HOPE, Sir James (1614-61), of Hopetoun, Linlithgowshire.

The Hopes were a well established lowland gentry family, with lands in Fife and Linlithgowshire. Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall was an eminent lord advocate and a baronet, and his sons included Sir John of Craighall, who succeeded to the baronetcy, and three knights: Sir Thomas of Kerse, Sir Alexander of Granton and Sir James of Hopetoun. Although only the sixth son, James Hope’s education was extensive and expensive. He entered Edinburgh University in 1632 (graduating in July 1635, at the age of 21) and was then sent to France to study law at Orleans University. On his return to Scotland in the winter of 1637-8, Hope was furnished with a suitable bride – Ann Foulis, the daughter of an Edinburgh gold merchant, who came with a substantial dowry, in the form of the rich mining area of Leadhills in Lanarkshire. In the next few years, Hope built up a thriving export business, supplying lead (and probably small amounts of gold) to the Dutch markets, and in 1641 he was made governor of the Scottish mint. In 1645 Hope made a lucrative five-year contract to supply lead to Zealand merchants, and in 1646 he visited first London and then Holland, returning via the lead workings in Derbyshire. Hope’s surviving letterbooks suggest that trade was a constant concern, even when politics came to dominate his life in the later 1640s and early 1650s.16Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. ix. 129, 130-1, 137, 140; Oxford DNB.

Hope’s entry into public life was relatively slow, despite the prominence of his father as a Covenanter, and of his two elder brothers, Sir John and Sir Thomas, who were both lords of the session. On the death of the latter in 1643 there were moves to appoint Hope as his successor, but they were unsuccessful, and although Hope served on the committees of war during the mid-1640s, he did not attain high office until the purges that followed the collapse of the royalist Engagement.17Oxford DNB. He sat for Stirlingshire in the Scottish Parliament which opened in February 1649, was made an ordinary lord of session in June of that year, and in 1650 represented Lanarkshire in Parliament.18Young, Parliaments of Scot. i. 359. He accepted the return of Charles Stuart in the summer of 1650, and the Edinburgh records show him involved in the committee of estate’s plans for the defence of the city as late as 17 August 1650.19Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 238, 257-8. After the defeat of the Scottish army at Dunbar, Hope supported the radical opponents of the Stuarts, known as the Protesters (or Remonstrants), but his political ideas were becoming increasingly unorthodox in this period, and in November the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*) denounced him as ‘a main enemy to king and kingdom’ and as ‘a plotter and contriver, assister and abettor of all the mischiefs that have befallen the kingdom’. In the row that followed, Hope merely confirmed his enemies’ suspicions, by calling upon Charles Stuart to ‘speedily treat with [Oliver] Cromwell*, quit his interest in England and Ireland … and content himself with this country till he had a better opportunity to recover the rest’.20Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. iii. 103; Oxford DNB. Hope clearly intended this to be a Parthian shot. At the beginning of January he told the earl of Lothian that, having withdrawn from the committee of estates, and fearing further action a against him, he ‘therefore resolved, rather than it should be so, to retire myself for a time out of the kingdom’.21Ancram Corresp. ii. 325-6. Before he could leave for the border, the committee of estates arrested him and his brothers, Sir John and Sir Alexander, and they remained confined to their houses until the destruction of the Scottish army at Worcester in September 1651.22Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. iii. 102-4; D. Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scot. (1977), 190, 196.

Hope’s militancy had brought him to the attention of Oliver Cromwell as early as December 1650.23Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 365, 369n. When Lady Anna Hope fled into England in June 1651, she was welcomed and given a pass to go ‘beyond seas’, possibly to Holland.24CSP Dom. 1651, p. 529. The victorious Cromwellians, advancing against the remaining royalist forces in Scotland in the winter of 1651-2, treated Hope and his brothers as friends. A newsletter from Dundee, dated 1 January 1652, reported that John Lambert* and Richard Deane* lodged at Sir John Hope’s house at Craighall in Fife, and were attended by Sir James Hope and John Swinton* of Swinton.25Scot. and Commonwealth, ed. Firth, 30. The only account of the deliberations at Craighall, in Hope’s private diary, was later excised, but it is probable that union between the two nations was on the agenda, and the group may also have discussed ‘the larger aspirations and apocalyptic hopes’ they all shared.26A.H. Williamson, ‘Union with England Traditional, Union with England Radical’, EHR cx. 312-13; Oxford DNB. When the commissioners for the administration of justice were appointed in April 1652, both Craighall and Swinton were included in their number.27Smith, ‘Scotland and Cromwell’, 72, 75. Hope’s role in the administration was less formal than that of his brother, but there is no doubt as to his close connection with the English regime. In April 1652 he advised the government on the instructions for sheriffs and commissaries, taking the opportunity to urge them to consider ‘a more equal and unsubordinate constitution of the two nations in the desired union than anything as yet held out’, and, in the short term, to include more Scots in the administration.28Williamson, ‘Sir James Hope’, 313-5.

In May 1653 Hope joined his brother on the commission for the administration of justice.29CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 312. In the same month he was chosen as one of the five Scottish members to sit in the Nominated Assembly at Westminster.30Nicoll, Diary, 109, 111-2. The initial approach to Hope came from the commander-in-chief in Scotland, Robert Lilburne*, who was instructed ‘to sound my freedom to come up to London to be assisting there’. At first, Hope was reluctant to accept, offering to ‘own them, or even to act under them, in Scotland, but not to go out of Scotland, nor to meddle in state affairs’, but when the official summons arrived, he consented to it, telling Cromwell that ‘I look upon what hath lately been acted by you, whatever by man be in as to the way, yet as to the end, it was of the Lord’.31Williamson, ‘Sir James Hope’, 317. He travelled south in the same carriage as his fellow MP John Swinton.32Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. iii. 158-9.

Arriving in London on 23 June, Hope was active in Parliament for the first two weeks of July, being named to committees to decide the membership of the council of state, to manage Scottish affairs, and to consider the state of the treasuries in the three nations.33Scot. Hist. Sc. Misc. iii. 160; CJ vii. 282a, 283b, 284b, 285a. He also made a ‘speech for the Jews’, which presumably supported readmission as a way of hastening the coming apocalypse.34Oxford DNB. From mid-July, however, Hope’s attentions were diverted away from the Commons, as he was added to the sixth council of state, where he became an active member, attending 72 of the 140 meetings held from then until its dissolution on 31 October.35CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. xxxiv-xl. The Journal suggests that Hope was almost entirely absent from the House throughout this period, although in September he waited with anticipation for the promised bill of union between England and Scotland.36CJ vii. 334b; Williamson, ‘Sir James Hope’, 318. Unsurprisingly, his conciliar duties were largely confined to the Irish and Scottish committee (to which he was added on 19 Aug.), and he dealt with such matters as the needs of garrisons, preaching at Edinburgh and the imprisonment of John Maitland, earl of Lauderdale. He was also appointed to council committees to suppress scandalous pamphlets and regulate printing presses, and his familiarity with the Netherlands (and perhaps the Dutch tongue) probably influenced his inclusion on a committee to examine captured enemy sailors.37CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 25, 94, 140, 199, 200, 209, 211, 218. Hope was also a supporter of Anglo-Scottish union, and in September complained of the slowness of the progress of the union bill, which he feared would not be passed before the end of the year.38Oxford DNB. During October Hope made occasional appearances in the House, sitting on the committee on the bill for establishing a high court of justice on 13 October, and managing the bill to confirm the imposition on ale and beer granted to the city of Edinburgh.39CSP Dom. 1654, p. 69; CJ vii. 334b, 343a. In his support for Edinburgh’s privileges, Hope was acting in collaboration with the other Scottish MPs.40Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 325. On 10 November he was added to the committee to consider a new body of the law in England.41CJ vii. 348b.

Hope’s renewed activity in the final weeks of the Nominated Assembly may have been prompted by his growing dissatisfaction with the Cromwellian regime. During the summer of 1653 Hope had been on good terms with Cromwell, and Lilburne recommended him as a man capable of unravelling the complexities of Scottish law, but this was not to last.42Scot. and Commonwealth, ed. Firth, 191. Indeed, Hope’s absence from the membership of the seventh council of state, elected on 1 November, may suggest that his radicalism had become increasingly unacceptable to the lord general during the autumn. The rift did not become final until the beginning of December. According to Hope’s own account, the committee report on tithes caused divisions between those who favoured a state church and their radical opponents who rejected the parochial structure altogether, demanding ‘that the antichristian constitution might once be unhinged’. A vote on the report, taken on 10 December, narrowly rejected tithes, and ‘it was observed that the English in this vote were equal and the Scots did cast it, for of us four only Colonel [William] Lockhart* went out’. This put Cromwell ‘in a great chaff’, and he finally lost patience with an assembly that had threatened ‘the dissolution of all bonds and shaking the very foundations’ of church and state. When a majority of MPs resigned their powers to Cromwell, a small group of militants remained in the Commons, including Hope and his Scottish colleague Alexander Jaffray*, and had to be evicted by soldiers.43Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. iii. 163-7. The crucial role of the Scottish MPs in defeating the motion, and the prominence of Hope among those who refused to resign their commissions, had a profound effect on Cromwell, and during the early months of the protectorate, Hope was gradually frozen out of the government.

At first, there was little sign of Hope’s fall from grace in Scotland. Lilburne continued to pay his salary in advance, and in February 1654 arms taken from the house at Hopetoun were returned there.44Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLIV, unfol.; 26 Jan., 18 June 1654; XLV, unfol.: 26 Jan., 24 Feb., 19 Apr. 1654. Hope was also included in the commission for the sale of forfeited estates in April.45Oxford DNB. But the advent of George Monck* (who replaced Lilburne as commander-in-chief) was followed by the removal of Hope from the commission for the administration of justice in June.46Clarke Pprs. v. 190. The Edinburgh-based diarist John Nicoll, found Hope’s dismissal hard to fathom. When the new commission arrived in Scotland on 7 July 1654, ‘all the former commissioners were inserted, only my Lord Hopetoun, a Scot, and very fine judicious man, was overseen, for what cause it was not known, but the land sustained much prejudice through his removal, for he was a good and upright judge’.47Nicoll, Diary, 132. The leading Protester, Sir Archibald Johnston* of Wariston, was also puzzled: ‘I was much taken up with the news of the protector scoring my Lord Hopetoun’s name out of the roll of the judges’, and took great pains to persuade Hope of the benefits of retirement, ‘but I apprehended by his eye that he would turn melancholious’.48Wariston Diary, ii. 276, 280-1. During the next few years, the government refused to effect a reconciliation with Hope, even when it found qualified Scottish judges in short supply. In November 1655 the president of the Scottish council, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), admitted that ‘Sir James Hope was under consideration’, but added that he had ‘opposed it, he being a person who had not so well carried himself to his highness at the dissolution of the Little Parliament, and had been laid aside by the my lord protector himself’.49TSP iv. 269; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 214. In a personal petition to Cromwell in January 1656, Hope said he waited patiently ‘in my private station, a hiding place until the indignation should be over-passed’ and was resolved to make a ‘peaceable submission’ to the present regime, even if he could not (or perhaps would not) serve it in a public capacity.50Williamson, ‘Sir James Hope’, 320.

In the later 1650s, Hope’s political career began to recover. There are signs that Cromwell was beginning to relent, perhaps prompted by John Lambert, who (as Swinton attested) said in February 1657 that he regretted Hope’s ‘removal from public employment’.51Williamson, ‘Sir James Hope’, 320. After years of little or no contact with the government, in the winter of 1657-8 Hope was sufficiently confident of acceptance to travel to London in person to petition for relief for the Earl Marischal, whose daughter and co-heir he had taken as his second wife in the previous October.52Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 23 Dec. 1657; Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. ix. 140. On 25 February the Scottish committee at Whitehall referred the matter back to Edinburgh, with the recommendation that if the facts of the petition were true, then the earl might be allowed to sell lands to pay his fines.53CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 282, 301. The Marischal case was pursued by Hope during the summer of 1658, and he also lobbied for the confirmation of privileges and exemptions previously allowed to his own lead mines.54CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 67, 70, 76, 78. Despite some concessions on these personal matters, it was only the fall of the protectorate that brought Hope back to his earlier political prominence. In the summer of 1659, as the commonwealth regime considered the appointment of Scottish judges, it reported that Hope was ‘able, honest, and a known commonwealthman, for which he was put out of commission by the late lord protector’.55Scot. and Protectorate, ed. Firth, 385. There were reports of Hope’s imminent promotion in October of that year, but his restoration to the bench did not come until February 1660.56Wariston Diary, iii. 141, 148; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 146.

Hope survived the Restoration, but was not continued as lord of session. In June 1660 he tried to use his influence with Lauderdale to gain employment for his brother, Sir Alexander of Granton, but with little success.57Williamson, ‘Sir James Hope’, 321. Thereafter, Hope returned to his commercial interests. In October 1661 he made another visit to the Netherlands, to renew his business contracts and to visit his son, who was a student at the University of Leiden. During his travels he contracted ‘the Flanders sickness’, and died immediately after his return to Scotland, on 23 November, aged 47.58Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. ix. 140-1. Hope’s testament, approved at Edinburgh in 1662, demonstrates the cohesion of the extended family, as the estate was left in the hands of trustees, including his brother Sir Alexander of Granton, and his nephew Alexander of Kerse.59NRS, CC8/8/70. His widow married Sir Archibald Murray* of Blackbarony, who was a nephew of the wife of Sir John Hope of Craighall.60Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. iii. 104-5. Of Hope’s 15 children, only two sons and a daughter lived to adulthood. His eldest son from his first marriage, John, succeeded to the estates, and married a daughter of the 4th earl of Haddington in 1668. Their son was created earl of Hopetoun in 1703, and his descendants became marquesses of Linlithgow in 1902.61Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. iii. 105-6; Scots Peerage, iv. 493, 504.