| Constituency | Dates |
|---|---|
| St Mawes | 1741 – 1747 |
| Malmesbury | 1747 – Apr. 1751 |
Clerk of the household to Prince of Wales 1736 – 51.
James Douglas’s father was a younger son of Henry Douglas of Friarshaw, Roxburghshire, grandfather of Admiral Sir James Douglas, 1st Bt., M.P.1PCC 225 Spurway; Cust, Recs. Cust Fam. iii. 117; Vernon Pprs. (Navy Recs. Soc. xcix), 149. Of his marriage the 1st Earl of Egmont wrote on 10 Aug. 1737:
It is much wondered that the King should take away the Duchess of Ancaster’s pension [of £600],2Cal. Treas. Bks. and Pprs. 1735-8, p. 384. purely because Mr. Douglas her husband has an employment under the Prince. She is indeed a worthless woman, and in want, her first husband having ordered in his will that if she married again she should have no more jointure than £400 per annum.3HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 429.
William Pulteney described him in December 1740 as a man ‘for whom I have a very particular regard’.4Vernon Pprs. loc. cit. For the 1741 election he was brought in by the Prince of Wales at St. Mawes but he switched to Malmesbury in 17475HMC Fortescue, i. 113. on the interest of Sir John Rushout. In Parliament he steadily adhered to Frederick, voting against the Administration on the chairman of the committee of elections in 1741 but for them on the Hanoverians in 1742, 1744 and 1746, reverting to opposition with the Prince in 1747. In Egmont’s list of future office holders on the Prince’s accession, drawn up c.1749-50, he is placed as one of the clerks of the Board of Green Cloth; and on Frederick’s death Newcastle wrote that if ‘Boone and Douglas were the clerks of the Green Cloth [to the dowager Princess] ... it would be well settled’.6Newcastle to Pelham, 10 Apr. 1751, Newcastle (Clumber) mss. Shortly afterwards he died, 2 June 1751.