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Names
P0119 · Person · 1721 – 1765

Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, KG, KB, FRS (26 April 1721 [N.S.] – 31 October 1765), was the third and youngest son of King George II of Great Britain and Ireland and his wife, Caroline of Ansbach. He was Duke of Cumberland from 1726. He is best remembered for his role in putting down the Jacobite Rising at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, which made him immensely popular throughout Britain. He is often referred to by the nickname given to him by his Tory opponents: 'Butcher' Cumberland. Despite his triumph at Culloden, he had a largely unsuccessful military career. Between 1748 and 1755 he attempted to enact a series of army reforms that were resisted by the opposition and by the army itself. Following the Convention of Klosterzeven in 1757, he never again held active military command and switched his attentions to politics and horse racing.

P0221 · Person · d. 1834

William Dawson (d. 1834), was in Auchinteck, Kilbryde estate, in 1810, but later moved to Ashentree in Doune, Stirling where he farmed. He married Agnes Towers and they had many children including James (b. 1810) who became a clerk and salesman in Glasgow and Colin who died in 1835.

P0121 · Person · 1732 – 1818

George Dempster of Dunnichen and Skibo FRSE FSA (Scot) (1732–1818) was a Scottish advocate, landowner, agricultural improver and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1761 and 1790. Dempster founded the bank George Dempster & Co. (also known as the Dundee Banking Company) in 1763, was a Director of the East India Company from 1769, and served as Provost of St Andrews (1780) and a Director of the Highland Society of Scotland (1789).

Dempster, nicknamed Honest George, was a key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment and respected as an "independently minded, incorruptible and moderately radical MP". He dedicated the later years of his life to improving Scottish fishing and agriculture and improving the living conditions of his tenants.

He was a lifelong friend of the philosopher Adam Ferguson and the minister Alexander Carlyle.

P0141 · Person · 1786 – 1846

Sir Robert Henry Dick KCB KCH KOV (29 July 1787 – 10 February 1846) was a Scottish soldier, son of a doctor in the East India Company's service.

He entered the British Army in 1800 serving in the 75th Regiment. He was a lieutenant in the 42nd Regiment of Foot in 1804. He served as an officer in the 42nd Regiment of Foot serving in the Peninsular War. He fought at Buçaco, Fuentes de Oñoro, and Salamanca. He distinguished himself at Quatre Bras and Waterloo.

In 1814, he received the C.B., followed by the K.C.H. in 1832 and the K.C.B. in 1838. In 1837, he was promoted to be major general, and in 1841–1842 was acting Commander-in-Chief at Madras. In 1846, he assumed command of the Third Infantry Division in the Sikh War. He fell while leading a second charge against Sikh entrenchments at Sobraon.

Memorial at Dunkeld Cathedral, Dunkeld, Tayside:

Sacred to the memory of Major-General Sir Robert Henry Dick KCB KCH who after distinguished service in the Peninsula in the command of a Light Battalion and at Waterloo with the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment fell mortally wounded whilst leading the 3rd Division of the Army of the Sutledge to the attack on the Seikh entrenched camp at Sobraon on 10 February 1846. The officers who had the honour of serving under him in his last battle and other friends in Her Majesty's and the Honourable East India Company's Service in Bengal have caused this monument to be placed in his parish church.

P0204 · Person · 1804 – 1881

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the glory and power of the British Empire. He is the only British prime minister to have been of Jewish birth. He was also a novelist, publishing works of fiction even as prime minister.

Disraeli was born in Bloomsbury, then a part of Middlesex. His father left Judaism after a dispute at his synagogue; young Benjamin became an Anglican at the age of 12. After several unsuccessful attempts, Disraeli entered the House of Commons in 1837. In 1846 the Prime Minister at the time, Sir Robert Peel, split the party over his proposal to repeal the Corn Laws, which involved ending the tariff on imported grain. Disraeli clashed with Peel in the House of Commons. Disraeli became a major figure in the party. When Lord Derby, the party leader, thrice formed governments in the 1850s and 1860s, Disraeli served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons.

Upon Derby's retirement in 1868, Disraeli became Prime Minister briefly before losing that year's general election. He returned to the Opposition, before leading the party to winning a majority in the 1874 general election. He maintained a close friendship with Queen Victoria, who in 1876 appointed him Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli's second term was dominated by the Eastern Question—the slow decay of the Ottoman Empire and the desire of other European powers, such as Russia, to gain at its expense. Disraeli arranged for the British to purchase a major interest in the Suez Canal Company (in Ottoman-controlled Egypt). In 1878, faced with Russian victories against the Ottomans, he worked at the Congress of Berlin to obtain peace in the Balkans at terms favourable to Britain and unfavourable to Russia, its longstanding enemy. This diplomatic victory over Russia established Disraeli as one of Europe's leading statesmen.

World events thereafter moved against the Conservatives. Controversial wars in Afghanistan and South Africa undermined his public support. He angered British farmers by refusing to reinstitute the Corn Laws in response to poor harvests and cheap imported grain. With Gladstone conducting a massive speaking campaign, his Liberals defeated Disraeli's Conservatives at the 1880 general election. In his final months, Disraeli led the Conservatives in Opposition. He had throughout his career written novels, beginning in 1826, and he published his last completed novel, Endymion, shortly before he died at the age of 76.

P0008 · Person · 1745 – 1848

Born 26 Oct. 1775, 2nd son of Archibald James Edward Douglas, 1st Bar. Douglas (d. 1827), of Castle Douglas and 1st wife Lady Lucy Graham, daughter of William, 2nd Duke of Montrose.

Douglas, whose father had established his claim to the estates of the dukes of Douglas in 1769 and been created a baron in 1790, was described as a ‘judicious man of business’, who managed the vast estates of his ward, the 5th duke of Buccleuch. He had stood unsuccessfully for Lanarkshire at the general elections of 1806 and 1807, and offered again at a by-election in October 1827, when he ‘avowed in general terms’ his ‘attachment to the present establishments of our constitution’. Privately, he assured Lord Goderich’s coalition ministry of his willingness, leaving aside ‘his right to form opinions on some particular cases, which he does not at present anticipate’, to support them; some Whigs regarded this promise as ‘hollow’. He was defeated by Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, representing the interest of the Whig 10th duke of Hamilton. His father died at the end of the year, but he received nothing from the estate. By the time of the general election in 1830 freeholder creations had strengthened the Douglas interest in Lanarkshire and he was returned ahead of Sir John Maxwell†. He declared that he ‘placed perfect confidence’ in the duke of Wellington’s government, while remaining ‘altogether free and unshackled’, and he ‘declined to give his opinions on any subject’ or ‘pledge himself to any line of commercial policy’.

The ministry regarded him as one of their ‘friends’, and he voted with them in the crucial civil list division, 15 Nov. 1830. He condemned the Grey ministry’s English reform bill as ‘calculated most unnecessarily to risk the security of the settled institutions of the country’, 9 Mar. 1831, and called for details of the plan for Scotland, where the people were ‘under the present system contented and prosperous’. He thought it would be ‘better by gentler and gradual means to remedy existing blemishes, than ... resort to a sweeping measure’. He divided against the second reading, 22 Mar. He supported Dunbartonshire’s ‘fair claim for separate representation’, 14 Apr. He confirmed his ‘decided opposition’ to the bill, as ‘the principle of disfranchisement ... pervades it’, 19 Apr., and warned that ‘if we change the electors we shall change the elected, which I cannot think for the benefit of this country’; he voted that day for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment. He presented and concurred in a Glasgow petition against revision of the timber duties, which would be ‘detrimental to the commercial, the shipping and the colonial interests of this country’, 15 Mar. In presenting a petition from vessel owners in the Firth of Forth against the proposed tax on steam navigation, 29 Mar., he suggested that any tax should be levied on the tonnage of vessels rather than on the number of passengers, who were ‘one of the greatest sources of profit in the trade’. He believed that ‘we owe it to our sense of what is due to the dignity of the crown’ to support the civil list bill, 14 Apr. He offered again for Lanarkshire at the general election in May 1831 and faced a riotous crowd when he appeared on the hustings, being pelted with stones and cut by a broken glass. He complained that the Scottish reform scheme was ‘an attempt to assimilate our elective franchise too rapidly to the forms and standard of England’. However, he disapproved of the existing county franchise and favoured extending it to ‘owners of the soil’, without specifying what the valuation threshold should be. He also expressed his ‘cordial concurrence’ in the granting of separate representation to Glasgow and other rapidly expanding towns, but not at England’s expense, and thought the burgh franchise might be extended in some unspecified way. Following his victory over Maxwell’s son, the sheriff was forced to read the Riot Act and call in the cavalry. In a published address, he pledged himself to oppose ‘the extravagance of theorists’ in order to ‘ensure reasonable and practical measures of improvement’.

He deplored the ‘extremely improper ... attack’ made by Members on the sheriff of Lanarkshire for his conduct of the election, 29 June 1831. He voted against the second reading of the reintroduced English reform bill, 6 July. He divided for an adjournment motion, 12 July, before pairing for the rest of the night with John Cam Hobhouse. He voted to use the 1831 census for the purpose of scheduling boroughs, 19 July, after pointing to the rapid population increases in the principal towns of Lanarkshire. He divided to postpone consideration of Chippenham’s inclusion in schedule B, 27 July. He protested against population being used as the criterion for determining London’s representation, 4 Aug., remarking that ‘in a short time the metropolis will engross a very large proportionate share’ of seats. He maintained that ‘under the present system, the various colonial and other interests are all adequately represented’, but if the bill passed ‘local interest and connection will be sure to command the return’. He therefore intended to move for an increase in Scotland’s representation, as it would no longer have ‘the facilities afforded by means of the boroughs’ to secure reasonable ‘access to this House’. He insisted that the Scottish electoral system had ‘always ... been found to answer all the purposes of popular representation’, 12 Aug., and repeated his complaint next day that Scotland had ‘not been treated fairly’ under the ministerial plan. He voted to preserve the voting rights of non-resident freemen, 30 Aug., and against the third reading, 19 Sept., and the bill’s passage, 21 Sept. In moving to reject the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept., he admitted that there was a ‘very strong feeling ... in favour of reform’ in Scotland, but denied that this reflected ‘the spontaneous wishes of the people’, who had been encouraged by radical agitators to ‘entertain extravagant ideas that their condition would be materially benefited’. He thought it strange that ministers did not connect the ‘rapid advances in wealth and civilization’ made by Scotland in the past century with its political institutions. The bill was ‘a direct attack on the agricultural interests’, which would ‘throw the whole power of the representation into the hands of the manufacturers’, and he particularly objected to conferring county votes on householders. While it proposed some ‘desirable alterations’, such an ‘extravagant’ measure could not be justified. The second reading was carried by 209 votes to 94, with Douglas acting as a minority teller. He divided for inquiry into the effects on the West India interest of renewing the Sugar Refinery Act, 12 Sept. In October he suffered a ‘severe and dangerous attack’, probably a stroke, and though by mid-November 1831 he was reportedly ‘in a convalescent state’, his speech was permanently impaired. He took no further part in parliamentary proceedings and did not seek re-election in 1832.

Douglas succeeded his brother to the barony in 1844. He died in 1848 and was succeeded by his half-brother, the Rev. James Douglas (1787-1857), on whose death the title became extinct. His personalty was sworn under £4,000 within the province of Canterbury.