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 years. ‘His health,’ writes Wodrow in 1731, ‘is much broken this winter and spring.’ But in 1732 these scandals and his wife's existence came to an end, and he publicly celebrated her funeral. Nevertheless she was alive till 1745, and a prisoner beyond the ken of friends till her death. She lodged with a highland woman, a Maclean, in Edinburgh. One winter's night, when Lady Grange was on the point of going to London (22 Jan. 1732), this woman introduced some highlanders in Lovat's tartan into the chamber, who violently overpowered Lady Grange, carried her off in a chair beyond the walls, and thence on horseback to Linlithgow, to the house of one Macleod, an advocate. Thence she was taken to Falkirk, thence to Pomeise, where she was concealed thirteen weeks in a closet, and thence by Stirling into the highlands, till, travelling by night, and not sleeping in a bed for weeks together, she was brought in a sloop to the island of Hesker. This operation was actually conducted by Alexander Foster of Carsbonny, and a page of Grange's, Peter Fraser, but several highland chieftains, Lord Lovat, Sir Alexander Macdonald, and Macleod of Muiravondale, were privy to and participators in the affair. For ten months she was kept in Hesker without even bread, and thence was removed to St. Kilda. This was her prison for seven years. For long she had no attendant but one man, who spoke little English. Then a minister and his wife arrived, who did indeed commit her story to writing, 21 Jan. 1741, but were afraid otherwise to interfere in her behalf. At length the daughter of a catechist conveyed a message to her friends to the mainland, hid in a clew of wool. They despatched a brig to her assistance, and she was thereupon removed by her captors to Assynt, Sutherlandshire, and finally to Skye, where she died in May 1745, and was buried at Dunvegan, Inverness-shire.

The story of Lady Grange forcibly illustrates the close solidarity and secrecy of the highland Jacobites; and though Grange's account of the matter was that her insanity made confinement necessary, it is clear the Jacobite organisation would not have been employed in a private quarrel, or in so relentless a manner, unless Lady Grange had command of secrets which might have cost the lives of others besides her husband.

Grange certainly was connected with the Jacobites at various times. In 1726 the suspicion against him was strong, and in 1727 he was able to say from personal knowledge that the Jacobites were weary of the Pretender and were turning towards the king. But his main policy was to oppose Walpole. He was endeavouring to enter parliament with the view of joining the opposition, when Walpole inserted in his act regulating Scotch elections a clause excluding Scotch judges from the House of Commons. Grange at once resigned his judgeship, and was elected for Stirlingshire in 1734. With Dundas of Arniston he was one of the principal advisers of the peers of the opposition in 1734. In 1736 he vehemently opposed the abolition of the statutes against witchcraft. Walpole is said to have declared that from that moment he had nothing to fear from him. Though he became secretary to the Prince of Wales, his hopes of the secretaryship for Scotland were disappointed. For a time he returned to the Edinburgh bar, but without success, and having lived during his latter years in London died there 20 Jan. 1754. He was poor in his latter years, and there is evidence to show that he eventually married a woman named Lyndsay, a keeper of a coffee-house in the Haymarket, whom he had long lived with as his mistress. He had four sons, of whom the eldest, Charles (b. 27 Aug. 1709, d. 1774), was in the army, and John, the youngest (1720–1796), was dean of Cork, and four daughters, of whom Mary (b. 5 July 1714, d. 9 May 1772) married John, third earl of Kintore, 21 Aug. 1729.

[Burton's Hist. of Scotland, 1689–1748; Wodrow's Analecta; Lord Grange's Letters in Spalding Club Miscellanies, vol. iii.; W. M. Thomas's Memoir of Lady M. Wortley Montagu; Wharncliffe's ed. of her Works, 1861; Omond's Arniston Memoirs; Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, iii. 578; Chambers's Journal, March 1846 and July 1874; Proceedings of Soc. Scottish Antiquaries, vol. xi.; J. Maidment's Diary of a Senator of the College of Justice, 1843; Scott's Tales of a Grandfather; Boswell's Johnson (Croker); Gent. Mag. 1754; Scots Mag. 1817, p. 333; Brunton and Haig's College of Senators, p. 485; Douglas's Scotch Peerage, ii. 219.] 

ERSKINE, JAMES ST. CLAIR, second  (1762–1837), general, was the elder son of Lieutenant-general Sir Henry Erskine (d. 1765) [q. v.], a distinguished officer, who had acted as deputy quartermaster-general in the attack on L'Orient in 1746, by Janet, only daughter of Peter Wedderburn, a Scotch lord of session under the title of Lord Chesterhall, and only sister of Alexander Wedderburn, lord chancellor of England from 1793 to 1801, who was created successively Lord Loughborough and Earl of Rosslyn, with remainder in default of issue to this nephew. Sir Henry Erskine, who was the fifth baronet of Alva, succeeded his uncle, General the Hon. James St. Clair, as colonel of the 1st regiment, or Royal Scots,