Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 | Page 9

family increased, interrupted indeed by some vicissitudes of fortune,
but by no serious reverses, until that period which, during the
commotions of the Great Rebellion, reduced many of our proudest
nobility to comparative poverty.
Among other important trusts enjoyed by the family of Erskine, the
government of the Castle of Edinburgh, and the custody of the principal
forts in the kingdom, attested the confidence of their Sovereigns. To
these was added by Mary Queen of Scots, the command of the Castle
of Stirling, and the still more important charge of her infant son. To
these marks of confidence numerous grants of lands and high
appointments succeeded,--obligations which were repaid with a fidelity
which impoverished the family of Erskine; and which produced,
towards the close of the seventeenth century, a marked decline in their
fortunes, and decay of their local influence.
John, ninth Earl of Mar, the grandfather of the Jacobite Earl, suffered
severely for his loyalty in joining the association at Cumbernauld, in
favour of Charles the First. He afterwards raised forces at Brae-Mar for
the King's service, for which he was heavily fined by the Parliament,
and his estates were sequestrated. During all this season of adversity he
lived in a cottage at the gate of his house at Alloa, until the Restoration
relieved him from the sequestration.
His son Charles, who raised the first regiment of Scottish Fusileers, and
was constituted their Colonel, began life as a determined Royalist; but

disapproving of the measures of James the Second, he had prepared to
go abroad when the Prince of Orange landed in England. He appears
afterwards to have pursued somewhat of the same wavering course as
that of which his son has been accused, and, joining the disaffected
party against William, he was arrested, but afterwards released. The
heavy incumbrances upon his estates, contracted during the civil wars,
were such as to oblige him to sell a great portion of his lands, and to
part with the ancient Barony of Erskine, the first possession of the
family. This necessity may almost be considered as an ill omen for the
future welfare of a family; which never seems to be so utterly brought
low by fortune, as when compelled to consign to strangers that from
which the first sense of importance and stability has been derived.
Under these circumstances, certainly not favourable to independence of
character, John, eleventh Earl of Mar of the name of Erskine, and
afterwards Lieutenant-general to the Chevalier St. George, was born at
Alloa, in Clackmannan, where his father resided. He was a younger son
of a numerous family, five brothers, older than himself, having died in
infancy. His mother, the Lady Mary Maule, eldest daughter of George
Earl of Panmure, gave birth to eight sons, and a daughter. Of the sons,
the Earl of Mar and his brothers, James Erskine of the Grange,
afterwards the husband of the famous and unfortunate Lady Grange;
and Henry, killed at the battle of Almanza in 1707, alone attained the
age of manhood. The only sister of Lord Mar, Lady Jean, was married
to Sir Hugh Paterson of Bannockburn, in Stirlingshire.
The Earl of Mar succeeded to the possession and management of
estates, heavily encumbered, in 1696.[10] His qualities of mind and
person, at this early period of his life, were not eminently pleasing. His
countenance, though strongly marked, had none of the attributes of
intellectual strength. In person he is said to have been deformed,
although his portrait by Kneller was skilfully contrived to hide that
defect; his complexion was fair: he was short in stature. In his early
youth the Earl is declared by historians who were adverse to the Stuarts,
to have been initiated into every species of licentious dissipation, by
Neville Payne: and the young nobleman is characterized as "the scandal
of his name."[11] Although his ancestors had been devotedly attached

to the interests of the exiled family, yet, it was to be shewn how far
Mar preferred those interests to his own, or upon what principles he
eventually adopted the cause of hereditary monarchy, which had
already brought so much inconvenience, and so many losses to his
father and grandfather.
The first political prepossessions of the young Earl must certainly have
been those of the Cavaliers; such was the name by which the party
continued to be called who still desired the restoration of James the
Second, and fervidly believed in the fruition of their hopes. His father
had indeed, to use the words of Lockhart of Carnwath, "embarked with
the Revolution;" but had given tokens of his deep contrition for that act,
so inconsistent with his hereditary allegiance. But the unformed
opinions of the young are far more easily swayed by events which are
passing before their eyes than by the cool reasonings of the