Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/370

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impeachment for high treason. Argyll was executed, and Loudoun became apprehensive lest he too might share the same fate. In the following year, by an act ‘containing some exceptions from the Act of Indemnite,’ he was fined 12,000l. Scots. He died at Edinburgh on 15 March 1663, and was buried in the church of Loudoun, Ayrshire. Several of his speeches were printed in the form of pamphlets, and will be found among the political tracts in the British Museum. By his wife, Margaret, who survived him, he had two sons and two daughters. His eldest son, James, succeeded to the title, and died at Leyden. On the death of James, the fifth earl (a grandson of the second earl), the title descended to his only daughter, Flora, who married Francis, second earl of Moira, afterwards first marquis of Hastings. Upon the death of Henry, fourth marquis of Hastings, in 1868, his eldest sister became the Countess of Loudoun, and the title is now held by her son Charles, eleventh earl of Loudoun.

[George Crawfurd's Lives and Characters of the Officers of the Crown and State in Scotland (1726), i. 195–216; Sir R. Douglas's Peerage of Scotland (1813), ii. 148–9; Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice (1832), pp. 300–5; Clarendon's History (1826); Sir James Balfour's Historical Works (1825), vols. ii. iii. iv.; Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie (Bannatyne Club Publications, No. 71), 3 vols.]

G. F. R. B.

CAMPBELL, JOHN, first Earl of Breadalbane (1635–1716), was descended from the Glenorchy branch of the Campbell family, and was the only son of Sir John Campbell, tenth laird of Glenorchy, and Lady Mary Graham, daughter of William, earl of Strathearn. He actively assisted the rising under Glencairn for Charles II, which was suppressed by General Monck in 1654. Afterwards he entered into communications with General Monck, and strongly urged him to declare for a free parliament in order to obtain formal assent to the king's restoration. In the first parliament after the Restoration he sat as member for Argyllshire. His abilities at an early period won him considerable influence in the highlands, but he owed the chief rise in his fortunes to his pecuniary relations with George, sixth earl of Caithness. Being principal creditor of that nobleman, who had become hopelessly involved in debt, he obtained from him on 8 Oct. 1672 a deposition of his whole estates and earldom, with heritable jurisdictions and titles of honour, on condition that he took on himself the burden of the earl's debts. He was in consequence duly infeoffed in the lands and earldom on 27 Feb. 1673, the earl of Caithness reserving his life-rent of the title. On the death of the earl, Sir John Campbell obtained a patent creating him earl of Caithness, dated at Whitehall 25 June 1677. His right to the title and estates was, however, disputed by George Sinclair of Keiss, the earl's nephew and heir male, who also took forcible possession of his paternal lands of Keiss, Tester, and Northfield, which had been included in the deposition. The sheriff decided, as regards these estates, in favour of Campbell, and on Sinclair declining to remove, Campbell obtained on 7 June 1680 an order from the privy council against him, and defeated his followers at Wick with great slaughter. In July of the following year the privy council, under the authority of a reference from parliament, declared Sinclair entitled to the dignity of earl of Caithness, and in September following it was also found that he had been unwarrantably deprived of his paternal lands. The claims to the earldom of Caithness being thus decided in favour of Sinclair, Sir John Campbell on 13 Aug. 1681 obtained another patent creating him, instead, earl of Breadalbane and Holland, viscount of Tay and Pentland, lord Glenurchy, Benederaloch, Ormelie and Wick, with the precedency of the former patent. On the accession of James II in 1685 he was created a privy councillor.

At the time of the revolution Breadalbane was, next to his kinsman, the Earl of Argyll, the most powerful of the highland nobles, while he was not regarded by the other clans with the same uncompromising hostility as Argyll. His greed was indeed notorious, and his double-faced cunning made him feared and distrusted by many of the chiefs, but his actions were not like those of the Argylls, regulated by lowland opinion, and he was not the recognised representative of lowland authority. He was not therefore regarded by the chiefs as an alien, and his remarkable talents had gained him a great ascendency throughout all the northern regions. According to the Master of Sinclair, he was ‘reckoned the best headpiece in Scotland’ (Memoirs, p. 260), and no one had a more thorough understanding both of the characters of the different chiefs and of the various springs by which to influence their conduct. He is described by Macky (Memorials, p. 199) as ‘of fair complexion, of the gravity of a Spaniard, cunning as a fox, wise as a serpent, and supple as an eel,’ and as knowing ‘neither honour nor religion but where they are mixed with interest.’ Of this last characteristic there is striking illustration in the fact that, though a presbyterian by profession, he marched in 1678 into the