Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Scott, Henry (1676-1730)

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605196Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 51 — Scott, Henry (1676-1730)1897Thomas Finlayson Henderson

SCOTT, HENRY, Earl of Deloraine (1676–1730), third but second surviving son of James Scott, duke of Monmouth [q. v.], and Anne, duchess of Buccleuch, was born in 1676. On 29 March 1706 he was created by Queen Anne Earl of Deloraine, Viscount Hermitage, and Baron Scott of Goldielands, the main title being derived from the lands of Deloraine in Kirkhope parish, Selkirkshire. He took his oath and seat in the last parliament in Scotland in October 1706, and voted in favour of the treaty of union. At the general election of 1715 he was chosen one of the Scottish representative peers, and he was rechosen in 1722 and 1727. In 1725 he was vested with the order of the Bath, and appointed gentleman of the bedchamber to George I. From the time of his accession to the peerage he also served in the army, being appointed in 1707 to the command of a regiment of foot, and promoted on 1 June 1715 to be colonel of the 2nd troop of horse-grenadier guards, on 7 April 1724 to be colonel of the 16th regiment, and on 9 July 1730 to be colonel of the 3rd regiment of horse, with the rank of major-general in the army. His reputation for courtesy and politeness—derived from his royal ancestors—is referred to in Young's ‘Night Thoughts:’

    Stanhope in wit, in breeding Delorain.

His mother, however, upon her death in 1723, reproached him with gracelessness and extravagance, and left him but 5l. He died suddenly on Christmas day 1730, and was buried at Lidwell in Sandford St. Martin, Oxfordshire. By his first wife, Anne (d 1720), daughter and heiress of William Duncombe of Battlesden, Bedfordshire, he had two sons—Francis, second earl; and Henry, third earl—and a daughter Anne, unmarried. By his second wife, Mary, daughter of Charles Howard, grandson of Thomas, first earl of Berkshire, he had two daughters: Georgina Caroline, married to Sir James Peachey, master of the robes; and Henrietta. His widow remarried, in April 1734, William Wyndham of Ersham, Norfolk, died on 12 Nov. 1744, and was buried at Windsor. She had been governess to the young princesses Mary and Louisa, daughters of George II.

[Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 409–410; Fraser's Scotts of Buccleuch, ii. 324; Burke's Peerage.]

T. F. H.