Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/436

 writhing with resentment at his dismissal in June 1716 from all his offices; but the overtures met with no encouragement. In the following year he entered into communications with Sunderland, offering the assistance of France to George I, to enlarge his German dominions, on condition of his assenting in some form to a Stuart restoration. There is some evidence that George I was not altogether averse to the project, but its inherent absurdity was no doubt at once evident to his advisers. In connection with the project Mar had also had communications with the Earl of Stair, with whom he had formerly been on terms of special intimacy. As he then admitted to Stair that he regarded the affairs of his master as ‘desperate,’ his negotiations would seem to have been entered into rather with the view of commending himself to King George than of aiding the cause of the chevalier. Shortly afterwards he left Paris for Italy, and he had no further communications with Stair till on the return journey in 1719 he stopped at Geneva. On this occasion he openly expressed his anxiety to desert the cause of the chevalier and come to terms with the government (see the documents connected with the negotiation in Hardwicke State Papers, vol. ii.) Stair advanced him a sum of money, and advised that he should be conciliated on the ground that to detach him would ‘break the prince's party.’ Mar's terms for consenting to abstain from any plot against the government were that the family estates should be settled on his son, and that meanwhile until this was done he should be paid a pension of 2,000l., in addition to 1,500l. of a jointure to his wife and daughter. It would appear that the Jacobites at St. Germain were quite aware of his negotiations with Stair, but he informed them that he had no intention of fulfilling the conditions, while by pretending to do so he would be able more effectually to aid the cause. It was at Mar's suggestion that the chevalier stirred up the scheme of Atterbury, bishop of Rochester [q. v.], and he appears to have done so simply to demonstrate to the government his willingness to save them by discovering the plot. Not improbably it was through his connivance that his own correspondence with Atterbury was intercepted (see letters in Appendix to Stuart Papers), and at any rate it is almost demonstrable that he was the person who supplied the means of deciphering it. Shortly afterwards, in 1723, he presented a memorial to the regent of France, expounding a project for betraying Britain into the power of France, by dismembering the British empire through an adjustment of the powers of the Scottish and Irish parliaments. His real design in making the proposal was supposed to have been to render the cause of the Jacobites odious to the people of Britain by connecting them with an unpatriotic scheme. Atterbury, after his arrival in France, obtained evidence sufficient to convince him that Mar had been guilty of ‘such base practices’ ‘that the like had scarce been heard of; and seemed to be what no man endued with common sense or the least drop of noble blood could perpetrate’ (Lockhart Papers, ii. 142). Atterbury also expressed the general opinion which ultimately prevailed among the Jacobites regarding Mar, that ‘it was impossible for him ever to play a fair game or to mean but one thing at once’ (Stuart Papers, 131). Latterly all his proposals bore on the face of them the marks of charlatanry, and he ceased to possess the power to deceive any one but himself. He prepared a justification of his conduct, of which an abstract is given in ‘Lockhart Papers’ (ii. 175–9), but he failed to convince any one either of his good sense or his sincerity. The prince, however, in a letter to Lockhart expressed his desire that the facts proven against him should rather be concealed than made public, and gave it as his opinion that the ‘less noise made about him the better’ (ib. 198). He was succeeded in the confidence of the prince in 1724 by Colonel Hay, and in 1725 he definitely severed his connection with the Stuarts without, however, thereby securing any benefit from the government. In his retirement he accepted his disappointment more philosophically than could have been predicted, occupying himself chiefly in architectural designs and drawings. In a paper written in 1728 he suggested the improvement of the communications in Edinburgh by proposing the building of bridges north and south of the city. He also suggested the formation of a navigable canal between the Forth and Clyde. He resided in Paris till 1729, when, on account of his health, he removed to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he died in May 1732. He was twice married; first to Lady Margaret, daughter of the Earl of Kinnoul, by whom he had two sons, the youngest of whom died in infancy, and the eldest, Thomas, lord Erskine, became commissary of stores for Gibraltar, and afterwards sat in parliament successively for the counties of Stirling and Clackmannan; and secondly to Lady Frances Pierrepoint, by whom he had a daughter, Lady Frances, married to her cousin, James Erskine, son of Lord Grange. The second Lady Mar suffered latterly from mental irregularity, and having, like his own wife, quarrelled with Lord Grange [see ], Grange