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 exchanged to full pay as captain of the 4th regiment of foot, and on 29 Dec. purchased the majority of that corps, which he sold in 1789.

On 16 Sept. 1789 Napier laid the foundation-stone of the new buildings of Edinburgh University, and on 11 Nov. following the university conferred on him the degree of LL.D. At the election of Scottish peers on 24 July 1790 the vote of Napier was protested against, on account of an error in writing sexagesimo instead of septuagesimo in the second patent of the barony of Napier when referring to the date of the original charter in 1677; but on 25 Feb. 1793 the lord chancellor moved the committee of privileges to resolve that Napier was entitled to vote at the election of 1790, and the resolution was unanimously agreed to, and confirmed by the House of Lords on 4 July. He was chosen a representative peer in 1796, and again in 1802 and in 1807. On 12 Nov. 1797 he was appointed lord-lieutenant of Selkirkshire. He was lieutenant-colonel of the Hopetoun fencibles from the embodiment of the regiment in 1793 until its disbandment in 1799. From 1802 until the close of his life he was annually nominated lord high commissioner to the general assembly of the church of Scotland. On 10 Nov. 1803 he became a member of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, and on 3 Jan. 1805 was elected president of the society. On 5 July 1806 he was constituted a member of the board of trustees for the encouragement of Scottish fisheries and manufactures. He died on 1 Aug. 1823.

Napier compiled with great care a digest of his charters and private papers, forming a genealogical account of his family, which remains in manuscript. He also supplied Wood with important information regarding the Napiers for his edition of Douglas's ‘Peerage.’ By his wife, Maria Margaret, eldest daughter of Lieutenant-general Sir John Clavering, he had nine children—four sons and five daughters—of whom William John [q. v.] succeeded him as eighth lord, and is separately noticed.

[Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 302, 303; Mark Napier's Memoirs of John Napier; Gent. Mag. 1823, pt. ii. p. 467.] 

NAPIER, GEORGE (1751–1804), colonel, was the eldest son of Francis Scott, afterwards Napier, fifth Lord Napier of Merchiston (d. 1773), by his second wife, the daughter of George Johnston of Dublin. He was born in Edinburgh on 11 March 1751, educated under the supervision of David Hume, the historian, and on 8 Oct. 1767 was appointed ensign in the 25th foot, then known as the Edinburgh regiment. The regiment was in Minorca and commanded by Lord George Lennox. Napier became lieutenant in it on 4 March 1771. He subsequently obtained a company in the old 80th royal Edinburgh volunteers, raised in 1778, and served on the staff of Sir Henry Clinton (1738?–1795) [q. v.] in America. There Napier, who stood six feet two, with a faultless figure, was reputed one of the handsomest and most active men in the army. He was at the siege of Charleston, South Carolina, and, when Major John André [q. v.] was taken, offered to continue André's services as a spy in uniform. Clinton refused to sanction the proposal. Napier lost his wife and young children by yellow fever, and was himself put on board ship insensible and, it was thought, dying. Clinton took upon himself to sell his commission for the benefit of the remaining child, an infant daughter. Napier recovered on the voyage, and in August 1781 married again.

On 30 Oct. 1782 he re-entered the army as ensign in the 1st foot guards, of which he became adjutant, and was afterwards promoted to a company in the old 100th foot. His brother-in-law, the Duke of Richmond [see, third ], as master-general of the ordnance, found Napier a temporary berth as superintendent of Woolwich laboratory. In 1788 Napier communicated to the Royal Irish Academy, of which he was a member, a memoir on the ‘Composition of Gunpowder,’ in which he states, ‘I was ably assisted when superintending the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich.’ It is probable that Sir William Congreve [q. v.], who was appointed controller of the laboratory in 1783, had a considerable share in the experiments. This paper appeared in the ‘Royal Institute of Artillery Transactions,’ 1788, ii. 97–118, and was translated into Italian and, it is believed, other languages. In 1793, Napier, a captain on half-pay of the disbanded 100th foot, was appointed deputy quartermaster-general, with the rank of major, in the force collected under the Earl of Moira [see ] to assist the French royalists in La Vendée, which eventually joined the Duke of York's army at Mechlin in July 1794. Napier was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the newly raised Londonderry regiment on 25 Aug. 1794, and worked hard to discipline the regiment, which was at Macclesfield; but it was drafted to the West Indies the year after, to Napier's disgust and in defiance of the men's engagements. A place was then created for Napier as ‘chief field engineer’