HOME, Patrick (1728-1808), of Billie and Wedderburn, Berwick.

His father Ninian Home, parish minister of Sprouston, Roxburghshire, deposed 1718 for drunkenness and Jacobitism,Hervey Scott, Fasti, ii. 5, 89-90. became the proprietor of Billie and Wedderburn by buying up the debts of their impoverished owners. Denounced by his detractors as ‘Old Ringan Griphard’, he rightly regarded himself as the preserver of the Wedderburn fortunes and in due course returned their lands, under certain financial obligations, to the dispossessed family. Ambitious of allying his own comparatively humble line with theirs, he married Margaret, daughter of George Home, and by her had a large family. In 1733 he drew up an elaborate entail, settling the Wedderburn estate on George Home’s sons. Only after the heirs of all these had failed were the estates to descend to his own family by Margaret Home.E. E. Hume, ‘A Colonial Scottish Jacobite Family’, Virginia Mag. of Hist. and Biog. (1930).

Patrick Home inherited £1,000 on his father’s death in 1744. In 1766 he succeeded to Wedderburn on the death of the last of the Wedderburn line designated by Ninian Home in his entail. He had for many years spent much time at Wedderburn Castle and had acquired a reputation for whimsical humour or even eccentricity.HMC Home; SRO, Dunglass mss. Although he had a strong electoral interest in Berwickshire, for many years he pretended an indifference to politics; but in 1784, at the age of 56, he was returned unopposed for Berwickshire with the support of Henry Dundas.

In Parliament Patrick Home followed Pitt, and on 18 Apr. 1785 voted for his parliamentary reform proposals. He is not known to have spoken in the House before 1790.

He died 19 Dec. 1808.