KER, William (fl. 1639-62), of Newtoun, Roxburghshire.

The Kers of Newtoun, near Jedburgh, were a minor branch of an extensive family which dominated Roxburghshire and included the earls of Roxburgh, Ancram and Lothian. William Ker was served heir to his father in 1639, and in the same year married the daughter of a local minister who had recently been promoted to the bishopric of Caithness; he was evidently still a young man in the 1640s.9Young, Parliaments of Scot. i. 393. Local appointments, first to the committees of war in Roxburghshire from 1643 and then as parliamentary commissioner for the shire in 1646-7, were followed by a seat on the committee of estates in 1647.10Young, Parliaments of Scot. i. 393-4; Montereul Corresp. 601. It was only with the defeat of James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton, and the royalist Engagers in 1648, and the resurgence of the hard-line Covenanters, that Ker became a figure of any importance in Scottish politics. In 1649 he was re-appointed to the committee of estates and made lieutenant-colonel in the Scottish army, and in the summer of that year acted as an envoy between the Edinburgh government and the governor of Carlisle, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, to arrange for the return of arms and ammunition captured from the Scots at Preston, ‘according to the list and undertaking signed by Lieutenant-general [Oliver] Cromwell*’.11Government of Scotland under the Covenanters ed. D. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1982), 97-8, 101-2. He may have been the ‘Lieutenant-colonel Ker’ who, with Colonel Archibald Strachan, led the Western Association’s resistance to the Cromwellian invaders in 1650, and who was ‘wounded and taken’ after their defeat at Hamilton in October of that year.12Diary of John Lamont ed. G. R. Kinloch (Edinburgh, 1830), 24.

Despite being an early casualty of the English invasion of Scotland, by the mid-1650s Ker was willing to work with the Cromwellian regime. In March 1654 he was given a pass ‘about his occasions’ in Scotland, ‘there being an engagement given that his horse shall not be employed against the commonwealth’, and in November 1654 he was given permission to keep two horses above the legal value for his own use.13Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLV, unfol.: 2 Mar. 1654; XLVI, unfol.: 11 Nov. 1654. In 1655 he became an assessment commissioner for Roxburghshire; in 1656 he was appointed as a justice of the peace; and in August of that year he was elected as the shire’s MP for the second protectorate parliament.14Acts Parl. Scot. vi. part 2, p. 841; C219/45, unfol.; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XXVIII, f. 65. The reasons for Ker’s election are not obvious. His connection with the aristocratic heads of the Ker clan was slight: mention of ‘Newtoun’ bringing a letter from the earl of Ancram to his brother, the earl of Lothian, in 1657, may not even refer to Ker, as there were several lairds of Newtoun (or Newton) in the lowlands of Scotland.15Corresp. of Earls of Ancram and Lothian (2 vols. Edinburgh, 1875), ii. 406; see Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVII, unfol.: 7 Nov. 1655. It would certainly be unwise to assert that Ker owed his election in the previous year ‘to his relationship with the greater landowning Kers’.16P. Pinckney, ‘Scottish Representation in the Second Protectorate Parliament of 1656’, SHR lxvi. 109. A more likely patron was the leading Roxburghshire politician, Sir Andrew Ker* of Greenhead, who, as sheriff of the shire, was ineligible to serve as its MP. The two men were not closely related; but they did share an attachment to the Western Association and its religious successor, the Protester faction within the Kirk.17Herald and Genealogist, vi. 231-40.

Ker was given a pass to travel to London on 21 August 1656, and was issued with a post-warrant six days later.18Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 21, 26 Aug. 1656. His activity at Westminster was unexceptional. He was named to the committee of Scottish affairs on 23 September, but his role in its deliberations is unknown.19CJ vii. 427a. His only other committee appointment, to consider the petition of the family and creditors of the Edinburgh financier, Sir William Dick, on 9 February 1657, suggests that Ker’s primary focus was on Scotland.20CJ vii. 488a. He was not included as a ‘kingling’ in the list of those who voted in favour of including the offer of the crown to Oliver Cromwell* in the Humble Petition and Advice on 25 March.21Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 23 (E.935.5). It may be significant that, in the same month, Ker was working with Adam Baynes* to procure ‘a wine licence for a friend of mine at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, one Mr Andrew Rutherford’. Baynes was a leading member of the army interest, which had political links with the Scottish Protesters.22Add. 21424, f. 287. After the adjournment of Parliament in the summer of 1657, Ker apparently returned to Scotland for good. He continued to be included in local assessment commissions in the later 1650s, and was granted a pass to travel around Scotland in May 1658.23A. and O.; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 4 May 1658. In August 1658 he again used his connections with Baynes to try to confirm Rutherford’s rights over the Newcastle wine trade.24Add. 21424, f. 287.

Nothing is known of Ker’s activities during the Restoration, but his involvement with the Protesters attracted the anger of the royalist regime after May 1660. In September of that year he was imprisoned at Edinburgh, along with Sir Andrew Ker of Greenhead, and in the 1662 act of indemnity he was fined £600 (Scots) for his support of the anti-Stuart faction in earlier years.25Diary of Alexander Brodie of Brodie ed. D Laing (Aberdeen, 1863), 216; Acts Parl. Scot. vii. 424. The date of William Ker’s death is unknown, and the testament of ‘William Ker of Newtoun’ recorded by the Peebles commissariot in 1691 (with a widow named Margaret Ker) was probably that of the MP’s son.26NRS, CC18/3/1, unfol.