Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/197

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Maclaine
191
Maclaine

of Sir John Cope at Prestonpans, and after the capture of Carlisle was sent by the prince back to Perth to expedite the movements of William Drummond, fourth viscount Strathallan [q. v.] He with his clan took part in the victory over Hawley at Falkirk, and was honourably distinguished at Culloden (16 April 1746). He was stationed in the front on the right wing in the company of the Macintoshes, the Frasers, Stewarts, Camerons, and Macleans, the last-mentioned clan being under his command as well as his own. After loudly protesting against Lord George Murray's fatal error in keeping the highland army motionless to receive the English fire, he, when the order was at last given, charged with so much impetuosity that he swept the English line of soldiers in front of him completely away, and his dead body was found considerably in the rear of the English line covered with wounds. One of his sons, an aide-de-camp of the prince, was killed when riding with the order to charge to Lord George Murray.

[Materials kindly furnished by J. MacLauchlan, esq., of Dundee; Anderson's Scottish Nation, iii. 35; Chambers's Hist. of the Rebellion, 1869, p. 295; Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, chap. lxxxiii.]

T. S.

MACLAINE, ARCHIBALD (1722–1804), divine, son of Lauchlin Maclaine and brother of James Maclaine [q. v.], the 'gentleman highwayman,' born at Monaghan in 1722, was educated at Glasgow, where he studied under Francis Hutcheson [q. v.] for the presbyterian ministry. In 1746 he became assistant to his maternal uncle, Robert Milling, a pastor of the English church at the Hague, and in 1747 was admitted co-pastor. He was greatly respected in Holland for his learning, and for a time was preceptor to the Prince of Orange. Ill-health and the disturbances consequent on the French invasion led him to resign his charge in 1796. He settled at Bath, where he died on 25 Nov. 1804, and was buried in the abbey church there. On the monument erected to his memory by his friend Henry Hope he is described as D.D. His portrait was engraved by C. H. Hodges.

Maclaine published in 1765, in 2 vols. 4to, a translation, with notes, of Mosheim's 'Ecclesiastical History,' reprinted in 1768 in 5 vols. 8vo, and in 1782, 1806, 1810, and 1825, in 6 vols. 8vo. He also translated from the French J. J. Vernet's 'Dialogues on some Important Subjects,' 1753, and addressed to Soame Jenyns [q. v.] a 'Series of Letters on occasion of his " View of the Internal Evidence of Christianity,"' 1777; 2nd edit. 1778.

[Chalmers's Biog. Dict.; Steven's Hist. of the Scottish Church, Rotterdam, pp. 309-11; George III, his Court and Family, ed. 1821, ii. 78-80; Aa's Biographisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden, xii. 37-8; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, ii. 259.]

G. G.

MACLAINE or MACLEAN, JAMES (1724–1750), 'gentleman highwayman,' born at Monaghan in 1724, was second son of Lauchlin Maclaine, a presbyterian minister of good Scottish family, who became a pastor at Monaghan in Ireland. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of James Milling. An elder brother, Archibald Maclaine [q. v.], was pastor of the English congregation at the Hague. James was educated for a merchant, but after running through the patrimony to which he became entitled on his father's death in 1742, he entered domestic service in London and fell under the influence of fast women. About 1746, however, he succeeded in winning the hand of the daughter of a Mr. Maclogen, a substantial horse-dealer, 'of the Golden Fleece in the Oxford Road.' With his wife's money he set up as a grocer and chandler in Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, and for a time lived honestly. On the death of his wife in 1748 his 'extraordinary itch for a gay appearance' returned, and, with an apothecary named Plunket, a man of the worst character, who had attended his wife, he formed a partnership of fraud. In the disguise of a 'flaming beau,' with Plunket acting as his servant, Maclean gamed and ruffled at Bath and Tunbridge Wells in the hope of entrapping a lady of fortune into a marriage. Before the end of 1748 his own and Plunket's resources were exhausted. Thereupon the allies took to the highway, their first exploit being to lift over 60l. from a grazier crossing Hounslow Heath. After a few more successful encounters, fine lodgings were taken in St. James's Street, opposite the Old Bagnio, and Maclean, who passed for an Irish squire of 700l. a year, became a well-known figure in the West End. One moonlight night in November 1749 the pair stopped Horace Waipole in Hyde Park, as he was returning from Holland House, and Maclean's pistol going off accidentally razed the skin under Waipole's eye. After the robbery Maclean sent Walpole two letters of excuses, appointing a meeting by Tyburn at midnight, 'where the gentleman might purchase again any trifles he had lost' (Walpole, in the World, No. 103, p. 621). Subsequently the confederates committed a series of robberies on the Chester Road, and Maclean, who had previously contemplated emigration to Jamaica, visited his brother, the minister at