WEMYSS, Sir John (d. 1680), of Bogie, Fife.

Sir John Wemyss of Bogie came from a family long established in Fife, where they owned substantial estates and also had interests in the local coal and salt working around the burgh of Kirkcaldy. His grandfather, Sir James of Bogie, was vice-admiral of Scotland under James VI, sat in the Scottish Parliaments between 1605 and 1617, and was clearly a man of high standing in Scotland as well as in his shire. After his father’s premature death, Sir John became his grandfather’s heir. In 1635 he was married to a sister of another prominent Fife gentleman, Sir John Aytoun of that ilk, and thereafter received part of the Bogie estate which eventually came into his possession in its entirety on the old man’s death in 1640.14Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 727-8.

There is no evidence of Wemyss’s activity in the first phase of the covenanting rebellion, but during the mid-1640s he emerged as a committed supporter of the Covenant, serving on the commission for the loan and tax and the committee of estates from 1643, and as commissioner for Fife in the convention of estates in 1644. In 1645-6 he was appointed as a commissioner to the general assembly of the Kirk, served on commissions to solve the financial problems of the covenanting cause, and was elected for Fife in the Scottish Parliament. In the summer of 1646 Wemyss was among those who hoped to make their peace with the king. He was made a member of the Scottish privy council on 9 September 1646, having been recommended for a vacancy by the king himself, ‘knowing [his] worth and abilities’, and in February 1647 he was chosen as commissary-general and treasurer of the army.15Reg. PC Scot. 1544-1660, pp. 55, 58; Scot. under the Covenanters ed. Stevenson, 198. This attachment to the Stuarts grew stronger in 1647-8, when Wemyss became a leading supporter of the Engagement. He was appointed to the committee of estates in 1647 and the committee of war in 1648, and became ‘deeply engaged upon his own credit in great sums of money applied to the public’.16Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 727; Acts Parl. Scot. vi. pt. 2, p. 25. The collapse of the Engagers’ cause after the defeat of the duke of Hamilton’s army at Preston resulted in Wemyss’s disgrace, and he was dismissed as commissary-general on 27 September 1648.17Scot. under the Covenanters ed. Stevenson, 198. On the return of Charles Stuart in 1650-1 he again became active, as colonel of the regiment raised in Fife and Kinross and as a member of the committee for war.18Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 727. During the spring of 1651 he was involved in raising troops and supplying arms for the disastrous Worcester campaign.19Scot. under the Covenanters ed. Stevenson, 115, 150, 170.

Despite his support for the Engagement in 1648 and for Charles Stuart in 1650-1, Wemyss had few problems becoming reconciled with the English authorities during the later 1650s. In March 1654 his properties were given ‘protection’ by the government, in return for bonds of security for his good behaviour.20Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLV, unfol.: 27 Mar. 1654. By June 1655 he was one of the commissioners for valuing the assessments in Fife, and in December of that year he was appointed to the assessment commission for the shire.21Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVII, unfol.: 16 June 1655; Acts Parl. Scot. vi. pt. 2, p. 839. In an election on 13 August 1656 Wemyss was returned as MP for Fife and Kinross, in a meeting of the local gentry which included four other Wemyss lairds and his brother-in-law, Sir John Aytoun of that ilk, and which was presided over by his cousin, the earl of Wemyss.22C219/45, unfol. Sir John may have sought election in the hope of protecting the Scottish coal and salt trades, for himself and others (including the earl of Wemyss), but he was also an acceptable candidate for the Edinburgh government.23P. J. Pinckney, ‘The Scottish Representation in the Cromwellian Parliament of 1656’, SHR lxvi. 108. On 19 August, the president of the Scottish council, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), welcomed Wemyss’s election, describing him as ‘an honest, sober man’, and he was provided with a pass and post-warrant for three horses to go south on the same day.24TSP v. 322; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 19 Aug. 1656.

Once at Westminster Wemyss seems to have devoted his energies to supporting the introduction of the Humble Petition and Advice. He was later listed as one of those who voted to include the offer of the crown to Cromwell in the first article of the Humble Petition on 25 March 1657, and his two committee appointments in this Parliament both concerned the new constitution.25Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 23 (E.935.5). On 9 April he was one of those appointed to receive the protector’s doubts and scruples, and on 27 May he was chosen to ‘methodise’ the votes on those scruples which became the Additional Petition and Advice.26CJ vii. 521b, 540b. Major-general John Disbrowe* named Wemyss (alongside Sir William Lockhart* of Lee) as one of the former Engagers present in the House when restrictions on the Scottish franchise under the Additional Petition were debated on 15 June.27Burton’s Diary, ii. 250. He probably attended the second sitting of this Parliament, as he was granted a pass and postwarrant to London on 23 January 1658.28Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 23 Jan. 1658.

Wemyss’s loyalty to the protectorate was not reciprocated. In July 1657 George Monck* blocked his efforts to have his brother, David Wemyss of Balfarg, made conjunct commissary of Fife, in favour of the son of Sir Andrew Bruce of Earlshall.29TSP vi. 383. It was only in March 1660 that Wemyss received some encouragement, when he was appointed as a Scottish judge by the English council of state; although it is doubtful that the new bench ever convened, and the appointment lapsed in May, with the return of the king.30Nicoll, Diary, 278. After the Restoration, Wemyss fared little better. He was not included in the new Scottish privy council, and was not appointed to any other major position, although he was involved in the commissions for supply and excise, and in October 1669 he was elected as commissioner for Fife in the Scottish Parliament.31Diary of John Lamont ed. G.R. Kintoch (Edinburgh, 1830), 213. Wemyss’s losses in support of the Engagement were recognised by the Scottish Parliament in 1661, but repayment was suspended in 1670, his other financial perquisites were rescinded in 1674, and at the time of his death (shortly before October 1680) he was in the tolbooth in Edinburgh as a prisoner for debt.32Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 728; HMC Portland, x. 153. Wemyss’s bitterness at his treatment may have turned him against the regime by the 1670s. In 1675 he took, as his second wife, the daughter of the executed Protester and noted enemy of the Stuarts, Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston – a woman of strong political opinions, who had been implicated in the riot with which radicals greeted the Restoration in Edinburgh in 1660.33Hay of Craignethan Diary ed. A.G. Reid (Edinburgh, 1901), pp. xxi-xxii. Wemyss did not have any surviving children with either wife, and on his death his estates, with the lairdship of Bogie, passed to his nephew James, son of Davis Wemyss of Balfarg.34Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 728.