Caithness

The chief interest in Caithness-shire was in the Sinclairs of Ulbster, who purchased the hereditary sheriffdom of the county from the Earl of Breadalbane c.1715.1CJ, xxi. 189. At the 1715 election, Sir James Sinclair of Dunbeath, who had represented Caithness-shire in the last Parliament of Scotland, stood, but John Sinclair of Ulbster, the sheriff, returned Sir Robert Gordon. Sir James Sinclair petitioned on the grounds that Gordon was a minor and held no lands in the county, but as John Forbes prophesied ‘James Sinclair, he’s come an April errand in March’, and the petition was shelved.2More Culloden Pprs. ii. 64; CJ, xviii. 38. In 1727 the same sheriff returned Patrick Dunbar, a member of a prominent family in the county and a government supporter, against John Sinclair of Muckle, the Earl of Caithness’s brother, later Lord Muckle, S.C.J., who petitioned unsuccessfully, claiming that he had had a majority of the legal freeholders’ votes.3CJ, xxi. 189. In 1741 the sheriff, George Sinclair who had succeeded his father in 1736, returned his maternal uncle, Alexander Brodie, the lord lyon, leaving Dunbar to petition unsuccessfully that he had been elected ‘unanimously’ by the properly constituted election meeting, but that an irregular breakaway meeting had elected Brodie.4CJ, xxiv. 26.