STEWART, James (d. 1665), the younger, of Mains, Lanarkshire, and Burray, Orkney.

The Stewarts of Mains were descended from the Stewarts of Garlies in Wigtownshire, and James’s father, William, was a younger brother of the 1st earl of Galloway.9CB. William’s interests moved north on his marriage to the daughter of James Stewart of Burray, an island between the Orkney mainland and South Ronaldsay, and in the 1630s he was regularly appointed to Orcadian commissions by the Scottish privy council. He was ordered to impose the 1580 confession and the 1589 general band in September 1638, and was convenor of the commission of the peace appointed in November 1639.10Regs. PC Scot. 1635-6, pp. 39, 309; 1638-43, pp. 77, 140. Of William Stewart’s four sons, three were to fight with James Graham, 5th earl (from 1644 1st marquess) of Montrose: Henry was killed at Auldearn in 1645; William was the marquess’s adjutant at Philiphaugh in 1646; and Archibald survived the ill-fated Carbisdale expedition in 1650, only to be captured at Worcester in 1651.11CB; ‘Orcadian Families’, pp. 1349-50. The eldest son, James, the younger laird, seems to have remained politically uncommitted, although there can be little doubt that he shared the royalist allegiances of his father and brothers in the 1640s. James Stewart’s election for the first protectorate Parliament of 1654 therefore needs some explanation.

The reason for Stewart’s acceptability to the Cromwellian authorities lay in his association with the earls of Morton, who had held the lordship of Orkney since 1643. Although a staunch royalist, the earl of Morton was one of the Scottish peers courted by the English in the early 1650s, and there were efforts to facilitate the collection of the lordship’s rents, administered on Morton’s behalf by the earl of Dunfermline in the winter of 1654-5.12Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, unfol.: 28 Sept. 1654, 12, 22 Jan. 1655. William Stewart the elder was Morton’s factor (or land agent) in the early 1650s.13Orkney Archives, D38/2541/3, 9. James Stewart was also heavily involved with the Morton estates by this time: he had been Morton’s feuer in South Ronaldsay since 1653; between 1653 and 1655 he was acting as factor of the rents of the earldom in both Orkney and Shetland, working with Dunfermline; and he continued to act in this capacity in Shetland at least until November 1659.14The Orkney Parishes ed. Storer Clouston, 201; Shetland Archives, GD150/2534B/2-3; GD150/2535A; GD150/2150; GD150/2200; Orkney Archives, D38/2541/10-11. Stewart’s involvement with Morton probably explains not only his election for the northern isles in 1654, but also the lateness of his departure for London. Dunfermline was given a pass to travel to Orkney and Shetland on 28 September, and Stewart may have been required to attend the earl before leaving for Westminster.15Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, unfol.: 28 Sept. 1654. The English government evidently thought his tardiness justified. On 19 October the commander of the army in Scotland, George Monck*, asked his agent George Downing* to use his influence at Whitehall ‘in regard of the distance of place of Mr James Stewart of Mains his coming from Orkney, being chosen a Member of Parliament, that he will further him in his excuse’; Monck also issued a pass and post warrant for Stewart to travel to London more quickly.16Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, unfol.: 19 Oct. 1654. Although Stewart is not mentioned in the records of Parliament, there is no doubt that he attended the session. He was absent from Orkney until April 1655, when granted a pass to return across the Pentland Firth, and in May 1655 Monck made a passing reference to ‘the charge of a commissioner sent from Orkney to the late Parliament’.17Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, unfol.: 19 Apr. 1655; XLVII, unfol.: 14 May 1655. Stewart’s later activities are difficult to trace. He was named to the assessment commissions for Orkney and Shetland from December 1655, and was issued with passes to go to Orkney in May and June 1657.18Acts Parl. Scot. vi, pt. 2, 841; A. and O.; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 2 May, 26 June 1657. In July of that year he was granted a lease all the teinds (or tithes) and rents of the parsonage in the bishopric of Orkney, acquired by Edinburgh corporation in the 1640s.19Edinburgh City Archives, SL1/1/19, ff. 223v-4v.

Stewart remained at Burray in the late 1650s and early 1660s, but seems to have retired from political life. He appears in various legal deeds in 1661, 1663 and (posthumously) in 1666, although his brother and heir, William, was by this time more active in defence of the family’s interests, and as early as 1659 was described as ‘laird of Mains’.20SRO, Register of Deeds (Index), i. 470; iii. 447; vi. 446; Regs. PC Scot. 1661-4, p. 304; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLIX, unfol.: 11 Feb. 1659. This sharing of responsibility suggests that James was in bad health for several years before his death in 1665. William was in turn succeeded by his brother Archibald, who was created a baronet by James II in 1687 and died two years later. The second baronet, also Archibald, sat for Orkney and Shetland in the Scottish Parliaments of 1702-7. His son and heir, Sir James Stewart, continued the family’s royalist traditions by fighting for the Jacobites at Culloden. With his death in prison in 1746 the baronetcy became dormant.21CB; Eric Linklater, Orkney and Shetland (5th edn., 1990), 100-1.