Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/416

 Anstruther from 1754 to his death in 1765. His name was removed from the army list in 1756, owing to his opposition to the employment of the Hanoverian and Hessian troops; but he was afterwards restored and rose to the rank of lieutenant-general. He was colonel in succession of the 67th foot (Oct. 1760), the 25th foot (May 1761), then the Edinburgh regiment, and the 1st Royal Scots (Dec. 1762), in which he succeeded his uncle, the Hon. James St. Clair, de jure Lord Sinclair, who died in 1762, without taking up the title. Erskine was secretary of the order of the Thistle. He married in 1761 Janet, daughter of Peter Wedderburn of Chesterhall, and sister of Alexander Wedderburn, afterwards lord chancellor of England, and first Earl of Rosslyn, by whom he left two sons and one daughter, the eldest of whom succeeded his maternal uncle as second Earl of Rosslyn [see, second ]. Erskine died at York, when returning from the north to his residence at Kew, 9 Aug. 1765.

Erskine was an accomplished man, and for some time a fashionable figure in political circles in London. Horace Walpole sneers at him as a military poet and a creature of Lord Bute's (Letters, ii. 242). Philip Thicknesse (, Lit. Anecd. ix.) has left an account of a transaction in which Erskine, on behalf of Lord Bute, endeavoured to prevent the publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's letters, entitled ‘An Account of what passed between Sir Harry Erskine and Philip Thicknesse, Esq. …’ (London, 1766, 8vo). A letter from Lord Bute to Erskine, dated 8 April 1763, respecting Lord George Sackville, stating that the king admitted and condemned the harsh treatment of the latter, but was prevented by state reasons from affording him the redress intended, is printed at length in ‘Hist. MSS. Comm.,’ 9th Rep. 111, 116. Erskine is always credited with the authorship of the fine old Scottish march, ‘Garb of Old Gaul,’ but Major-general D. Stewart of Garth, a regimental authority, states that the words were originally composed in Gaelic by a soldier of the 42nd highlanders, and were set to music by Major Reid of the same regiment, afterwards the veteran General John Reid, and that several officers claimed to be the English adapters.

 ERSKINE, HENRY (1746–1817), lord advocate, second son of Henry, tenth earl of Buchan, by his wife, Agnes, second daughter of Sir James Steuart of Goodtrees, bart., was born in Gray's Close, Edinburgh, on 1 Nov. 1746. After receiving some instruction in Latin at Richard Dick's school at St. Andrews, he matriculated as a student of the united college of St. Salvator and St. Leonard on 20 Feb. 1760. In 1763 he proceeded to Glasgow University, and subsequently went to Edinburgh University, where in 1766 he attended the classes of Professors Wallace, Hugh Blair, and Adam Ferguson. While studying for the bar Erskine became a member of the Forum Debating Society in Edinburgh, where he ‘acquired the power of extempore speaking which was the foundation of his future success as a pleader.’ At this time he also wrote several poetical pieces of considerable merit, one of which, entitled ‘The Nettle and the Sensitive Plant,’ has been printed. He was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates on 20 Feb. 1768. His first triumphs as a pleader were obtained in the debates of the general assembly of the church of Scotland, of which at an early age he had been elected an elder. When he had been called to the bar a little more than ten years, he was proposed as a candidate for the procuratorship. Erskine, who had identified himself with the ‘Highflyer’ or evangelical section, was, however, defeated by William (afterwards Lord) Robertson, the representative of the ‘Moderate’ or tory party. In August 1783 he was appointed lord advocate in the coalition ministry, in the place of Henry Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville. It is related that on the morning of his appointment he met Dundas, who had already resumed his stuff gown. After chatting with him for a short time Erskine gaily observed, ‘I must leave off talking to go and order my silk gown’ (the official costume of the lord advocate). ‘It is hardly worth while,’ replied Dundas dryly, ‘for the time you will want it; you had better borrow mine.’ Upon this Erskine, who was never at loss for a reply, wittily observed, ‘From the readiness with which you make the offer, Mr. Dundas, I have no doubt that the gown is a gown made to fit any party; but, however short my time in office may be, it shall never be said of Henry Erskine that he put on the abandoned habits of his predecessor.’ Before Erskine could obtain a seat in the House of Commons Fox's East India Bill was thrown out in the lords. The coalition ministry was thereupon summarily dismissed by the king in December 1783, and Erskine was succeeded by Sir [q. v.], afterwards lord presi-