HAY, John (1626-97), 2nd earl of Tweeddale [S], of Yester, Peeblesshire.

The Hay family are first recorded as servants of King Malcolm IV in the twelfth century, and the Hays of Yester had become established as a separate, cadet branch, during the next century. In the fourteenth century the Yester family became hereditary sheriffs of Peeblesshire, and in 1488 they were ennobled as Lords Hay of Yester. John, 8th Lord Hay of Yester, was a Covenanter officer who fought with his regiment at Marston Moor but favoured a reconciliation with Charles I in 1646, and was created earl of Tweeddale on 1 December of that year. His eldest son, John, ‘Master of Yester’, served in his father’s regiment in 1645, and in 1646 accompanied his father to Newcastle to attend Charles I. Thereafter he returned to Scotland, where he was appointed to the committee of estates (as Lord Yester) in March 1647, and in 1647 and 1648 he also served on the committees of war for Peeblesshire and Haddingtonshire. In May 1648 Yester was given charge of the Haddingtonshire foot regiment, which formed part of the 1st duke of Hamilton’s expeditionary force which was defeated by Oliver Cromwell* at Preston.25Govt. of Scot. ed. Stevenson, 10, 36; Acts Parl. Scot. vi. pt. 1, pp. 766, 813, 820; pt. 2, pp. 30, 32, 34, 55. Yester, like other supporters of Hamilton, was excluded from office in 1649-50, but he was among those absolved by the Kirk and recommended for further employment in December 1650, and in the same month he was instructed to raise a regiment in Forfar.26D. Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1644-51 (1977), 194; Acts Parl. Scot. vi. part 2, p. 625. He attended the coronation of Charles II at Scone on 1 January 1651, but did not join the Worcester campaign, instead defending his house at Neidpath, which was the last stronghold south of the Firth to surrender to the Cromwellian invaders.27Scots Peerage, viii. 451-2.

Lord Yester’s activities in the 1640s and early 1650s were obviously guided by his father, but both father and son also operated within an extended family – a close-knit group of nobles centred on Hamilton’s great rival for the king’s favour at this time, James Livingston, 1st earl of Callander. The origins of this group can be found in a series of marriages between the Setons of Dunfermline and the Hays of Yester in the early seventeenth century. In 1633, Yester’s aunt, the widowed countess of Dunfermline, married the future earl of Callander. Callander was already related to the Hays through his mother, who was daughter of the earl of Erroll. Callander’s family were also related to the Montgomeries of Eglinton, and through them to the Scotts of Buccleuch.28CP. The remarriage of Yester’s father in 1641 to the daughter of the 6th earl of Eglinton cemented the bonds between the various families – as did Yester’s own marriage (in 1644) to a daughter of the earl of Buccleuch.29Scots Peerage, viii. 449, 454. Yester was at the very heart of this aristocratic connection, both socially and politically. In December 1646, shortly after his father’s elevation to the earldom, Yester was in Edinburgh, where he and his wife were entertained by the earl and countess of Eglinton, and he also associated with the countess of Buccleuch.30HMC Eglinton, 37. When Yester was appointed to the committee of estates in March 1647 he was joined by Callander, Eglinton, Dunfermline and Buccleuch. The regimental officers commanding in the Preston campaign included the earls of Buccleuch, Linlithgow (Callander’s brother), Dunfermline, Erroll and Lord Montgomerie, and the lieutenant-general was the earl of Callander. When Yester was given command of the Forfar regiment in 1650, he shared the honour with Buccleuch.31Acts Parl. Scot. vi. part 1, p. 766; part 2, pp. 55, 625.

The failure of the Worcester campaign, and the imprisonment of Callander by the Cromwellians, brought the political influence of this noble connection to an abrupt end. Despite this, the personal ties and obligations between the families survived throughout the 1650s, and played a crucial role in Yester’s later career as 2nd earl of Tweeddale. The key to this survival is financial. During the 1640s (and especially after the Engagement), the various noble families had sunk deep into debt, and through the guaranteeing of these debts had involved one in the finances of another. In March 1647 Yester claimed that the Scottish government already owed him nearly £2,500.32Acts Parl. Scot. vi. part 1, p. 820. To government debts were added private burdens. When the 1st earl died in 1654, his son was left with sorting out the estate: a task made all the harder by the claims of his step-mother, Margaret Montgomerie (Eglinton’s daughter), who had been left a generous legacy by his father, but had no obligation to pay off the family debts, or to provide for her own daughter.33NLS, MS 14476, ff. 54, 63, 67. The survival of a series of articles of agreement, of 1655, 1656 and 1657, indicate that the eventual settlement between them was only reached with great difficulty.34NLS, MS 14481, ff. 26, 66-7. The 1st earl of Tweeddale’s debts included ‘engagements’ made on behalf of the earls of Erroll and Lothian, as well as personal debts which exceeded £8,000, and all these obligations were inherited by his son.35NLS, MS 14481, ff. 5, 60; NRS, GD34/813/1-2. These sums were, however, dwarfed by those owed to creditors by the earl of Dunfermline, who, ‘in all his burdens’ was reckoned to be £50,000 in debt.36NLS, MS 14481, f. 60. Tweeddale was not merely a sympathetic onlooker on Dunfermline’s ruin. In 1651 he had joined Lord Montgomerie and the earl of Callander as surety for Dunfermline’s monumental debts.37NLS, MS 14476, f. 49. In January 1653 Callander and Tweeddale were granted a charter over part of Dunfermline’s estate, and in October of that year the two agreed to protect each other from prejudices arising from the estate. Financially, therefore, Tweeddale was dependent on the rehabilitation of Callander, and this became an overriding concern throughout the decade.38NAS, GD28/1656, 1657, 1684; Reg. Gt. Seal Scot. 1652-9, pp. 40-3. As a side-show to all this, Tweeddale also found himself locked in a lengthy battle with the Scotts of Buccleuch, over the custody, marriage and estate of the infant daughters of the late earl of Buccleuch (d. 1651), whose aunt (and prospective heiress) was Lady Tweeddale. The machinations of the various interested parties involved not only the Scottish government but also politicians at Whitehall, and again became an overriding concern for Tweeddale later in the 1650s.39W. Fraser, The Scotts of Buccleuch (2 vols. Edinburgh, 1878), i. 320-72.

With all this in mind, it is hardly surprising that Tweeddale’s political position during the Cromwellian occupation of Scotland was pragmatic, rather than ideological. He supported the radical Protester faction in the Kirk, but this support was always conditional. His comments in February 1654 that ‘never man, how tender soever, meddled with and for the king but became untender, and then was plagued with some judgement from the Lord’, reveal a degree of sympathy with the plight of the defeated royalists unusual among the Protesters, although he readily condemned the political views of the king’s supporters as unwise and ungodly.40Wariston Diary, ii. 205. Tweeddale’s relations with the English governors were never as close as those of committed Cromwellians such as John Swinton* or Sir William Lockhart*, and unlike his more forward compatriots, he played no part in the union negotiations of 1652-3. Indeed, apart from the confirmation of the Dunfermline charter by the commissioners for the administration of justice in October 1653, Tweeddale only began to receive the customary favours and compliments from the Edinburgh government after the creation of the protectorate.41NRS, GD28/1657; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLV, unfol.: 25 Feb. 1654. Thereafter, his standing in London also increased, and when he travelled south to lobby for the settlement of the Buccleuch dispute in June 1654, he was able to wait on Oliver Cromwell twice, and received support from the Scottish councillor, Samuel Disbrowe*, who encouraged his ‘underground machinations’.42Fraser, Scotts of Buccleuch, i. 325-334. Tweeddale’s efforts encouraged the government to reduce the fine imposed on the infant countess by half. He also took the opportunity to advance the concerns ‘anent the public debt’ of another of his friends (and ‘debtor to my father’), the earl of Lothian.43Corresp. of Earls of Ancram and Lothian (2 vols. Edinburgh, 1875), ii. 384, 394.

Tweeddale’s improved relations with the English authorities are shown by the reports that he was to be included in the new Scottish council, which were current in April 1655, although he was absent from the final list of councillors agreed later in the year.44Clarke Pprs. iii. 32. Despite this disappointment, Tweeddale was treated with much greater courtesy by Monck from the spring of 1655, and he received government support in collecting the Dunfermline rents, reducing assessments due from the Fife estates.45Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVII, unfol.: 29 May 1655, 16 June 1655. He had high hopes of the new council in Edinburgh, led by the Irish peer Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), telling Lothian in the weeks before their arrival that ‘the council … shall be sufficiently empowered in the affairs of this nation’ that a solution to the financial crisis might be achieved.46Ancram Corresp. ii. 395; NRS, GD40/2/5/81. In December 1655 Tweeddale was involved in talks which led to the closer involvement of Scots in local government, ‘that the shires might engage to live peaceably and the English to diminish their forces’.47Wariston Diary, iii. 19. In 1656 he was duly included in the new commissions for the peace and assessments for Edinburgh, Haddingtonshire and Peebleshire, where his own patrimonial estates lay.48Acts Parl. Scot. vi. part 2, pp. 839-41; Scot. and Protectorate, ed. Firth, 312-3. In August of that year he received confirmation of the Castle Maynes estates in Peeblesshire.49Reg. Gt. Seal Scot. 1652-9, pp. 233-4. A few days later, on 20 August 1656, Tweeddale was elected as MP for Haddingtonshire, on his interest as a local landowner, but presumably with the approval of the Scottish council.50C219/45, unfol.; NRS, GD28/1736.

Tweeddale’s activities at Westminster demonstrate how his private concerns came first, followed by his concern for Scotland, with the survival of the protectorate coming a poor third. They also show his detachment from factional groupings. Enjoying links with all the major factions in Westminster and Whitehall, Tweeddale was able to change his position as it suited him. During the quiet days of September 1656 he seems to have been eager to demonstrate his loyalty to the protectorate, being named to committees to renounce the title of Charles Stuart, to manage Scottish affairs, to ensure the security of the protector, and to continue the ordinances passed since the last Parliament.51CJ vii. 425a, 426b, 429a, 429b; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 119. In October, however, Tweeddale was diverted from Westminster by the need to support the Protester agents at Whitehall, working alongside the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*).52Wariston Diary, iii. 52. He also lobbied for the leading Protester, Sir Archibald Johnston* of Wariston, not to lose his position as clerk of the registers, attending both Broghill and Cromwell on his behalf, with the protector giving ‘a good answer with many expressions of goodwill to him’.53Wariston Diary, iii. 46, 51. On 4 December Tweeddale supported Scottish interests more broadly, opposing the army interest (led, in this case, by Edward Whalley and Adam Baynes) in supporting the confirmation of burgh rights in the new Scottish union bill, which he saw as reserving the privileges, not confirming rights by a new law.54Burton’s Diary, i. 15. By the beginning of January 1657, however, the factional heat had risen, and Tweeddale publicly supported John Lambert and the army interest, acting as teller in favour of giving the militia bill its second reading on 29 January.55CJ vii. 483b. In this move, Tweeddale was apparently motivated by his private concerns, which encouraged him to court the powerful: for in January 1657 the Buccleuch dispute broke out again, with Tweeddale apparently lobbying those of influence at Whitehall (including Lambert) to secure the infant countess as a wife for his own son. The countess of Wemyss warned the rival claimant, Gideon Scott of Highchester, to engage Sir Andrew Kerr* ‘to have an eye on Tweeddale and his designs, for he is not idle to our hurt if he have power’.56Scotts of Buccleuch, i. 345, 349.

The defeat of the militia bill, and the rising influence of the civilian interest led by Lord Broghill, caused Tweeddale to think again. This was partly prudence, but once again, his change of line coincided with a private case: on 19 March Tweeddale petitioned the protector for support against Dunfermline’s creditors, and to gain money promised to the earl in the 1640s.57CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 31-2. He followed this with a further petition on 14 May.58CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 374. Despite his earlier support for the army interest, from early March until the end of May, Tweeddale supported the civilian interest. He was active on committees to bring in the new constitution, known as the Remonstrance, in March; and at the end of March and beginning of April he was appointed to committees to present the Humble Petition and Advice and to answer the protector’s scruples.59CJ vii. 499b, 502a, 524a, 521b. Tweeddale’s support for the new constitution led him to vote in favour of including the offer of the crown to Cromwell in the Humble Petition on 25 March.60Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 23 (E.935.5). Tweeddale was also selected with Lord Eure to lead the speaker to the Painted Chamber when the revised Humble Petition was presented to Cromwell on 25 May.61Burton’s Diary, ii. 123. Despite his public support for Broghill and the promoters of the Humble Petition, Tweeddale refused to follow them in other policies. When debating the distribution of the assessments in Scotland on 30 May, Tweeddale opposed the Scottish council’s line (promoted by Sir Edward Rodes), arguing that new arrangements should be decided within the Scottish committee.62Burton’s Diary, ii. 163. On 13 June Tweeddale again broke with Broghill and his allies by acting as teller against the abatement of £2,000 from the Irish assessments, which, it was feared, would increase the burden on Scotland.63CJ vii. 557a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 247.

More seriously, in June 1657 Tweeddale rejoined the army interest in support of the radical changes in the Additional Petition and Advice, and especially article four, restricting the Scottish franchise by excluding former royalists. Tweeddale was present when the article was debated on 15 June, and startled even the Protester agents by ‘changing’ his stance at the last moment. Wariston later claimed that Tweeddale had ‘met with him’ and ‘after my information’ decided to support Lambert and the army interest in the Commons.64Wariston Diary, iii. 87-8. Wariston’s rather garbled account is supported by a letter from the Resolutioner agent, James Sharp, who says that Lambert would have been defeated ‘if in the very nick, a little before two of the clock, the earl of Tweeddale had not come in and interposed that which Lambert, taking to be the sense of that party [the Protesters], gave the stop, to the closing of the business’. Sharp was furious, and accosted Tweeddale in the lobby afterwards, ‘and was very free with him about his carriage on that business, and told him plainly that he had acted in it contrary to his light, and for the carnal interest of a party’. As Sharp concluded, ‘I told him he might miss his end, which for all his fawning he is like to do’.65Consultations ed. Stephen, ii. 43-4.

Sharp insinuated that Tweeddale had thrown in his lot with Lambert for hope of private gain; and this allegation was well founded. In the last weeks of the sitting Tweeddale’s private interests had again taken precedence. On 29 April, Lambert’s Scottish ally, John Swinton had (in a gesture no doubt designed to flatter Tweeddale) offered a proviso in the Scottish donative bill, allowing a pardon to Tweeddale’s uncle, the earl of Callander. With alacrity, ‘Lord Tweeddale and Lord Broghill seconded that motion’, and when it was decided to frame the matter as a separate bill, he joined Swinton, Broghill, Lambert and Howard as its draftsmen.66CJ vii. 527b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 76-7. The line-up suggests that this bill was supposed to be apolitical, but in the weeks that followed the factional initiative shifted from Broghill back to Lambert, encouraged by the former’s incapacity from an attack of gout. The Callander bill was still pending when the fourth clause of the Additional Petition was debated on 15 June, and Tweeddale may have had its survival in mind when he once again curried favour with Lambert. The bill itself reached its committee-stage on 17 and 18 June, and Tweeddale was prominent in its deliberation. With George Lockhart I and Sir James McDowell he was selected to investigate the case and report back to the committee and then to the Commons.67NLS, MS 7032, f. 97. On 19 June, Tweeddale himself reported to the House, and Callander’s pardon was passed.68CJ vii. 557b, 563a. His factional gamble had apparently paid off.

Despite significant gains, Tweeddale’s financial problems were not settled by the 1656-7 sitting of Parliament. The matter of the Dunfermline money was eventually passed by the protectoral council (with Monck’s backing), but not until September, and even this did little to help the encumbered estate, which was paying £350 a year in rents, ‘the sums owing him being near £30,000 sterling’.69CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 31-2, 42, 83, 89; NLS, MS 7104, ff. 25-6. Callander’s pardon had been passed, but his lands were in a poor state, and the precise nature of Dunfermline’s obligation towards Callander was still causing controversy in 1660.70NLS, MS 9638, f. 34. Tweeddale’s pursuit of the Buccleuch heiress proved no less problematic, and it was this issue that would dominate his involvement in the third protectorate Parliament. In January 1659 Tweeddale was again returned as MP for Haddingtonshire. Before he could start for Westminster, events overtook him; for on 9 February the countess of Buccleuch was married to Walter Scott, son of his old rival, the laird of Highchester. Tweeddale immediately protested, and, claiming the extreme youth of the parties as a pretext, persuaded Monck to take the countess into protective custody.71Scotts of Buccleuch, i. 352-64, 370. On 7 March Tweeddale wrote to Secretary John Thurloe* from Edinburgh, concerning ‘the disposal of the heir of Buccleuch … whereupon the disgrace and ruin of a peer may follow’, and asking that the new protector, Richard Cromwell*, intervene to prevent the countess’s mother – who had ‘abused her trust’ – from securing a marrriage against her will.72Bodl. Rawl. A.63, f. 241. He also requested that the countess’s younger sister, Lady Anna, would also be removed from her mother’s care.73Scotts of Buccleuch, i. 358, 364. Tweeddale was at last ready to travel south on 1 April, when he was issued with a post warrant, but it is doubtful whether he reached Westminster before Richard was forced by the army to close the Parliament on 22 April.74Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLIX, f. 46.

Tweeddale’s activities in 1659-60 again resembled a balancing act. In December 1659 there were rumours that Lord Brechin, the earl of Southesk and other royalists were meeting in Tweeddale’s house in Edinburgh, and Monck was urged to arrest them all.75Clarke Pprs. iv. 200-1. Yet in the same period there were allegations that Tweeddale was a partisan for his old associate, John Lambert, and he may even have taken a calculated stance, agreeing with the earl of Rothes to side with different factions with the aim of aiding each other once the conflict was resolved.76Scotts of Buccleuch, i. 372. Such bet-hedging would not be out of character for Tweeddale. As Gilbert Burnet commented, waspishly, ‘he had loose thoughts both of civil and ecclesiastical government; and seemed to think that what form soever was uppermost was to be complied with’.77G. Burnet, Hist. of his own Time (6 vols. 1833), 188-9. Tweeddale was able to negotiate the restoration of the Stuart monarchy smoothly enough, despite his continuing links with the disgraced Protester faction, and soon insinuated himself with the duke of Lauderdale and other influential men, being made a Scottish privy councillor on 13 July 1661, and president of the same five days later.78Ancram Corresp. ii. 450; Scots Peerage, viii. 452. Tweeddale was not without some loyalty to the old regime, however, and in September 1661 he was the only man to oppose the death sentence passed by the Scottish Parliament against the leading Protester, James Guthrie, and as a result was imprisoned for a short period in Edinburgh Castle.79Diary of Alexander Brodie of Brodie ed. D. Laing (Aberdeen, 1863), 211, 215. He was back in favour by May 1662, and from 1667 until 1674 joined Sir Robert Murray and the earl of Kincardine as the effective ruler of Scotland, using his influence to mitigate the severe measures taken against Covenanters by the restoration government. By this time, however, Tweeddale had fallen out with Lauderdale, who secured his removal from office in 1674. He was restored to the privy council in 1682 and continued in office in 1685, although he was opposed to James II. Under William and Mary, Tweeddale served as lord of the treasury and lord high chancellor, and was created marquess of Tweeddale in 1694. Implicated in the ill-fated Darien scheme, Tweeddale was again sacked in 1696, and was out of favour on his death in August 1697. In his later years, and despite his political successes, the financial problems which had so preoccupied him during the 1650s increased. Although Tweeddale had settled his estates on his eldest son in 1684, two years later his position as security for the earl of Dunfermline finally caught up with him, and he was forced to sell the ancestral estates in Peeblesshire, and relinquish the hereditary sheriffdom which the family had held for over two hundred years. On his death, Tweeddale was succeeded by his eldest son, the 2nd marquess, who, in another example of the father’s political shrewdness, had married in 1666 Mary, the only daughter and heiress of the duke of Lauderdale.80Scots Peerage, viii. 452-8; NRS, CC8/8/77.