WILKIE, John (d. bef. 1692), of Broomhouse, Lanarkshire.

John Wilkie of Broomhouse was descended from William Wilkie, who was commissioner for the Scottish Parliament for Lanark in 1581 and 1593 and baillie of the burgh between 1569 and 1592.3Parliaments of Scot. ii. 732. The family had purchased the barony of Wamphrayflatt in Lanarkshire by 1580, and this property remained in the family’s hands at least until the 1660s.4Parliaments of Scot. ii. 732; NRS, GD 59/108. William Wilkie’s son, John Wilkie, purchased the barony of Foulden in Berwickshire in 1622, and his grandson, Sir John Wilkie of Foulden, was a figure of some importance in the 1640s and 1650s.5NRS, GD 59/84, 86. The exact relationship between the Foulden branch of the family and that of John Wilkie of Broomhouse is uncertain, although he and his elder brother, William Wilkie of Haghill, evidently had close connections with their Berwickshire cousins, as in 1655 they acquired a financial interest in the Foulden estate, holding the lands in return for a life-rent payable to Sir John and his wife.6NRS, CC9/7/29, p. 133; GD 59/107.

John Wilkie of Broomhouse had himself married into a prominent Glasgow family. His first wife, Isobel, was a daughter of James Bell and sister of Patrick Bell, both of whom had served as provost and commissioner for the burgh in the Scottish Parliaments between 1639 and 1644.7NRS, CC9/7/29, pp. 100, 133; Young, Parliaments of Scot. i. 46-7. The Wilkie family sided with the Covenanters, and their connections with the leaders of that movement included Archibald Johnston of Wariston*, who was related to the lairds of Foulden by marriage, and the Glasgow minister, Robert Baillie.8Wariston Diary, i. 3n; ii. 310. In January 1653, and again in July and December of that year, John Wilkie carried letters from Baillie to Presbyterian ministers in London asking for contributions to compensate those affected by the disastrous fire that had destroyed part of the city and left many of its inhabitants destitute. Baillie described Wilkie as Glasgow’s ‘agent’ or ‘commissioner’ in this business.9Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. iii. 204, 224, 226, 231.

Wilkie’s success as an agent presumably encouraged him to stand in the elections for the Lanark Burghs, which took place at Glasgow on 28 July 1654; and he was returned apparently without opposition.10Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, p. lvii; Extracts from Recs. of Burgh of Glasgow, 1630-62 (Glasgow, 1881), 292. Wilkie duly travelled to Westminster, where he received £60 from Glasgow ‘for his entertainment in attending their affairs’, although the other Lanark burghs were reluctant to pay up.11Extracts Recs. Glasgow, 300; Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 397. He may also have acted as informal agent to Wariston, who recorded on 29 August 1654 that he had ‘met with Mr John Wilkie’ prior to his departure for Westminster.12Wariston Diary, ii. 310. Nothing is known of Wilkie’s involvement in the proceedings of the Commons, but he remained in London for the next few months, as in June 1655 he received a letter from Glasgow ‘anent the farming of the excise’.13Extracts Recs. Glasgow, 1630-62, 315. His sojourn in London did not end well. On 15 July he wrote to Secretary John Thurloe* complaining that he had been put under arrest by Lieutenant-colonel Worsley, and asking that the protector and his council might consider his case, ‘both in regard of my public concernments for those poor distressed people of Glasgow and also of my own private occasions here at law, which in this term is to be heard, and will prove my ruin if I have not liberty to follow it’.14TSP iii. 554. The reason for Wilkie’s detention is not clear, but he seems to have been released shortly afterwards, and he was certainly back in Glasgow by August 1656, when he signed the indenture for the election of George Lockhart I* of Tarbrax as MP for Lanark Burghs.15C219/45, unfol. By then Wilkie’s financial position had improved with the death of his brother-in-law, Patrick Bell, in May 1656, as his wife was co-heiress.16NRS, CC/9/7/29, p. 100. Further good news came in December, when the convention of burghs responded to complaints from Glasgow by forcing the other burghs to pay their share of Wilkie’s expenses incurred as an MP two years’ earlier.17Recs. Convention of Royal Burghs, 436. Thereafter, Wilkie continued to act as messenger between Scotland and London. On 22 March 1659 he was granted a pass to go to the capital with servants and horses, and in June 1660 he carried letters between Robert Baillie and the earl of Lauderdale.18Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLIX, f. 41v; Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. iii. 407.

Nothing is known of Wilkie’s career after the Restoration until 1679, when the death of Sir John Wilkie of Foulden without a male heir caused a dispute over the inheritance. Although Foulden’s daughter and her husband, the Master of Ross, had assigned the estate to the earl of Dundonald, this was challenged by Wilkie, who demanded 14,000 merks to relinquish his own interest in it.19NRS, GD 59/120, 132. The case was not settled by the time of Wilkie’s death, in or before 1692, and was continued by his son, James.20Edinburgh City Archives, Moses’ Bundle 91, no. 3958.