privy to the rioting which then took place (Guthrie, Memoirs, p. 20). Delicate as his position was he contrived still to retain the favour of both sides. In the autumn, however, he became an open supporter of the supplicants, or popular party, and alone among the privy councillors refused to sign the approval of Lord High-treasurer Traquair's proclamation, 20 Feb. 1638, condemning the opposition to the service-book (Rothe, Relation of Affairs, p. 66). He avoided any prominent share in the preparation of the national covenant, and did not sign it, though he pronounced an opinion in favour of its legality; and, writing privately to the Earl of Morton, he called the covenanters ‘a number of the most loyal and faithful subjects that ever a prince had.’ Charles's royal commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, found him, according to Burnet, one of his greatest troubles, and yet dared not dismiss him. He could not induce him to declare the action of the covenanters to be illegal, or to defend episcopacy at the assembly in Glasgow in November (Burnet, Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, p. 92). His son, Sir Thomas Hope of Kerse [q. v.], served with the army of the covenanters, and Hope's own position became more and more precarious till on 14 Jan. 1640 the king ordered him to remain at his country house, Craighall, Fifeshire, during pleasure. There he remained till the end of May, when he was summoned to Edinburgh to carry out the prorogation of parliament. When parliament rose on 11 June he returned to Craighall, but again appeared in parliament officially to prorogue it on 14 Jan. 1641. When the committee of estates required his official signature to writs of summons against the ‘incendiaries,’ or opponents of the covenant, he refused it without the king's authority, and declined also to prosecute them in spite of the direction of the estates (see Balfour, Annals, iii. 1–3; Acts Scots Parl. v. 307). Later in the session his right to appear in parliament as lord advocate without representing a constituency was contested, and in spite of his arguments he was only permitted to be present as an officer of state, and to speak if called upon by the house. In 1643 he opposed the proposal to summon parliament without any warrant from the king, and though unsuccessful he re-established himself by his efforts in the confidence of Charles's partisans (Burnet, Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, p. 218), and he abstained from attending the convention when it sat. He was lord high commissioner at the meeting of the general assembly on 2 Aug., the only instance of the appointment of a commoner to that office, and maintained the king's policy—of which, however, he did not entirely approve—with much discretion. In spite of his requests for delay and communication with the king, the assembly adopted the solemn league and covenant. From this time he discharged only the formal duties of law officer, and even these were much limited by the jealousy of the estates. He appeared in parliament only if specially summoned. His health failed, and on 1 Oct. 1646 he died.
His success as a lawyer was very great, and with the profits of his practice he purchased estates in Fifeshire, Stirlingshire, Midlothian, Haddington, and Berwickshire. He wrote a legal treatise called ‘Minor Practicks,’ subsequently published by Bayne in 1726, and possibly wrote a manuscript treatise called ‘Major Practicks’ (see Fraser, Law of Parent and Child), and some reports of decisions of the court of session, 1610–19. Besides his ‘Carmen Sæculare’ in Charles I's honour, published at Edinburgh in 1626, he wrote a Latin translation of the Psalms and Song of Solomon. He married Elizabeth, daughter of John Binning or Bennet of Wallyford, co. Haddington, by whom he had four sons who survived infancy; of these three reached the bench: John, lord Craighall (1605?–1654) [q. v.], Thomas, lord Kerse (1606–1643) [q. v.], and Sir James Hope of Hopetoun (1614–1661) [q. v.]; Alexander was cupbearer to Charles I. Of his two daughters who survived infancy, Mary was wife of Sir Charles Erskine of Alva, and Anne married David, lord Cardross.
[G. W. T. Omond's Lord Advocates, i. 93–147; Diary of the Public Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall (Bannatyne Club), 1813; Gardiner's Hist. of England, viii. 323, ix. 93; Douglas's Peerage, ed. Wood, i. 741–2; Nisbet's Heraldry, i. 218, App. p. 91; Coltness Papers, p. 16; Cat. of Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.]
HOPE, THOMAS (1770?–1831), author and virtuoso, born about 1770, was the eldest of the three sons of John Hope of Amsterdam by his wife P. B. Vander Hoeven. He belonged to the rich family of Amsterdam merchants founded by Henry Hope, brother of Sir Thomas Hope of Kerse (d. 1646) [q. v.], lord advocate. His father is said to have been an intimate friend of the Prince of Orange, whom he powerfully aided in the crisis of 1788. The elder Hope built a magnificent country house near Haarlem, at a cost of 50,000l., and placed in it a rare collection of pictures. There the Prince of Orange was a frequent guest. A good drawing of the mansion by Samuel Ireland appears in Ireland's ‘Picturesque Tour … made in 1789’ (London, 1796, i. 112). From
