Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/199

 1663 a statute was passed requiring all public officials to subscribe a declaration, affirming the duty of passive obedience, and renouncing the solemn league and covenant. Being unable conscientiously to sign the declaration, Dundas sent in his resignation. It was signed by ten of the judges on 10 Nov. 1663, Dundas being absent. Though the time for signature was extended in his case until 8 Jan. 1664, and then for a further period of eighteen months, and though he was frequently pressed to reconsider the matter, Dundas steadily refused to sign unless he were permitted to qualify the clause in the declaration abjuring the covenant by the words, ‘in so far as it led to deeds of actual rebellion.’ The compromise was not accepted, but it was notified to him that if he would sign the declaration as it stood the king would permit him to make reservation in private audience. To this Dundas replied: ‘If my subscription is to be public, I cannot be satisfied that the salvo should be latent.’ On 28 Aug. 1665 Sir John Lockhart of Castlehill was appointed to succeed him. Dundas died at Arniston in October 1679. He married, first, in 1641, Marion, daughter of Robert, lord Boyd, by whom he had one son, Robert, second lord Arniston [q. v.], lord of session, and three daughters; secondly, Janet, daughter of Sir Adam Hepburn of Humbie, and widow of Sir John Cockburn of Ormiston, by whom he had three sons; thirdly, in 1666, Helen, daughter of Sir James Skene, president of the court of session, and widow of Sir Charles Erskine of Alva.

[Collins's Peerage (Brydges), vi. 404; Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Douglas's Baronage, p. 180; Omond's Arniston Memoirs.] 

DUNDAS, JAMES (1842–1879), captain royal engineers, eldest son of George Dundas, one of the judges of the court of session in Scotland, was born on 12 Sept. 1842. He was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and the East India Company's military college at Addiscombe, received a commission in the royal (late Bengal) engineers in June 1860, and, proceeding to India in March 1862, was appointed to the public works department in Bengal.

In 1865 he accompanied the expedition to Bhootan under General Tombs, and was awarded the Victoria Cross for his distinguished bravery in storming a block-house which was the key of the enemy's position, and held after the retreat of the main body. Fearing that protracted resistance might cause the Bhoteas to rally, General Tombs called upon a body of Sikh soldiers to swarm up the wall. The men, who had been fighting in a broiling sun on very difficult ground for upwards of three hours, hesitated until Major W. S. Trevor and Dundas of the Royal Engineers volunteered to show the way. They had to climb a wall fourteen feet high, and then to enter a house occupied by some two hundred desperate men, head foremost, through an opening not more than two feet wide. After the termination of the Bhootan expedition Dundas rejoined the public works department, in which his ability and varied and accurate engineering knowledge won for him a high position. In 1879, on the fresh outbreak of the Afghan war, he found his way to the front, and was killed with his subaltern, Lieutenant Nugent, R.E., on 23 Dec. 1879, in attempting to blow up a fort near Cabul. A general order referring to the services of the royal engineers in this campaign, issued by Sir Frederick Roberts contained an appreciative notice of Dundas's services. A monument is in Edinburgh Cathedral, and his brother officers placed a stained glass window in Rochester Cathedral.

[Official Records, Corps Papers.] 

DUNDAS, JAMES WHITLEY DEANS (1785–1862), admiral, son of Dr. James Deans of Calcutta, was born on 4 Dec. 1785, and entered the navy on 19 March 1799. After serving six years in the Mediterranean, on the west coast of France, and in the North Sea, he was promoted by Lord Keith to be lieutenant of the Cambrian 25 May 1805, and the following year, after being for a few weeks flag-lieutenant to the Hon. George Cranfield Berkeley [q. v.], he was made commander, 8 Oct. 1806. On 13 Oct. 1807 he was posted, and continued actively employed in the Baltic or the North Sea to the peace. On 2 April 1808 he married his first cousin, Janet, only daughter and heiress of Charles Dundas, lord Amesbury [q. v.], and at the same time took the surname of Dundas. From 1815 to 1819 he commanded the Tagus frigate in the Mediterranean. From 1830 to 1832 he was flag-captain to Sir William Parker on board the Prince Regent of 120 guns, on the coast of Portugal, and from 1836 to 1838 commanded the Britannia at Portsmouth as flag captain to Sir Philip Durham. On 25 Oct. 1839 he was nominated a C.B., and was advanced to the rank of rear-admiral 23 Nov. 1841. He was liberal M.P. for Greenwich 1832–4, for Devizes 1836–8, and for Greenwich again 1841–52. For some months in 1841, and again from 1846 till 1852, he sat on the board of admiralty. In January 1852 he was appointed commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, was advanced to be vice-admiral on 17 Dec. 1852, and was still in the Mediter-