with a power of justiciary within the limits of his jurisdiction. He was one of the eight commissioners elected by parliament 8 Dec. 1557 to represent the Scottish nation at the nuptials of Queen Mary with Francis, dauphin of France, 24 April 1558. Though the commissioners agreed to swear fealty to the king-dauphin as the husband of the queen, they affirmed that their instructions did not permit them to agree that he should receive the ensigns of royalty. They were thereupon requested to support this proposal in the Scottish parliament, but when they left for Scotland, the French court appears to have been doubtful of the intentions of certain members of the commission. In such circumstances the death of four of their number on the way home awakened grave suspicions that they had been designedly poisoned. The Earls of Rothes and Cassilis and Bishop Reid succumbed sooner to the attack than Fleming, who, in the hope of recovery, returned to Paris, but died there on 18 Dec. By his marriage to Lady Barbara Hamilton, eldest daughter of James, duke of Chatelherault, he had one daughter, Jane, married first to John lord Thirlestane, who died 3 Oct. 1595; and secondly, to John, fifth earl of Cassilis, by neither of whom had she any issue.
[Douglas's Scotch Peerage (Wood), ii. 634; Crawfurd's Officers of State, pp. 327–8; Keith's History of Scotland; Hunter's Biggar and the House of Fleming, pp. 525–8.]
FLEMING or FLEMMING, JAMES (1682–1751), major-general, colonel 36th foot, was wounded at Blenheim when serving as a captain in the Earl of Derby's regiment (16th foot, now 1st Bedford), and afterwards for many years commanded the royal fusiliers, until promoted on 9 Jan. 1741 colonel of the 36th foot (now 2nd Worcester). He became a brigadier-general in 1745, was present at Falkirk and Culloden, and became major-general in 1747. He died at Bath 31 March 1751. A tablet with medallion portrait was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.
[Cannon's Hist. Records 16th Foot and 36th Foot; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits (London, 1836–53), vol. ii.; Scots Mag. xiii. 165.]
FLEMING, JOHN, fifth Lord Fleming (d. 1572), was the younger brother of James, fourth lord Fleming [q. v.], and the second son of Malcolm, third lord Fleming, by his wife Johanna or Jonet Stewart, natural daughter of James IV. He succeeded to the title on the death of his brother, 18 Dec. 1558. He is mentioned in a letter of Randolph to Cecil, 3 June 1565, as one of those who ‘shamefully left Moray when he endeavoured to prevent the marriage between Mary and Darnley’ (Keith, ii. 292). By commission dated 30 June 1565 he was appointed great chamberlain of Scotland, and he took the oaths on 1 Aug. following (Reg. Privy Council Scot. i. 347). In the ‘round-about raid’ against Moray he accompanied the king, who led the battle (ib. 379). He was one of those in waiting on Mary when Rizzio was murdered (Letter of Queen Mary to the Archbishop of Glasgow, 9 May 1566, printed in Keith, ii. 418), but succeeded in making his escape from the palace of Holyrood. In 1567 he was made justiciary within the bounds of the overward of Clydesdale, appointed to the sheriffdom of Peebles, and received the important office of governor of Dumbarton Castle. Though he was in Edinburgh at the time of the murder of Darnley, he had no connection with the tragedy. He, however, signed the bond in favour of the marriage of Mary and Bothwell. After the flight of Bothwell from Carberry Hill, Fleming, along with Lord Seton, accompanied him to the north of Scotland, but both ultimately abandoned him (Illustrations of the Reign of Mary, p. 223). He joined the party of the queen's lords, who resolved to take measures to effect her escape from Lochleven (Keith, ii. 656). Refusing the invitation to attend a parliament to be held at Edinburgh on 15 Dec. (Calderwood, ii. 388), he withdrew with other lords to Dumbarton Castle, of which he was keeper, where a bond was entered into for the queen's liberty (Keith, ii. 718). In the hope of obtaining assistance from France he refused to deliver up the castle (Calderwood, ii. 402). After Queen Mary's escape from Lochleven, he assembled with other lords at Hamilton to take measures for securing the triumph of her cause. Rather than trust herself to the Hamiltons, Mary would have preferred meanwhile to shut herself up in the stronghold of Dumbarton under the protection of Fleming, but the Hamiltons, who had determined that she should marry Lord Arbroath, would not permit her out of their hands, and resolved against her wishes to stake the cause of the queen on a battle against the forces of Moray. The result was the disaster at Langside. Fleming was one of the three noblemen who with the queen watched the battle from an adjoining eminence. He, along with Lords Herries and Livingstone, conducted her from the field (Herries, Memoirs, p. 103), and accompanied her in her gallop for life through the Ayrshire and Galloway moors. The small party crossed the Solway in a fishing-boat, and on 15 May arrived at Workington. A day or two afterwards they lodged her in the castle of Carlisle (State Papers, For. Ser.
