of about £5,000 a year. SHR, lx. 62. In another analysis of Scots representative peers drawn up shortly after the election he was classed as a ‘Jacobite’.

It was not until 4 Dec. 1710 that Eglinton took his seat, having registered his proxy with Mar the day before. He was thereafter present on 52 per cent of all sitting days in the session. Though not recorded as attending again until 11 Dec., he was working on behalf of the Scottish Episcopalian minister James Greenshields, who was appealing to the Lords against a sentence passed against him by the Edinburgh magistrates for using the Church of England liturgy. Stirred by Eglinton’s enthusiasm, Greenshields praised him as ‘truly Episcopal’. Together with Greenshields’s principal supporter, William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, Eglinton canvassed various Scottish peers, not only strong Episcopalians but former Queensberryites like Seafield and David Leslie, 5th earl of Leven [S]. Meanwhile he joined English High Churchmen in pressing for the repeal of the General Naturalization Act of 1709: when the repeal bill was rejected in the Lords on 5 Feb. 1711 Eglinton and Balmerino subscribed the Tory protest. Evidently encouraged rather than discouraged by this outcome, Eglinton informed Nicolson the next day that in his opinion ‘Mr. Greenshields’s bill may be seasonably moved’. Nicolson, London Diaries, 520, 525-26, 542, 543. Eglinton then sounded out his fellow representative peers on the extent to which the Presbyterian establishment in Scotland could be challenged. He made known his own opinion that the Union should be extended to matters ecclesiastical—‘that as we are one in civils, we should be one in church matters, and the liturgy and ceremonies brought into Scotland’—but was ‘laughed at’, a response which led him to counsel caution, advising Nicolson that it would be wise not to question the authority of the Kirk. Wodrow, Analecta, i. 318. Under Eglinton’s guidance, Nicolson spent the next three weeks rallying support amongst English peers, while ensuring that Greenshields did not provoke Presbyterians unduly in his published writings. The appeal came before the Lords on 29 February. All the Scots were present, the representative peers, the duke of Dover (Queensberry’s British title), and earl of Greenwich (Argyll’s English title), and with one exception they gave the petition their support. After a pre-emptive adjournment motion had been decisively defeated, there was little debate on the appeal itself and the House ruled unanimously that the sentence be reversed. Nicolson, London Diaries, 553; LJ, xix. 240. Eglinton was elated. According to Nicolson, he saw the way open for far-reaching changes in Scotland: ‘a toleration … of the very frame of ours, and … resumption of patronages’. Nicolson, London Diaries, 555; NLS, Advocates’ mss, Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 5, f. 148. Before the end of the session he was also involved in the repercussions of the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Harley, being named on 9 Mar. as one of the Lords’ managers at the conference requested by the Commons over the safety of the Queen’s person and government. He quit the session on 27 March. By 27 Apr., he was back in Scotland. NAS, GD 3/5/884.

During the recess, Eglinton pursued his demands for office. In August he asked for the vacant seat on the court of session. The rationale was that he had been turned out by the Squadrone in 1704 ‘for being against their act of security and not concurring with their limitations of the crown’, and while others who ‘left their places at that juncture, have either got others, or an equivalent’, he had received nothing. HMC Portland, v. 78. There was no response until November, when Harley, now earl of Oxford and lord treasurer, became sufficiently worried about the management of the Lords to do something about Scotland. He put the office of lord high chamberlain into commission, and used the places to gratify a gaggle of importunate Scots, including Eglinton. Riley, Eng. Ministers and Scotland, 177.

In spite of his new appointment, when the session began on 13 Nov. 1711, Eglinton was still in Scotland. He might have hoped by his absence to remind Oxford of his value, but by 3 Dec. Mar had possession of his proxy. On 15 Dec. Eglinton wrote to Oxford both to emphasize his gratitude for his post but also to excuse his continuing absence. His preferment, he insisted, ‘puts me to the greater difficulty of expressing my sense of the favour, but without compliment, if your Lordship will admit me to the number of those you confide in, and look upon me as your firm friend, you shall never have reason to repent it’. He went on to express dislike of the continuing war and irritation at the allies’ interference in attempts to conclude a peace: ‘It makes my heart to bleed, that the Queen cannot change her ministry, nor offer to extricate her people from a bloody and expensive war, but every little neighbouring state and prince not privately, but openly in the face of the sun, intermeddle and prescribe the laws and rules.’ There was nothing he would not do:

to serve her Majesty in this juncture, and therefore, though my wife is extremely ill in her health and within few weeks of her time, and to leave her in that condition will be most uneasy to me, yet if I can add to strengthen the Queen’s friends by my coming to London, I will immediately upon a line from your Lordship take post, but upon the other hand, if there be no immediate service for me, pray you be so charitable to allow me to stay till my wife be brought to bed. Add. 70249, Eglinton to Oxford, 15 Dec. 1711.

Later that month, he was assessed as in favour of allowing Hamilton to sit as duke of Brandon, but before his arrival the Lords had already decided against Hamilton. Eglinton eventually appeared in the House on 14 Jan. 1712 (following which he was present on almost 63 per cent of all sitting days) and three days later, at a meeting of Scots peers at Hamilton’s London home, gave vent to his outrage at this ruling. He argued that if an act were to be passed asserting the queen’s prerogative to dispense British peerages, and the right of the Scots nobility to receive them, ‘then all is right again’. If not, he warned, ‘it is better for the Union to be dissolved’. At the same time, his fear of the Whigs made him doubtful of the utility of a parliamentary boycott, for all its likely impact on the ministry: ‘if we please he shall be absent’, he was reported as saying, ‘but if he be present by God he will never let the Whigs gain a vote of the Tories if he can help it’. Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 141–2. When his fellow countrymen agreed a boycott he was quick to reserve his own position, telling the Whigs publicly that

he hoped our folks would quit, but that they should gain nothing by it for we would all be at hand to establish the peace, and if it was an ill peace, by God he cared not, for he was resolved like Samson to pull down the house upon his enemies and himself.’ Ibid. 150.

Eglinton also saw it as necessary to be present in the House to pursue measures to benefit Scottish Episcopalians. Having taken advice from Greenshields and Nicolson, he liked the idea of securing the ‘exemption of Episcopal clergy from Presbyterian discipline’, and worked with Nicolson to prepare for the arrival of the toleration bill from the Commons. Nicolson, London Diaries, 582. Although absent at the bill’s first reading in the Lords on 8 Feb., he attended five days later for the second reading and committal. After the House had approved the committee report, the bill was sent back to the Commons, who accepted the first three of the Lords’ amendments but inserted a further amendment imposing the Abjuration on all ministers of the Church of Scotland. This was intended to wreck the bill, since it was thought likely to catch over-scrupulous Presbyterians, but on 26 Feb. Eglinton and Mar both denied that Presbyterians would be incommoded, and the alteration was approved. Haddington mss at Mellerstain, 5, Baillie to his wife, 26, 28 Feb. 1711/12; NLS, Advocates’ mss, Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 6, ff. 125–6. Once the bill was passed Eglinton abandoned the boycott completely. Haddington mss at Mellerstain, 5, Baillie to his wife, 28 Feb. 1711/12.

While Eglinton’s contribution to the proceedings of the House was much more subdued in March and April 1712, in May he supported the bill to appoint commissioners to establish the value of all grants made by the crown since 1688 and on the 28th of that month voted against the proposal for an address to the queen to order her army to take the offensive against the French. Haddington mss at Mellerstain, 5, Baillie to Montrose, 20 May 1712; Baillie to Roxburghe, 29 May 1712; PH, xxvi. 177–81. His attendance lasted just over a fortnight more in that session. But before departing for Scotland he took it upon himself to remind Oxford once again of the £500 owing to him as arrears from 1706–7, and received an assurance from Mar which he accepted but which was then not acted upon. HMC Portland, x. 196, 203.

On 9 Feb.1713 Oxford wrote to inform Eglinton that his presence would soon be required in London. Mar had expressed his confidence some time before that Eglinton would be one of those likely to take his place on time. Oxford hoped that ‘your Lordship’s zeal for your country will bring you up to perfect that good work you have been so instrumental in. I do assure you everything shall be made good to you.’ Add. 70249, Oxford to Eglinton, 9 Feb. 1712/13; NAS, GD 124/15/1024/27. However, Eglinton was anxious about his arrears of salary as commissioner of chamberlainry, and about the earlier £500; unless he received some payment, it would be impossible for him to subsist in London. NAS, GD 3/5/891; HMC Portland, x. 203. He took his seat on 3 Mar. for the prorogation day and was again present on 17 March. In the meantime he was assessed as a likely supporter of the ministry. He took his place at the opening of the new session on 9 Apr. (attending 88 per cent of all sitting days), but it was not until the end of May that he stirred himself to action, after the Commons had brought in a bill to extend the malt tax to Scotland. His patriotism now began to run away with him. On the evening of 27 May, after dining with Archibald Primrose, earl of Rosebery [S], and Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, he went to a meeting of representative peers to consider their response to the bill. Balmerino was delighted to see his great-nephew there, who ‘was rare company being a little drunk’. Eglinton was one of those who argued in favour of the Scots expressing their anger formally. It was decided that on the following day Findlater (as Seafield had become) would move the Lords to consider the state of the nation, which he did; Eglinton seconded the motion. NLS, ms 25276, f. 65; Lockhart Letters, 80; Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 154. Then on the morning of 1 June, the day appointed for the debate, Scots in both Houses met and agreed that Findlater should move for a bill to dissolve the Union. When he had done so, Eglinton, briefed to support the motion, intervened to answer the English Tory William North, 6th Baron North and 2nd Baron Grey, who had declared the Scots’ complaints unjustified and dissolving the Union impracticable. North had dropped a snide comment about Scottish poverty, which Eglinton took up; he ‘allowed the Scottish nation to be poor, and therefore unable to pay the malt tax’. PH, i. 57; Timberland, ii. 395. After a long debate in which Scottish arguments were countered by speakers on behalf of the administration, the motion was lost. When the malt bill was given its second reading in the Lords Eglinton divided in the minority against the motion. He also voted on 8 June, again on the losing side, to deny a third reading, and signed the protest which said that extending the tax to Scotland in wartime was a violation of the Treaty of Union. BLJ, xix. 168. Despite this he was estimated by Oxford a likely supporter of the French treaty of commerce in mid-June.

Eglinton remained in the House until 16 July 1713, but with a general election looming, and his wife’s health requiring a change of air, he was eager to return to Scotland. HMC Portland, x. 209. On 1 Aug. Balmerino told a Jacobite correspondent that ‘Eglinton is this evening taking leave of the queen. He goes off on Monday and is very keen for a high Tory election to enable the queen to reduce faction at home (these are the words of the queen’s speech). He said he longs to talk with you on this subject’. Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 165. He was unable to do much in Ayrshire, where his cousin John Montgomerie, who had become an Argyllite, was returned again without any attention being paid to Eglinton’s opinion; nor did he prevent the re-election of a Whig in Renfrewshire, where he was hereditary sheriff. HP Commons 1690–1715, ii. 832. He was, however, re-elected himself without opposition as a representative peer. NLS, Advocates’ mss, Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto 7, f. 182. An analysis of the election returns assessed Eglinton as a Jacobite.

Oxford’s failure to pay the salaries of the commissioners of chamberlainry resulted in several representative peers on the commission, including Eglinton, delaying their journey to Parliament until after the session had begun. D. Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Pols. 158. The ministry was well aware that Eglinton had other financial ‘pretensions’, namely ‘the old £500’, and that without gratification his support could not be counted on. Mar had indeed warned Oxford the previous autumn that Eglinton was ‘peevish’, though only requiring ‘a few fair words and the performance of that thing you promised him’ to restore his good humour. HMC Portland, v. 300, 314. For whatever reason, Eglinton’s parliamentary activity diminished sharply in this session. He failed to take his place until 15 Mar. 1714, a month into the session, and was in all present on 58 per cent of sitting days. He was forecast as likely to support the schism bill, and solicited for the bill to resume bishops’ rents in Scotland (designed to provide relief for Episcopalian ministers who could not avail themselves of the provisions of the toleration). Unhappy that ministers were seeking to frustrate the bill, and had persuaded Queen Anne against it, he went to court to press the case, though without success. Lockhart recorded how Eglinton told the queen that:

he was sorry to hear her majesty gave any credit to representations which had been made of the power and inclination of the Scots Presbyterians; that they wished destruction to her and her family was true enough, but, God be thanked, they could not effectuate it, and he could assure her Majesty, she had no reason to be the least apprehensive of them. The queen answered, she was told his lordship was violently bent against them, and had a great aversion to them. He replied, if zeal for the crown deserved such a construction, he owned it, but at the same time he did not doubt but perhaps her majesty might have heard another part of his character, viz. that he loved his money very well, and if that was true, nobody would imagine he would press a measure which would probably raise a rebellion, and consequently lay his estate waste, as it was situated in the most Presbyterian country of Scotland; but as that gave him an opportunity to know these people better than others did he would pawn his life and honour that they could not and dare not give her majesty the smallest disturbance on account of any measure she was pleased to set on foot. Lockhart Pprs. i. 450.

In general, however, he seems to have been more concerned to secure some further preferment, possibly as governor of Edinburgh castle. Haddington mss at Mellerstain, 5, Baillie to his wife, 3 Mar.1714. Findlater simply noted that Eglinton ‘expects what was promised’. NAS, GD 248/561/50/26. By the time he left London in June he had received a warrant for the payment of £1,000 from the Scottish treasury, as a result of which his manner was said to be ‘dry, submissive and patient’. HMC Portland, x.218; Jones, Party and Management, 164; Lockhart Letters, 109.

Eglinton was not re-elected as a representative peer under the Hanoverians and remained a strong Tory. He had long been targeted by Scottish Jacobites as a potential recruit, and in January 1715 was suspected of having influenced other peers into supporting anti-Union addresses, but when it came to armed rebellion he proved a broken reed. Scottish Cath. Archs. Blair Coll. Mss, 2/188/3; NAS, GD 220/5/461/1. Against Lockhart’s claim that Eglinton gave 3,000 guineas to help effect a Stuart restoration, and evidence that he ‘was at a meeting of the Jacobites where the rebellion, as to the manner of carrying it out, was concerted, and heard all their proposals’, has to be set the fact that when the fighting started he helped raise the Ayrshire fencibles for the government. By 1717, ‘melancholy and chagrined in his temper’, he was once again promising money for the Jacobite cause, and soon afterwards was approached by the Pretender. While making coded professions of loyalty, he stopped short of commitment, arguing that circumstances were unfavourable for an invasion. Lockhart Letters, 134; HMC Stuart, v. 259, 349, 365–6; vi. 285. Thereafter it seems to have been accepted by Scottish Jacobites that, although sympathetic, he was too cautious to be an active conspirator.

He died at Eglinton on 18 Feb. 1729, ‘to the great surprise’ and grief of his family. The necessity of providing for a quiver of daughters, and the irrevocable loss of government favour, meant that he left his estate indebted to the tune of £18,000. Fraser, Mems. Montgomeries, i. 102, 331–2;