CUMMING, Sir Alexander, 1st Bt. (c.1670-1725), of Culter, Aberdeen.

Sir Alexander Cumming, an episcopalian,2Spalding Club Misc. iv. 84-87. of an old Aberdeenshire family, who sat for his county as a Tory under Anne, was returned for it again in 1715, classed as a Tory who might often vote with the Whigs. He was absent from the division on the septennial bill in 1716 but voted against the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts in January 1719. At this time, while he himself was in ‘opposition to the court measures’, his son obtained a ‘retaining fee’ of £300 a year, paid secretly through the Duke of Argyll ‘until he could be otherwise provided for’. Later that year Cumming was listed by Craggs and Sunderland as a supporter of the peerage bill, but he was absent from the division on it in December 1719. The payments to his son were stopped by Walpole in December 1721.3Autobiographical notes, by Sir Alexander Cumming, 2nd Bt., Add. 39855, ff. 13-15. He did not stand in 1722. A heavy loser in the South Sea bubble,4Genealogist, iii. 8; LJ, xxii. 586, 608. he died, deeply in debt, 7 Feb. 1725.