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

2o 4
LORD JOHN JOHNSTONE
Mrs Johnstone when you think it will be proper to make them and to all
the rest of your Good Family."
Edward was insured in the Ministers Widows' Fund of the Church of
Scotland, in whose books it is recorded that he died unmarried, leaving no
children, and that his heirs were "his brothers and sisters, particularly Mr
Richard Johnstone, writer in Edinburgh, to whom apply."
The allusions in Captain Johnstone's letter possibly referred to the differences
between the Hopetoun and Westerhall families. Edward had done
his best to act as mediator, as they partly arose from the friendship between the
Westerhalls and the Dowager-Marchioness of Annandale, their near connection.
The Marchioness had a charge of £1000 a year on the Annandale property.
The young Marquis had attained his majority, and her second son, Lord
John Johnstone, was elected to represent the Dumfries Burghs in Parliament
when he was still only twenty. This took the young men to London, where
they had inherited property from their grandfather, Vanden Bempde, and, with
the pride of a new Member using his own frank, Lord John dated from the
Speaker's room in the House of Commons his receipt to Bryce Blair at Annan
for £277, 4s., lent by the Presbytery of Lochmaben to the Marquis, adding in a
second letter from New Bond Street, Nov. 19, 1741, his hope " that the good
Harvest will make the tenants pick up, and that the rents and arrears may be
got with more ease." There was one petition already before the House to
unseat the Member for Westminster, but he hoped to be let alone. As an
acknowledgment of the kindness that Dumfries had always shown to his
family, and to himself in particular, he presented it with a picture of King
William and Queen Mary, "who are of course particularly interesting to me,"
and added that he meant to do all the good he possibly could for the Burghs.
But his career was cut short by consumption. The Marquis, who seems to have
been very warm hearted, and not the born idiot that he is sometimes represented,
took the invalid to the south of France, and wrote to Edward Johnstone as well
as to his mother reports of his progress. But a new writ was issued for the
Burghs of Annan, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Lochmaben, and Sanquhar in the
room of Lord John, now deceased, Dec. 21, 1742. The Marquis visited
Scotland the next year, and gave Edward Johnstone a Greek Testament which
had belonged to his brother as a memento. His signature to the official paper
presenting Edward to the living of Moffat was the last he affixed to any legal
document, but a statute of lunacy was not actually granted till Feb. 9, 1747.
In this it was stated that he was living in the Parish of Hammersmith, and,
although enjoying lucid intervals, had been "incompos mentis" since Dec. 12,
1744; but it only applied to the English property, and there was a deadlock
in the Annandale estate owing to the friction between the two families. The
Marchioness's jointure was unpaid, and houses were falling to ruin in Moffat and
Annan. At last, in 1758, Lady Hopetoun and her son, as nearest heirs to the
Marquis, obtained the declaration of his lunacy in Scotland, and the second
Earl of Hopetoun became curator of the Scottish property, a private Bill