Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/55

 Hooke a ‘memoir’ from Ker on the disposition of the presbyterians (printed ib. pp. 370–371); but on 18 Nov. the Duchess of Gordon wrote that ‘Mr. Wicks is turned a knave’ (ib. p. 517). The probability is that before his treachery was discovered he had wormed himself into some Jacobite secrets, and there is reason to suppose that he helped to frustrate a plot to seize Edinburgh Castle in 1707. In the latter end of March 1709 he came to London, and according to his own account the lord treasurer upon his arrival paid all accounts due to himself, but would do nothing ‘in the matter of the Cameronian arrears’ (Memoirs, p. 65). Lockhart, however, prints a copy of a letter of Ker to the Duke of Roxburgh, dated 4 May (Papers, i. 302–6), simply asking to be repaid the expenses he had incurred in ‘managing of these people.’ This letter, according to Lockhart, was shown to certain Jacobites by a kept mistress of Ker's, who allowed them to make a copy. Lockhart states that Ker obtained in all from the government about 500l. or 600l., and finding that Godolphin ‘would give no more,’ he ‘tacked about to the whigs and tories,’ and, on the promise to give evidence of Godolphin's connection with the Jacobites, obtained at least two thousand guineas from the leaders of both parties unknown to one another (ib. p. 308).

In 1713 Ker was, according to his own testimony, sent on a private mission to the emperor of Austria in connection with a scheme for employing buccaneers to harass the trade of France and Spain (Memoirs, p. 75). On his arrival in Vienna in January 1713–14, he told his ‘story’ to Leibnitz, who privately arranged with the emperor an interview between Ker and the emperor's secretary. The enterprise being unfavourably received, Ker thereupon ‘drops’ it, to ‘inform posterity that I employed my spare hours at Vienna in sending to the Electress Sophia all the light I got.’ For the ill-success of his mission he was consoled by a present of ‘the emperor's picture in gold set round with diamonds’ (ib. p. 87). He arrived in Hanover in July 1714, and thus, according to his own account, was useful in securing the Hanoverian succession (ib. p. 92), besides giving good advice to the elector as to the method of ruling the English nation. He asked the government of the Bermudas as a reward, but, as he scorned to bribe officials, it was bestowed on another. He professes also to have given important information against the Jacobites in 1715, but no notice was taken of his communications. Being ‘disappointed’ of all his ‘endeavours to prevent the rebellion,’ he embarked for Holland, but returned to London, where Leibnitz told him that his presence would be ‘very necessary,’ in March 1715 (ib. p. 110). His offers of service were declined, and he only received ‘a hundred dollars from the king.’ He now offered his services to the East India Company, to arrange matters between them and the emperor of Austria; but disappointed here also, he in 1721 directed his efforts ‘to form a scheme and charter for erecting a new company of commerce in the Austrian Netherlands.’ The affair came to nothing, and henceforth ill-luck continued to dog his footsteps till his death, which took place in the King's Bench debtors' prison on 8 July 1726. He was buried in St. George's churchyard, Southwark. On his return from abroad in 1718 he sold the estate of Fergushill to John Asgill [q. v.] and Robert Hackett for 3,800l., and in 1721 Hackett conveyed his moiety of the estate to Asgill, which moiety Asgill afterwards mortgaged to Ker for 2,600l., ‘which remained at his death’ (ib. pt. iii. pp. 63–4). During his absence on the continent his wife had been obliged to impropriate the plate and furniture of Kersland to three friends who undertook to support her. After Ker's death she tried to save the estate from creditors by producing a forged deed in the name of her elder sister Jean. Ultimately the property, with the superiority of the barony, was sold in 1788. Ker left three daughters: Elizabeth, married to John Campbell of Ellangieg, Argyllshire, and Anna and Jean, of whom nothing further is known.

The ‘Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland, part i., published by himself,’ appeared in 1726, and parts ii. and iii. also in the same year. The publisher of all the three parts was Edmund Curll [q. v.] Part ii. was published by Ker's ‘express direction,’ and though part iii. was published posthumously, it claimed to be ‘faithfully printed from the original manuscript of the said John Ker, Esq.; and other authorities serving to illustrate the said work,’ and also to be ‘prepared for the press under his express direction.’ Part iii. contained ‘Maxims of Trade,’ and there was also added by Curll the indictment for publishing part i. For publishing the ‘Memoirs,’ which contained professed revelations reflecting on the government, and for other similar offences, Curll was fined twenty marks, and had to stand in the pillory an hour at Charing Cross (State Trials, xvii. 160; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. iii. 143–4). A third edition of part i. appeared at London in 1727 (Catalogue of Advocates' Library, Edinburgh), and another edition of part ii. in the same year (ib.) ‘Castrations of the Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland’ also appeared in 1727. (There is a copy