MURRAY, John (1660-1724)

Throughout his political career Atholl sat astride two horses: on the one hand he was a clan chieftain (known as ‘Ian Cam’ because blind in one eye), who lived ‘like a sovereign prince’ in his Highland castles, surrounded by ‘his degrees of gentlemen’, Catholic and Episcopalian followers whose loyalties were strongly Jacobite; on the other (impelled by acute financial need), he pursued ministerial ambitions in post-Revolution Edinburgh, which necessitated presenting himself as a Presbyterian and a Williamite. J. Macky, Journey through Gt. Britain (1714–29), 147–8; P.W.J. Riley, Union, 12. While his father harboured Episcopalian sympathies, Murray’s first wife was a devout Presbyterian, and her powerful influence seems to have brought him over to the Kirk, though he retained his family’s links with Episcopalian clergy. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii.18. By January 1710 (after his first wife’s death) he was assessed by at least one observer as a ‘professed’ Episcopalian. Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 5, ff. 13-14. In the great crises over the succession the Murrays were divided, taking opposite sides at the Revolution and during the Fifteen, either because of genuine differences of principle, or, as some historians have argued, as a calculated policy designed to preserve family power. Atholl, then styled Lord Murray supported the prince of Orange in 1688 while his brother Dunmore stood by James II; later he remained loyal to the Hanoverians while his son fought for the Pretender. To maintain this difficult course required a combination of talents, and Atholl possessed a capacity for leadership, a forceful parliamentary presence, and the requisite levels of cunning and deviousness, which seemed to coexist comfortably with a stern moralistic streak. But he was also hot-tempered, and prone to allow his emotions to govern his conduct. As Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, put it, ‘he is of a very proud, fiery, partial disposition; does not want sense, but chokes himself with passion; which he is easily wound up to, when he speaks in public assemblies, where his quality always makes him heard’. Macky Mems. 194. From the other end of the political spectrum, the Jacobite George Lockhart^‡ offered a similar opinion: Atholl ‘was endow’d with good natural parts, tho’ by reason of his proud, imperious, haughty, passionate temper, he was no ways capable to be the leading man of a party, which he aimed at’. Lockhart Pprs. i. 73.

Having stood by King William in 1689, while many of his clansmen fought on the Jacobite side, Lord Murray was rewarded with local office and in 1694 with his own regiment. This was not commensurate with his own opinion of his merits. However, after extensive lobbying, and with the assistance of his brother-in-law, Hamilton, he was made one of the secretaries of state in Scotland in 1696, with a pension of £1,000 a year, and commissioner to the Scottish Parliament. He was also named to the Scottish Privy Council by virtue of his office and raised to the peerage as earl of Tullibardine in his own right. After two years, friction with the other magnates in the Scottish administration, in particular James Douglas, 2nd duke of Queensberry [S], cost him his offices (his regiment had already been disbanded in 1697), and he joined Hamilton in opposition. His alienation from government was increased by disgust at the failure of the Darien scheme, of which he was an enthusiastic supporter, so that by the end of William’s reign he was one of the most prominent figures in the ‘country party’ opposition headed by Hamilton. P.W.J. Riley, K. Wm. and Scot. Politicians, 108, 122, 125-26, 133, 141, 143-44; HMC Hamilton, ii. 133; CSP Dom. 1696, p. 20. When the existing Scottish parliament was continued after Queen Anne’s accession, without a new election, he joined Hamilton’s boycott of the short session of June 1702. The English ministers then sought to buy him off with nomination as lord privy seal in April 1703, and reappointment to the Privy Council. Rumours of his appointment as privy seal and of his brother being made governor of Edinburgh Castle had circulated since the close of the previous year. This was partially successful, inducing him to break with Hamilton, but without similar advancement for his ‘friends’ he remained dissatisfied. Early Letters of Robert Wodrow (Scot. Hist. Soc. ser. 3, xxiv), 25; Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 17 Dec. 1702; NAS, GD 220/5/53/2.

The root of the problem was his relationship with Queensberry, now the dominant influence in the court party: a natural rivalry between magnates, exacerbated by mistrust and personal dislike, which put Atholl constantly on the watch for a slight. Just before the new Parliament met on 6 May 1703 his father died and he became 2nd marquess. Queensberry informed him that the queen had signed a patent to raise the marquessate of Atholl to a dukedom. Atholl expected this to proceed, but was suspicious, and having asked Queensberry directly if there were any other such patents pending, he was told that there was also a patent for the marquessate of Douglas, which Queensberry believed should have priority. Atholl complained of ill treatment, even though his own patent for the dukedom passed on 30 June. Edinburgh Univ. Lib. Laing mss, La. I. 180. 10a. While the lord chancellor, James Ogilvy, earl of Seafield [S], later 4th earl of Findlater [S], tried to reassure the English lord treasurer, Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, that Atholl could still be brought to ‘do the queen service’, Queensberry disagreed: ‘I am still afraid that he has an eye to his old friends and inclines to keep a door open there’. Seafield Letters, 1, 8,10; Laing mss, La. I. 180. 10b; NLS, ms 3414, p.276.

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Atholl proved a thorn in Queensberry’s side. He created problems in the preparations for the Parliament and when the session began moved for the establishment of a committee of accounts, against Queensberry’s wishes. In the debate over supply, he seconded Seafield’s attempts to divert the thrust of the country party’s demand that priority be given to laws for securing Scotland’s religion, laws, liberties and trade. This too aroused Queensberry’s anger, as it did not fit with his plans, but Seafield once more came to Atholl’s defence. On 7 July 1703 Atholl supported his colleagues in rejecting a resolution proposed by Hamilton, that the act of security should include limitations on the power of the crown. But he ran into problems when he proposed amending a similar clause presented by John Ker, 5th earl (later duke) of Roxburghe. Atholl’s proposal was that ‘the limitations should not be confined to this session of Parliament, but to any other Parliament ... by which means ... we had the best handle whenever they were insisted on this session of parliament to put them off to another.’ However, Queensberry wanted to bring in a clause for a communication of trade with England, which he thought would be so popular that the question of limitations would be forgotten. Atholl at first acquiesced, but when it was suggested that he present this clause himself he drew back, suspecting that he would be blamed if it failed. He still spoke for it, and went with Seafield to the cavaliers, ‘to persuade them to go along with us’, but in the end the new clause was combined with Roxburghe’s resolution and Atholl had to vote for limitations after all. This he felt was a personal embarrassment, for which he blamed Queensberry. Laing mss, La. I. 180. 3c, 9c, 15a, 47a, 47b, 50a, 50b, 50c, 50d, 185b; Crossrig Diary, 118. The remainder of the session saw the court lurching from one failure to another. When Queensberry refused the royal assent to the act of security, any prospect of a supply vanished, and he adjourned the Parliament. Laing mss, La. I. 180. 5a. Hamilton was delighted, believing that Atholl had played a decisive part in forcing this decision, while Queensberry was furious. NAS, GD 406/1/8070; NLS, ms 3415, p. 68; Add. 70075, newsletter, 2 Oct. 1703. That same month (October 1703) Atholl journeyed to London to make political capital from Queensberry’s failure. NLS, ms 14414, f. 199; Add. 70075, newsletter, 12 Oct. 1703. He gave the queen an account of the session and suggested a restructuring of the Scottish ministry. Queensberry was his prime target, since he felt that the duke ‘had most malicious designs not only against me, but several of my friends in Scotland’. NLS, ms 7104, f. 74; Riley, Union, 68.

Suspicions focused on Queensberry’s dealings with the notorious Jacobite Simon Fraser,11th Lord Lovat [S] in the so-called ‘Scotch Plot’. Atholl not only complained to the queen that Queensberry was intriguing against him, but set about ‘publishing ... it to the world’. Add. 70075, newsletter, 5 Feb. 1703; NLS, ms 3414, p. 284. His sense of grievance against Queensberry was to prove almost ineradicable. In a parliamentary debate in 1705 he returned to the Plot, and ‘very handsomely narrated the beginning, progress and conclusion of the whole affair, illustrated the design of it, whence it had its rise, and who were the promoters of it, and accused the duke of Queensberry of endeavouring to give the queen bad impressions of her good subjects’. Queensberry’s conduct was ‘villainous, false and scandalous and not to be tolerated in a well-governed kingdom’. Lockhart Mems. 99; HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 234; HMC Portland, iv. 236.

Atholl was back in Edinburgh at the beginning of May 1704 when he and Seafield were involved in the establishment of the ‘New Party’ administration. Although he wrote to John Hay, 2nd marquess of Tweeddale [S], to express his satisfaction at this turn of events and the hope that ‘your lordship has secured honest men being in the government, and that the enemies to our country and all good men be laid aside, particularly the duke of Queensberry’, his relationship with the ‘New Party’ (or Squadrone Volante, as it became known) was fraught. Add. 70075, newsletters, 29 Apr., 13 May 1704; NLS, ms 7104, f. 81. When Atholl was sent by them to solicit Hamilton’s support, his brother-in-law commented: ‘I see it’s with a design to ensnare him. If he does not they will press him to break with me or turn him out’. NAS, GD 406/6/8024. Indeed, the possibility of Atholl’s dismissal was seriously considered during the summer. This was largely owing to Atholl himself, who complained that he was kept in the dark about policy-making, and joined with Hamilton to frustrate Tweeddale’s schemes. HMC Laing, ii. 68, 71–2, 74; NLS, ms 7121, f.26; Crossrig Diary, 156, 158, 160. According to Godolphin, who described Atholl as being ‘at the head of all oppositions’, the queen now saw him as an obstacle to her Scottish policy. As soon as the session was over he was dismissed. Seafield Corresp. 377; Lockhart Letters, 6.

Henceforth Atholl was in declared opposition alongside Hamilton. This extended to a vigorous, though unsuccessful, campaign in the 1705 parliamentary session to prevent Parliament from agreeing to negotiations for a union treaty, despite the blandishments of the court party, and despite the fact that Atholl himself stood to gain financially from a union, through the economic opportunities that would become available to the linen manufacture in his locality. Some historians have attributed his resolution in part to the influence of his wife, herself a determined anti-unionist. Baillie Corresp. 138; HMC Laing, ii. 118, 120–1; HMC Hope-Johnston, 122; Crossrig Diary, 170; Riley, Union, 148, 150; A. I. Macinnes, Union and Empire, 274; Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 57; C. A. Whatley, Scots and Union, 46, 86. But his strategy was not one she would have endorsed, for exploiting his Jacobite connections he had assumed leadership of the cavalier faction. Baillie Corresp. 115, 134; Seafield Letters, 56, 81–2, 85–6; Crossrig Diary, 169. According to Lockhart, Atholl was trying his best to identify himself with the Jacobite interest in the kingdom at large, expressing a willingness to ‘enter into... the most desperate measures’ to obstruct the Union and the Hanoverian succession’. Lockhart Pprs. 72–73; Bodl. Carte 180, f. 217; HMC Portland, iv. 276. Lockhart found it impossible to trust him, however. There was much sabre-rattling but little action. When the news reached Scotland in the summer of 1706 of the conclusion of the Union treaty Atholl mustered his ‘fencibles’ at Huntingtower, a manoeuvre he repeated over the winter. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 56–7; Macinnes, 290; HMC Mar and Kellie, 335; K. Bowie, Scottish Public Opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union, 156. The following year, the Jacobite agent Colonel Hooke was assured by Jacobite sympathizers of Atholl’s good intentions, though without being vouchsafed a personal audience. Moreover, communications from the duke always counselled caution. N. Hooke, Secret Hist. (1760), 24–26, 28, 36, 41, 57, 64; Lockhart Pprs. i. 229–30.

Atholl’s opposition to the ratification of the Union was uncompromising, both inside and outside Parliament. He mobilized protests from Perthshire and Fife, and backed the campaign for a national address. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 67–8; Bowie, 122, 132; Whatley, 281. Before parliament opened he refused Queensberry the usual courtesy of dining with him (as the queen’s commissioner), and at the outset of the autumn 1706 session he tried various delaying tactics. First, he demanded that the English Parliament pay compensation for the losses of the Company of Scotland; then he turned his attention to the danger to the Kirk establishment. HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 284, 290; Crossrig Diary, 175. This was indicative of the double game he was playing in ecclesiastical affairs, seeking good relations with Presbyterians by patronizing their ministers, while at the same time transmitting to government complaints ‘of the severities of the Presbyterians in several shires against the Episcopal clergy’. Lockhart Pprs. 72–73; HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 265; Carstares SP, 753. Finally, when the articles came under discussion he opposed them all, indulging in extravagant rhetoric: the treaty was ‘contrary to the honour, interest, fundamental laws and constitution of the kingdom’, and while there were a hundred Scotsmen left alive they would resist it. In the debates of 18 Nov. he proposed an amendment to the third article, whereby it would be a requirement of the treaty that once every three years Parliament would meet in Scotland. The proposal was let fall after brief discussion. Riley, Union, 332; HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 309, 313, 323, 328, 339; Lockhart Pprs. i. 181; Whatley, 297. Hamilton’s occasional flinching from the same course of adamantine resistance revived tensions between the brothers-in-law. Atholl himself, though, was not above making secret advances to the Squadrone, or, once the Union had passed, securing out of the Equivalent the arrears of salary he had been pursuing since his dismissal. These amounted to £1,500, though most of this money might have been used to settle a debt to his brother Dunmore, who had voted for ratification. Lockhart Pprs. i. 160, 205; Whatley, 27, 306; Macinnes, 255–6, 263–4, 305–6; Baillie Corresp. 174; HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 431; Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 39; CTB, xxii. 112; Riley, Union, 258–9.

Atholl reacted badly to the death of his first wife in January 1707, and retired from public life, spending much of the next 18 months at Blair Castle preoccupied with his own health. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 69–73; NAS, GD 406/1/7000, 7899. Further tragedy was to strike the family in September 1709, when his eldest son, an army officer, was killed at Malplaquet. Before that, in March 1708, he was implicated in the unsuccessful attempt to raise a Jacobite rebellion in Scotland when one of his footmen was arrested with incriminating correspondence. Atholl was cited to appear before the Privy Council at Edinburgh, but, arguing that he was too ill to travel, he was able to reach an agreement to be held under guard at Blair Castle in return for helping the court party in the forthcoming election. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 87–99, 111-14; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 291, 298; HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 438; Seafield Letters, 109. Hamilton complained that Atholl was ‘quite wrong and working with all his might for... Queensberry’s interest’ in parliamentary elections. NAS, GD 406/1/8067. Atholl’s deputy in Perthshire was accused by one of the opposing candidates of ‘bringing in a great many people to vote who were never understood to have right to do so before’. HP Commons 1690–1715, ii. 876–7; Add. 61631, f. 54. But he was still resentful at being treated worse than others in custody; in particular, that troops were billeted in his house and he was kept a prisoner there, not allowed bail. The Hamiltons tried to take advantage, and made several approaches to him, promising his early release through the duke’s influence with the government if he would vote in the peers’ election for the joint list that Hamilton had agreed with the Squadrone. HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 440–1, 458, 476; Seafield Letters, 141. Atholl was left trying to accomplish another of the balancing acts which characterized his political conduct. Eventually he sent Hamilton his proxy for the election which was delivered in by Orkney. He divided his list between Hamilton and the court, explaining to his brother-in-law that he had felt obliged to vote for ‘persons who have done me particular favours.’ NLS, ms 1026, ff. 23, 32; NAS, GD 406/1/7964. At the same time, writing to Queensberry’s lieutenant, John Erskine, 22nd earl of Mar [S], he deplored Hamilton’s alliance with the Squadrone, which Atholl deemed another example of his ‘unaccountable’ behaviour, and acknowledged a debt to Queensberry. HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 443–44, 455. The balancing act worked: his mixed list in the peers’ election was thought by Mar to be ‘pretty odd’, but was not construed as a violation of their agreement, and early in July his appeal for bail was granted. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 99; NAS, GD 124/15/831/19.

Although Atholl privately pressed a claim for monetary compensation for his ill-treatment in 1708 (a grievance he nursed for many years), it was only after his second marriage in the summer of 1710 that he once more took an active part in public affairs. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 105–7; HMC Portland, iv. 558; NAS, GD 112/39/266/1. The breach with Hamilton was evidently still unbridged, and late in September he was still not committing himself to stand as a representative peer. HMC Portland, iv. 601. Arriving in Edinburgh for the election he informed the dowager duchess of Hamilton that ‘I wrote a letter to the queen, which some other peers near signed with me, in which we gave her Majesty assurances to support her and the monarchy and that we would show such peers as would do so’. NAS, GD 406/1/7932. This seems to have been a tactic to push the new ministry towards backing distinctively Tory candidates in Scotland. For a time his own prospects seemed to be deteriorating as his support amongst the cavaliers waned and he struggled to secure the co-operation of Hamilton and John Campbell, 2nd duke of Argyll [S] (earl of Greenwich). But suddenly an agreement was reached and Hamilton’s brother, Orkney, wrote that ‘Atholl... is now very easy and goes along entirely in the measures the duke of Argyll and brother Hamilton has laid down.’ HMC Portland, iv. 587, 602; x. 349–51; NAS, GD 406/1/8111. Atholl’s account was rather different, namely that Hamilton ‘gave me all the satisfaction I could desire as to the mistakes had happened betwixt us, and owned at the meeting of peers that he had been in the wrong to me’. NAS, GD 406/1/7967. Atholl attended the election and was duly elected as a representative peer, being classified by the duchess of Buccleuch’s chaplain as an ‘Episc[opal] Tory’, with an estate valued at £2,000 a year. NLS, ms 1026, f. 62; SHR, lx. 62. Another analysis drawn up soon after the election classed him as a Jacobite.

Atholl did not take his seat in the Lords until 18 Dec. 1710 (just over a month after the opening). He was present on 65 per cent of all sitting days in the session and it was only in the new year that there is any evidence of his activity. As soon as he came to London he sought to raise the issue of the 1708 arrests, complaining in particular about his own ‘hard usage’, but was advised by the queen that ‘it was very unfit at this time, so that it was laid aside’. Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 123. On 2 Jan. 1711 he was named to the committee for the address and during the next two months he was named to the committees considering the war in Spain. He also worked to delay consideration of the appeal of the Episcopalian minister, James Greenshields, against his conviction by the Edinburgh magistrates for using the Church of England liturgy. Canvassing by Scottish members of the Commons for Greenshields made little impact on Atholl, who ‘showed himself very friendly this session to the Church of Scotland’. He abstained from the crucial division on 1 Mar. but his decision to remain in his seat meant that in effect he voted against Greenshields. Wodrow, Analecta, i. 326; Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 133; NAS, GD 45/14/352/9. Despite that, on 20 Mar. he was said to have been one of two peers to make a point of expressing ‘themselves much grieved with the behaviour of their countryman’ towards William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle (one of Greenshields’s principal supporters), over his (Nicolson’s) case then before the Commons. Nicolson, London Diaries, 562. On 9 Mar. he was nominated one of the managers of the conference concerning the safety of the queen’s person. Atholl was then named a manager of several conferences in May, first on the bill for repairing the highway between Dunstable and Hockley and then for the series of four conferences concerning the bill for preservation of game. Towards the end of the month he conveyed to Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, the Commons’ votes relating to Colonel Charteris and took the opportunity at the same time to remind Oxford that he hoped to secure a place for his son in the Guards. Add. 70249, Atholl to Oxford, 26 May 1711. His final intervention in this session came on 1 June when he opposed extending the bill which prohibited the export of Scottish linen and flax, to include Ireland. Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. xii. 136.

By the close of the session Atholl was thoroughly discontented with the unsatisfactory level of reward he had received for backing the ministry. In April the queen had agreed to act as godmother to the first child of his second marriage, and he afterwards received a gift of gilt plate worth £100. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 131; CTB. xxvi. 231. But he remained dissatisfied with ministers’ failure to reward him as promised. He complained at being kept in town after Parliament had risen for longer than he thought necessary and reminded Oxford pointedly of his ‘constant... support’ in the Lords as well as of his offer ‘in conjunction with the clans, of so considerable a body of our men, to serve the queen’. HMC Portland, v. 25–26. The duchess of Marlborough’s confidant, Arthur Maynwaring^‡, noted four Scots peers ‘pretenders to be Scotch secretaries’, one of them being Atholl, and remarked on each candidate’s hunger to be satisfied. Add. 61461, ff. 140-1.

In November 1711 Atholl refused to come to London ‘unless he be employed in the queen’s service’, pleading poverty: ‘he has not money of his own to spend there’. HMC Portland, v. 112. The following month his name appeared on one of Oxford’s lists, which may have been an indication of his expected support for the ministry. He missed the beginning of the following session, arriving in London at the end of January 1712. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 136. Even then he did not take his seat until 27 February. He was present thereafter on just 15 per cent of all sitting days. Probably for personal reasons, he did not participate in the Scottish peers’ agitation against the Lords’ ruling that Hamilton was ineligible to sit in the House by virtue of his British peerage title as duke of Brandon. When Hamilton demanded that the queen dismiss her secretary of state, William Legge, earl of Dartmouth, for voting against him, Atholl visited Dartmouth with reassurances of his own goodwill. G. Holmes, Pols. Relig. and Soc. 96. Naturally, he took care to appear more sympathetic to Hamilton when writing to the dowager duchess, but merely advised her to trust in Providence: He ‘that brought light out of darkness that covers the whole earth can yet bring light out of the dark and confusion that Scot[land] is now trusted with’. NAS, GD 406/1/7928. Atholl quit the session after 12 Apr. and on 19 Apr, registered his proxy with Mar. That month he was appointed commissioner to the general assembly of the Kirk. Although there had been rumours the preceding year that he was actively soliciting the appointment, it seems he was not enthusiastic about accepting it on this occasion. This was presumably because of Presbyterian resentment at the pro-Episcopalian legislation introduced at Westminster, which prompted instructions from the queen that he should if possible ‘divert’, but on no account attempt directly to suppress, protests. Wodrow, Analecta, i. 321; HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 499; Q. Anne Letters, ed. Brown, 370. As a sweetener, he was promised appointment as an extraordinary lord of session, and when it was clear that he had carried out his duties to satisfaction he immediately sought to capitalize on royal and ministerial goodwill, calling in the promised preferment, which was accompanied by nomination to the British privy council, and adding a claim for extra expenses beyond the £700 allowance. HMC Portland, v. 172–5, 179–80; x. 435; Atholl mss, 45/10/ 81; Staffs. RO, Dartmouth mss, D(W)1778/I/ii/326; Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 137; CTB. xxvi. 246. He was, however, concerned at the drift of Oxford’s policy more generally, and drew up a memorandum of ‘some things concerning Scotland to be represented to the lord treasurer’, drawing on his particular local knowledge. He feared that the Scottish people were still not reconciled to the Union, and drew attention not only to the grievance over the Hamilton peerage case, but also the failure to protect Scottish trade, both legislatively and practically, and the general neglect of Scottish business: what was wanted, above all, was ‘some face of a government in Scotland’. Atholl mss, 44/1/17. He may also have been concerned by the conduct of the war as he appeared on a list of those thought to have voted on 28 May in favour of requesting an address to the queen seeking to overturn the orders restraining James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, from engaging in an offensive war against the French. Atholl was absent from the chamber so cannot have voted in person. His proxy-holder, Mar was also one of those thought to have voted that way, though on that occasion proxies were not called for. PH, xxvi. 177-81.

Hamilton’s death in November 1712 offered Atholl an opportunity to demonstrate his leadership among the other Scots peers. Following the election of James Livingston, 5th earl of Linlithgow [S], in Hamilton’s place in January 1713, Atholl called a series of meetings in Edinburgh to draw up a list of the Scots peers’ grievances. His first draft met with little support, though, and he undertook to produce another in time for the next meeting. NAS, GD 248/561/47/49. Atholl travelled to London the following month and was present on two prorogation days in March but having taken his seat on the opening day of the new session attended on just four more days before returning to Edinburgh in April as commissioner to the General Assembly. There, using his political skill, he once again managed to head off trouble in the Kirk. Chrons. Atholl and Tullibardine Fams. ii. 153; TNA, SP 34/34/75; Wodrow, Analecta, ii. 191; HMC Portland, v. 287–8, 290–1. Atholl appears to have been disinclined to serve in the assembly again, so to persuade him to accept the post, he was paid £600 above the standard allowance. In addition, in April he was restored to his former office as lord privy seal. Add. 70215, Ilay to Oxford, 4 Apr. 1713; HMC Portland, x. 290; CTB, xxvii. 25, 184, 228, 323. Thus he absented himself from the debates over the motion to repeal the Union, despite being pressed to attend by Scottish friends. Lockhart Letters, 79; Atholl mss, 45/11/23. He had been listed after the election as a likely supporter of the ministry, and was later forecast as likely to vote for the French commerce bill, but was probably not in the House to vote. During the summer he received his first payment as lord privy seal, amounting to a full year’s salary. BLJ, xvi. 127; CTB, xxvii. 323.

Having been re-elected a representative peer, Atholl sent Oxford his proxy in January 1714 (though it does not appear to have been registered at that time) and on 15 Feb. told his mother-in-law that he was on his way to London. HMC Portland, v. 380; Hamilton mss at Lennoxlove, C3/1727. An analysis of the Scots peers returned at the election listed Atholl, perhaps misleadingly, as a Jacobite, though Sarah duchess of Marlborough had certainly noted her conviction in the summer of 1713 that Atholl was ‘for the p[rince] of W[ales]’. Stowe 751, ff. 18-20. He took his seat a week into the new Parliament on 23 Feb. after which he attended on a quarter of all sitting days. He received the proxy of his nephew, John Murray, 2nd earl of Dunmore [S], on 17 March. He quit the session a month later on 14 Apr. and registered his own proxy with Dunmore two days later. He was once again in Edinburgh for the assembly in April and early May, and does not seem to have returned, though forecast as likely to vote for the schism bill. By August he was at Blair Castle, writing to the dowager duchess of Hamilton that ‘the queen’s sudden death is a great loss to these nations ... It is a mercy that we have a Protestant king to succeed her’. Hamilton mss at Lennoxlove, C3/1721. He then appeared in the House on 21 Oct. as Parliament was prorogued for the last time before the dissolution.

Atholl lost his major offices with the Hanoverian succession, even if his loyalty to the new dynasty kept him in power locally. His political career was over, however, and he did not sit in Parliament again, devoting himself to improving his estates. Atholl mss, bdle. 683, list of members of Society for Improving in the Knowledge of Agriculture, 1723. His eldest surviving son, heir apparent to the dukedom, having fled to France after being out in the ’Fifteen, Atholl obtained an act of Parliament in 1715 to vest his titles and estates in his second surviving son, James Murray^†, later 2nd duke of Atholl [S], who went on to be returned to Parliament first as a member of the Commons and latterly as a representative peer.

Atholl died at Huntingtower 14 Nov. 1724 and was buried at Dunkeld. A broadsheet mourned the ‘Highland hero’, presenting a stereotypical scene with his vassals dropping their claymores to howl wildly on hearing the melancholy news. The Cries of the Clans (1724).