History of the Johnstones, 1191-1909, with ... - Electric Scotland

1 64.
THE SECOND MARQUIS
was revived by Queen Anne. He was also Lord Privy Seal in 1702, and Lord
President of the Privy Council till 1706. His manners are said to have
been courteous and pleasing. He was elected a Scottish Representative Peer in
1707, and in 171 1 was Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Kirk of
Scotland. In 17 14 he was appointed Keeper of the Great Seal, and a Privy
Councillor; and during the Rising in 1715 was made Lord-Lieutenant of
the counties of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and Peebles. His wife (the bride of
fourteen in 1682) died in 1716, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The
eldest daughter, Henrietta, had long been married to John Hope, who was
created, by the ex-Secretary's influence, Earl of Hopetoun in 1703. Two
younger sons, William and John, died unmarried in 1721, shortly after their
father. The old Marquis astonished and disgusted his children in 17 18,
by going through a Fleet marriage with Charlotta Van Lore, the only child of a
Dutch merchant in Westminster, John Vanden Bempde, by his wife, Temperance,
daughter of John Packer. Vanden Bempde owned property in Hammersmith
and Chiswick, and the estate of Hackness Hall in Yorkshire. He
settled £300 a year on his daughter, and the reversion of his estates to her heirs,
saying that he was not going to be behind anyone else in the matter, but
with the provision that the inheritor of his property should take his own
family name. When the Marquis died at Bath, April 21, 1721, Vanden
Bempde" allowed another .£300 a year for the maintenance and education
of his infant grandson, George, and for the son, John, who was born six
months after the Marquis's death. The ex-Secretary was among those who
attended the Marquis's funeral. Sir William Johnstone of Westerhall was there
on behalf of the Marchioness when the Will was read. The Earl of Orkney,
Sir R. Montgomery, Colonel Graham, Jerviswood, and Lord Hope also came,
but in the interest of the Marquis's elder children.
James, Lord Johnstone, the second Marquis, lived at Newbie Castle when
not abroad, and was Provost of Annan in 1715. After his succession he
was little seen in Scotland, and died in Naples in 1730. His stepmother
had to sustain a lawsuit with Lord and Lady Hopetoun for her son, George,
about the possession of the Annandale estates. In consideration of Miss
Fairholm's fortune, these estates had been settled on her and on her future
children after her marriage with the first Marquis ; and on the death of
James they were claimed as well as the title by his sister, the last survivor of
that marriage, on the ground that the title went with the estates. The
House of Lords in 1733 decided that the Fairholm provision was illegal
on both points, the land having been settled in 1661 on the heirs male of the
first Earl, and only to go to the female on the demise of all those heirs.
So young George succeeded to his father's estates as well as to his title, and
Lady Hopetoun inherited her mother's estate at Craigiehall. Some of the lands
held by Galabank paid a trifling duty to the Marquis.
On April 27, 1700, Lord Carstairs wrote from Whitehall to Lord Annandale
: " I was told your lordship wished to have Major Jhonston a Knt Baronet.
I have procured his patent, and shall send it down either with this or Tuesday's