Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/51

 the instance of Lauderdale, Lockhart and all his friends were banished from Edinburgh and twelve miles round. A day was fixed for their making their submission, but they still stood out, and legal business was virtually suspended for a year (, Own Time, ed. 1838, p. 246). At length, through the intervention of Sir George Mackenzie, they were induced to yield, and were permitted to return on acknowledging, somewhat ambiguously, that the judicial proceedings of the court were not suspended by appeals. Lockhart himself was not readmitted till 28 Jan. 1676.

During the covenanting persecutions Lockhart was in great request for the defence of political prisoners, but sometimes the government, as in the case of Baillie of Jerviswood, claimed his services. His defence of Michell, tried in 1678 for attempting to shoot Archbishop Sharp, was specially noteworthy for eloquence and boldness (see ib. p. 276). In 1679 he was one of the counsel employed by the Scottish lords to impeach the administration of Lauderdale before the king. Engaged as counsel by the Earl of Argyll on his trial for treason in 1681, he was three times deprived of the sanction of a warrant from the privy council, and it was only granted at last lest Argyll should refuse to plead. In 1681–1682 and in 1685–6 Lockhart represented the county of Lanark in the Scottish parliament. On 21 Dec. 1685 he succeeded Sir David Falconer of Newton as lord president of the court of session, and in 1686 became a member of the privy council and a commissioner of the exchequer. Lockhart and two other members of the Scottish privy council were summoned to London in 1686 to discuss James II's proposals for the removal of catholic disabilities. They agreed to the proposals on condition that similar indulgence were granted to presbyterians, and that the king should bind himself by an oath not to do anything prejudicial to the protestant religion. James merely promised some relaxation of severity in his treatment of the presbyterians. On his return from London Lockhart strongly opposed the king's proposals at the meeting of the committee of articles, but when he saw that resistance for the time was hopeless he ceased to offer opposition. His friends explained that he could better serve the interests of protestantism by retaining office than resigning, but his conduct laid him open to charges of insincerity. How far his sympathies were with the revolution cannot be accurately determined. Balcarres states that he opposed the address to the Prince of Orange (Memoirs, p. 17) but he died before the government was finally settled, being shot on Sunday, 31 March 1689, in the High Street of Edinburgh by John Chiesley of Dalry, in revenge for a decision given by Lockhart in favour of Chiesley's wife in her suit for aliment. After being tortured by the boots, Chiesley was executed on the following Wednesday, and his body hung in chains between Leith and Edinburgh.

By his wife, Philadelphia, daughter of the fourth Lord Wharton, Lockhart had one daughter and two sons: [q. v.], author of ‘Memoirs of Scotland,’ and [q. v.], shot as a rebel at Preston in 1715. 

LOCKHART, GEORGE (1673–1731), of Carnwath, Jacobite and author, eldest son of Sir [q. v.], lord president of the court of session, by Philadelphia, daughter of the fourth Lord Wharton, was born in 1673. On the death of his father, 31 March 1689, he succeeded to an ample fortune. He soon manifested, rather in opposition to the traditions of his family, strong sympathies for the Stuarts, and became one of the most zealous and persistent of Jacobites. In 1702–7, and again in 1708–1710, he represented the city of Edinburgh in parliament, and in 1710–13, and 1713–15, the Wigton burghs. Much to his surprise he was in 1706 named a commissioner for the union with England. The government, he believed, thought by such means to win his support, and while pretending, with the knowledge and advice of the leading Jacobites, to accept the nomination as proof of his friendliness for the measure, faithfully reported to his Jacobite confederates all the proceedings of the commission, in order that methods might be more easily contrived for frustrating them (Lockhart Papers, i. 142–3). He avoided signing the articles by absenting himself from the last meeting of the commission on 23 July.

Lockhart discountenanced as premature the scheme for a rising promoted after the ratification of the union by [q. v.] On its failure he and his friends directed their chief efforts towards gaining the countenance of Queen Anne. When in 1710 the queen was being urged to dismiss Mrs. Masham, Lockhart was introduced to the queen by the Duke of Hamilton to present an address of loyalty. She expressed her belief that he was ‘an honest man and a fair dealer,’ whereupon the duke replied that Lockhart ‘liked her majesty and all her