Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 3.djvu/403

 COLVILL or COLVILLE 383 the Port of Dundee. He m. (cont. Apr. 1687) Mary, da. of Sir Charles Erskine, Bart. [S.], of Cambo, Lyon King of Arms, by Penelope, da. of Arthur Barclay, of Colhill. She surv. him. He d. 9 Aug. 1717, aged 51. [VI. 17 17.] 6. John Colville, of Kincardine, de jure(f) Lord yj Colville of Culross [S.], s. and h., b. 1690. He was an ' ^' Ensign at the battle of Malplaquet in 1709. On 2 Apr. 1722 he was served h. to John, 2nd Lord Colville of Culross, and, on the 2ist, requested to vote at the gen. election of Scottish Peers, but was refused on the ground of the peerage not being on the roll at the Union. In 1723 he presented a petition, in which he stated "that James, 2nd Lord Colville of Culross, died about 50 years ago" [i.e. about 1673, instead of, as was the fact, in 1654] "leaving no male issue behind him " [whereas he, in fact, left at least fjco sous, one living 24 years after him], " and that thus [!] the heirs male of the body of the ist Lord failing," the dignity " descended to the heirs male of Alexander, who was the only brother{^) [sic but more accurately ujtcle] of the said first Lord," to which Alexander the petitioner was [which statement, so far as regards Alexander the Commendator is, apparently, correct] the h. male of the body. His right to the peerage claimed, under the charter of 20 Jan. 1609, as h. male of the grantee, was acknowledged 27 May 1723, by the House of Lords, to whom his petition had been referred by the Crown,(') whereby he became, de facto, Lord Colville of Culross [S.]. He was at the siege of Gibraltar, il^f; was Lieut. Col., 1739, in the war with Spain; being in command of a battalion off Cartagena in 1741, where he fell a victim to an epidemic. He m., in 1716, in Ireland, Elizabeth, da. of ( — ) John- ston, of that kingdom. He d. as afsd. on board a transport off Cartagena, 20 Apr. 1741, in his 52nd year. Admon. 2 May 1744. His widow d. at Dundee, 3 Mar. 1747/8, aged 47. little else but the unsupported, and by no means disinterested, statement of the claimant of 1723 to support such pedigree. The late Alexander Sinclair is said to have had proof that Alexander the Commendator was an uncle, not brother, of the first Lord. This is certainly the case (see Scots Peerage, vol. ii, p. 548), and it may be added that in 1566, when Alexander received the Abbey lands (of which, in 1 569, he appointed Robert Colville, of Cleish, heritable baillie), he would, if z. yr. br. of the 1st Lord, have been aged at the outside but 14, and there would be no apparent reason for preferring him to his elder br., whose preferment came much later on. The gross misstatements in the allegation of the petitioner of 1723 are referred to, ante, p. 380, note " d." It is to be regretted that the author of The Ancestry iJc. does not indicate what the " other documents " say as to these " unquestionable discrepancies " from the statements in the peerage. (*) See note " e " on preceding page. (*>) See as to this and other statements in this petition, ante, note "d," p. 380, and note "f" on preceding page. (') He was accordingly placed on the roll in the precedency of 1609, i.e. before " Cranstoun " and after " Cardross," a lower precedency than that given at the decreet of ranking. See ante, p. 380, note "d."