THE DALRYMPLES OF STAIR.
THE Dalrymples of Stair can lay claim to no long illustrious pedigree. Their real founder was a man who was prominent in the days of the Protectorate and in the Revolution settlement of 1689, and it is their distinctive honour that in his person and those of his son and grandson they produced three generations in succession of statesmen of a high intellectual if not moral standard:. The family surname is derived from the barony of Dalrympill in Ayrshire, and we find the name occurring more or less frequently in charters, &c., from the time of Robert II., the Dalrymples of Laucht being the leading family of the name. The first Dal- rymple, however, who can be identified as a lineal ancestor of the Earls of Stair, is a WILLIAM DE DALRYMPLE, who lived in the middle of the fifteenth century, and became possessed of the lands of STAIR Montgomery, in Ayrshire, by his marriage with Agnes Kennedy, heiress of that estate, for which marriage a Papal dispen- sation was obtained in 1450, as they were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity. Their son, also William de Dalrymple, is remarkable, for his wife, Marion or Mariot, daughter of Sir John Chalmers, of Gadgirth, in Ayrshire, a lady "of excellent worth and virtue," who was one of the Lollards of Kyle summoned in 1491 before the King's Council on account of their heretical doctrines. James IV., however, dismissed the charge, but the Lollard Marion seems to have given the tone to the religious and political principles
of the House of Stair thenceforth. Her son, William Dalrymple, died before his parents, leaving a son, William, who succeeded his grandfather at Stair, and left a son John, who was one of the first who made open profession of the Reformed doctrines, and in 1544 joined the Earls of Lennox and Glencairn against the Earl of Arran. In 1555, however, he obtained a pardon from the Duke of Chatelherault, the Regent, "for being in feir of weir at the unlawful convocation of the Queen's lieges on the Muir of Glasgow, with Matthew, sometime Earl of Lennox, and William, Earl of Glencairn." His son, James Dalrymple, was one of those who signed the confession of faith, and entered into an association for the defence of the Reformed religion in 1562. He was also one of those who rose in opposition to the marriage with Darnley in 1565, but obtained a pardon for so doing in 1566. Again be entered into the association in defence of James VI. and against Mary in 1567. He died in 1586, and was succeeded at Stair by his son, John Dalrymple, and he again by his son James, who married Janet, daughter of Fergus Kennedy, of Knockdaw, and died in 1624.
His son, JAMES DALRYMPLE, it was who first raised the family to distinction in the annals of their country. He was born in May, 1619, at Drunnurchie, in Carrick (of which a charter had been granted to his father in 1620), and was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he took the degree of A. M. in 1637. In 1638 he came to Edinburgh, and had a company of foot in the Earl of Glencairn's regiment. He had already exhibited such remarkable powers of mind, that at the request of some of the professors in Glasgow he stood as a candi- date, in military uniform, for a chair in philosophy in the Univer- sity, and was elected with great applause, though he kept his commission for some time afterwards. After his classical studies, to which he devoted much care, he applied himself especially to the civil law, in which he became pre-eminent, and being admitted as an advocate on the 7th of February, 1648, he soon took a lead in his profession. He followed in the wake of the Covenanting party, and was appointed Secretary to the Commissioners sent to Breda in 1649 to invite Prince Charles into Scotland. He made his peace, however, with Cromwell's party, and on the 23rd of June, 1657, Monk recommended him to Cromwell as a person fit to be a judge, " being a very honest man, a good lawyer, and one of considerable estate," and on a vacancy suddenly occurring among the Lords of Session on June 26, Monk wrote off to Crom- well the same day that " the Judges had pitched upon a person of eminent abilities, Mr. James Dalrymple, an advocate of whose qualifications and good affections they have ample satis- faction," to fill the vacancy, " of which they humbly crave leave to•desire your Highness's approbation." Dalrymple took his seat on the bench on the 1st of July, and his nomination was ap- proved by Cromwell, who thus. gave the first public preferment to the House of Stair, though the credit is due to Monk's sagacity. That wily general had a private conference with Dalrymple the day before he marched into England, as it turned out to restore the Stuarts, but probably with little other fixed determination than that of securing his own interests, and being guided in so doing by the drift of events. The equally subtle Dalrymple, however, afterwards claimed the credit of having recommended him strongly to call a free Parliament. At the Restoration Monk made his peace for him with the King, and coming up to London, he was confirmed as a Lord of Session June 1, 1661. In 1663, the Par- liament having appointed a test oath to be taken by all who filled public offices in favour of passive obedience and against the late Revolution, Dalrymple stickled at the terms, and at last sent in his resignation to the King, and retired to France with his eldest son. On this the Lords of Session declared his place vacant on the 19th of January, 1664, but Stair seemingly thought better (or rather worse) of his first resolution, and returning to London, gave satis- factory "explanations" to the King in a private audience, obtained a Royal letter to the Lords of Session, and signing the declaration was restored to his seat on the bench. On the 2nd of June in the same year (1664) he was created a baronet. He was constituted President of the Court of Session on January 17, 1671. He was chosen member of Parliament for Wigtonshire in 1681, and when the Test Act was brought into the House he artfully proposed that the first confession of faith should be appended thereto, as the precise standard of the Protestant religion. This was adopted without opposition. It was thus rendered impossible without perjury either to receive or to reconcile the test to itself. This the Duke of York highly resented, declaring that by introducing the con- fession of faith Stair had ruined all honest men. Dalrymple, finding the storm too great for him, repaired to London to resign his offices, as he said, or more probably to make his peace, but he found he had been already dismissed, and another President ap- pointed in his place. He then retired to his country seat, but on a hint from the Lord Advocate that he was about to be com- mitted to prison, he crossed the seas to Holland in November, 1682. Macaulay says of Sir James that "he did not, as far as we can now judge, fall short of that very low standard of morality which was generally attained by politicians of his age and nation. In force of mind and extent of knowledge he was superior to them all. In his youth he had borne arms, he had then been a pro- fessor of philosophy, he had then studied law, and had become by general acknowledgment the greatest jurist that his country had produced. In the days of the Protectorate he had been a judge. After the Restoration he had made his peace with the Royal family, had sat in the Privy Council, and had presided with unrivalled ability in the Court of Session. He had doubtless borne a share in many unjustifiable acts, but there were limits which he never passed. He had a wonderful power of giving to any proposition which it suited him to main- tain a plausible aspect of legality, and even of justice, and this power he frequently abused. But he was not, like many of those among whom he lived, impudently and unscrupulously servile. Shame or conscience generally restrained him from committing any bad action for which his rare ingenuity could not frame a specious defence, and he was seldom in his place at the Council Board when anything outrageously unjust or cruel was to be done. His moderation at length gave offence to the Court. He was deprived of his high office, and found himself in so disagree- able a situation that he retired to Holland. There he em- ployed himself in correcting the great work on jurisprudence which has preserved his memory fresh down to our own time. In his banishment he tried to gain the favour of his fellow-exiles, who naturally regarded him with suspicion. He professed, and perhaps with truth, that his hands were pure from the blood of the persecuted Covenanters. He made a high profession of re- ligion, prayed much, and observed weekly days of fasting and humiliation. He even consented, after much hesitation, to assist with his advice and his credit the unfortunate enterprise of Argyll. When that enterprise had failed, a prosecution was in- stituted at Edinburgh against Dalrymple, and his estates would doubtless have been confiscated had they not been saved by an artifice which subsequently became common among the politicians of Scotland. His eldest son and heir apparent, John, took the side of the Government, supported the dispensing power, declared against the Test, and accepted the place of Lord Advocate when Sir George Mackenzie, after holding out through ten years of foul drudgery, at length showed signs of flagging. The services of the younger Dalrymple were rewarded by a remission of the forfeiture which the offences of the elder had incurred. Those services indeed were not to be despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father in depth and extent of legal learning, was no common man. His knowledge was great and various, his parts were quick, and his eloquence was singularly ready and graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed Epis- copalians and Presbyterians agreed in regarding him as little better than an atheist. During some months Sir John at Edinburgh affected to condemn the disloyalty of his unhappy parent, Sir James ; and Sir James at Leyden told his Puritan friends how deeply he lamented the wicked compliances of his unhappy child Sir John! The Revolution came, and brought a large increase of wealth and honours to the House of Stair. The son promptly changed sides, and co-operated ably and zealously with the father. Sir James established himself in London, for the purpose of giving advice to William on Scotch affairs. Sir John's post was in the Parliament House at Edinburgh. He was not likely to find an equal among the debaters there, and was prepared to exert all his powers against the tyranny which he had lately served."
But while the House of Stair was thus rising into the highest positions in the State, it had been visited by a series of domestic tragedies of a startling character. One of Sir James's sons had died by poison. The bridegroom of his eldest daughter had been found lying bathed in his own blood on the wedding night. " One of his grandsons had in boyish sport been slain by another." The superstition of the times attributed the political success of the family, accompanied by such domestic catastrophes, to the results of a league on their parts with the powers of darkness. Sir James had a wry neck, MA his enemies said it marked him out as a man doomed to the gallows. His wife, Margaret, daughter of James Ross, of Balniel, in Wigtonshire, with whom he obtained a large estate, " a waman of great ability, art, and spirit, was popularly nick-named the witch of Endor. It was gravely said that she had cast fearful spells on those whom she hated, and that she had been
seen in the likeness of a cat seated on the cloth of State by the aide of the Lord High Commissioner." Two of these domestic tragedies in the Stair family have been commemorated in verse and fiction, the luckless bridal night being the foundation on which Sir Walter Scott has constructed the most artistic and dramatic of all his romances, the weird tale of the Bride of Lammermoor. The introductory incidents of the story are toler- ably well ascertained, though the catastrophe is shrouded in mystery. Janet Dalrymple, the eldest daughter of Lord Presi- dent Stair, whom Sir Walter has immortalized as Lucy Ashton, had entered into a secret engagement while a young girl with Archibald, third Lord Rutherford. The lovers had plighted their faith by parting a coin between them, and imprecating dismal evils on whoever should withdraw from or violate the compact. But this alliance did not suit the views of the parents. They favoured a new suitor, David Dunbar the younger, of Baldoun, in Wigtonshire," who is said to have been a nephew of Lord Ruther- ford. "On learning that Dunbar was advancing in his suit, Lord Rutherford wrote to his mistress to remind her of her engagement, but received an answer from her mother to the effect that she was now sensible of the error she had committed in entering into an engagement unsanctioned by the parental authority, and this engagement it was not her intention to fulfil. The lover refused to take an answer which did not come directly from his mistress, and insisted on an interview. It took place, but in presence of the mother, a woman whom public report represented as master of her husband and whole family. When Rutherford was introduced, he found her ready to meet his arguments with what was then an unanswerable defence—a text of Scripture (Numbers xxx. 2-5), clearly absolving a woman from a bond entered into in her youth if her father should disallow her fulfilment of it, and promising that in that case ' the Lord shall forgive her.' The poor girl herself sat mute and overwhelmed, while the lover vainly pleaded against the application of this text, and the scene ended with her surrender of her portion of the broken coin, and his flying dis- tracted from the house, after telling her that she would be a world's wonder from what she had done, and was yet to do." Baldoun's suit meanwhile prospered. On the 12th of August, 1669, he and Janet Dalrymple were betrothed, and on the 24th they were made man and wife. " The wedding was celebrated in the presence of the relatives of both parties and with great festivity, but the bride remained like one lost in a reverie, and who only moves and acts mechanically. A younger brother lived long enough to state to a lady, who communicated the fact to Sir Walter Scott,that he had the duty of carrying her on horseback behind him to church, and he re- membered that the hand with which she clasped his wrist was damp and cold as marble. Full of his new dress and the part he acted in the procession, the circumstance, which he long afterwards remem- bered with bitter sorrow and compunction, made no impression on him at the time. In the evening the newly-wedded pair retired to their chamber, while the merry-making still proceeded in the hall. But suddenly there was heard to proceed from the bridal-chamber a loud and piercing outcry, followed by dismal groans. On its being opened they found the bridegroom weltering in his blood on the threshold, and the bride cowering and gibbering in a corner of the chimney, her shift dabbled in gore. All she said was " Take up your bonny bridegroom " She made no further rational com- munication, but died in a state of idiotcy on the 30th of September following. Young Baldoun recovered from his wounds, but would never explain the occurrence. If a lady, he said, asked him any question upon the subject, he would neither answer her, nor speak to her again while he lived ; if a gentleman, he would consider it as a mortal affront, and demand satisfaction as having received such. He did not very long survive the dismal catastrophe, having met with a fatal injury by a fall from his horse as he rode between Leith and Holyrood House, of which he died the next day, the 28th of March, 1682. Lord Rutherford died unmarried and childless in 1685. Lady Dalrymple died in 1692. The Stair family believe that the bridegroom's wounds were inflicted by Lord Rutherford, who, they say, secreted himself in the chamber beforehand, and escaped afterwards by a window. But we quite agree with Mr. Cham- bers that " this notion " is " contrary to all probability," because in that case " something would have come of it, either in the way of private revenge or of procedure before a criminal court." Yet we find Lord Rutherford in the July of the very next year engaged in a successful legal prosecution of a man of his own name for at- tempting to obtain by forgery a hold over part of his estate, and in the same year he himself has a charter of lands. Nor are the words of Baldoun at all reconcileable with the hypothesis that he was attacked unawares and unarmed by his rival. There could be no reason on his part for concealing such an occurrence. 'There seems no doubt that the unhappy girl stabbed her husband,„.:lin a paroxysm of insanity, with a weapon which she had either secretV about her person beforehand, or snatched from the bridegroom's side at the time.
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