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Names
GB224 · Persoon · 1796 – 1839

Charles Stirling (known as Charles Stirling junior, until the death of Charles Stirling of Cadder in 1829/30), partner in Stirling, Gordon (q.v.). Bought Gargunnock c. 1835.

Son of John Stirling of Kippendavie.

Thomas Bryson
GB224/PD212 · Persoon · c.1895 - c.1970

Dates of birth and death not known. Born c.1895. Lived at 113 Stirling Street, Denny during the time of the First World War. Married Margaret Harkness June 1918. Brothers John, Joseph and Lewis. The papers held relating to him at the Council Archives appear to have been in his possession even though some of them do not relate to the Bryson family, it may be assumed that they concern wider family members. The correspondence in the collection is largely written to Thomas from family members and friends. It is significant because two of his brothers were on active service in the First World War, and wrote to Thomas from where they trained and where they were posted. Thomas worked as a miner throughout the First World War as his was the equivalent of a ‘reserved occupation’ – coal was required for the war effort. Thomas’ Father was also Thomas, we know this as Thomas is addressed as ‘Thomas junior’ on some of the envelopes in the collection. His grandfather was William Bryson. Thomas had three brothers. His brother Joseph appears to have been living locally and working through the war. Brother John enlisted in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He sustained an injury to his arm whilst on active service in May 1915, and convalesced after this until he was sent to serve in Northern Ireland in March 1916. Brother Lewis enlisted in the Royal Navy and trained at Portsmouth. He was killed on HMS Paxton when the vessel was torpedoed by a German U-boat in May 1917. Thomas had a fiancée, Maggie Harkness, and married in June 1918. The papers found their way to the Archives after they were handed in to the shop next to the Miners’ memorial in Fallin.

P0001 · Persoon · 1755 – 1836

Montrose was the son of William Graham, 2nd Duke of Montrose, and Lady Lucy, daughter of John Manners, 2nd Duke of Rutland. Montrose was twice married. He married firstly Lady Jemima Elizabeth, daughter of John Ashburnham, 2nd Earl of Ashburnham, in 1785. After her death in September 1786, aged 24 (following the death of a son, who died as an infant), he married secondly Lady Caroline Maria, daughter of George Montagu, 4th Duke of Manchester, in 1790. They had six children. Montrose died in December 1836, aged 81, and was succeeded in the dukedom by his son, James. The Duchess of Montrose died in March 1847, aged 76.

Montrose was educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Cambridge from where he graduated MA in 1775. In 1780, he was elected MP for Richmond, Yorkshire and, from 1784, he represented Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire. Montrose held a number of offices including those of Lord Justice General of Scotland and President of the Board of Trade, and he was Lord Chamberlain on two occasions.

Montrose was succeeded as Chancellor in 1837 by his son James Graham, the 4th Duke of Montrose.

He was appointed a Knight of the Thistle in 1793, resigning from the Order when appointed a Knight of the Garter in 1812. He was Chancellor of the University of Glasgow from 1780 to 1836, Lord Lieutenant of Huntingdonshire from 1790 to 1793, Lord Lieutenant of Stirlingshire from 1795 until his death, and Lord Lieutenant of Dumbartonshire from 1813 until his death.

P0003 · Persoon · 1679 – 1758

Third son of John Murray, born 1st October 1679; died 25th June 1758. He was served heir to his nephew 16th October 1729. He married, first, Cecilia, daughter of Gibson of Durie, and had a son, who died in infancy. He married, second, 10th February 1738, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Alexander Gibson of Pentland, who died 7th August 1757, and had issue :

(a) William Murray, 1744 - 1814
(b) Alexander Murray, born 9th March 1749; died unmarried.
(c) John Murray, 1752 - 1838

P0004 · Persoon · 1752 – 1838

Third son of William Murray, born 16th November 1752; died 6th April 1838. He married, 14th January 1789, Isabella, daughter of Professor Hercules Lindsay, and had a
son :

John Murray of Touchadam and Polmaise, born 5th July 1797 ; died 15th April 1862.

P0005 · Persoon · 1720 – 1788

Prince Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart, eldest son of James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender or James III, and of the Princess Clementine, a daughter of Prince James Sobieski, was born at Rome on 31 December 1720. He is commonly styled Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender. His main claim to long-lasting fame was his leadership of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46, which aimed at reinstating the Stuarts as kings of Great Britain but which ended in inglorious failure at the battle of Culloden in April 1746. He spent the majority of his life abroad, becoming titular king as succeeding to his father on his death in 1766. After the failure of the '45 he became increasingly dependent on alcohol which alienated his followers. He died at Rome on 31 January 1788.

P0006 · Persoon · 1744 – 1814

Born 12th July 1744; died 29th August 1814.

He was served heir to his father 8th September 1758, and to Robert Junkine, or Murray, of Pitlochie 5th April 1764.

He married, first, September 1772, Margaret, daughter of John Callender of Craigforth, who died 28th July 1784, having had:

(a) William Murray, 1773 – 1847

He married, second, 7th June 1791, Ann, daughter of John Campbell of Clathie and Killermont, who died 2nd August 1802, and had issue:

(b) Captain John Murray, R.N., died 3rd March 1821.
(c) Archibald Murray, E.I.C.S.
(d) Alexander Murray, Advocate, died 1835. He married, 12th April 1826, Johanna, daughter of John Wilkinson of Castlehead, Denbigh, and had a daughter, Anne, who married Gilbert Innes Murray Menzies, and recorded Arms as James Murray in Lyon Office, 1852.

P0007 · Persoon · 1774 – 1840

Born 1774, 2nd son of John, 11th Baron Elphinstone, by Anne, daughter of James Ruthven, styled 3rd Baron Ruthven. Married June 1816, Catalina Paulina Alessandro, ‘a Spanish lady’, 1s. 4da. suc. gdm. to the Wigtown estates 1799 and took additional name of Fleeming.

Elphinstone Fleeming had seen naval service in the Mediterranean and the West Indies when, in succession to his uncle Lord Keith, he was unanimously returned for Stirlingshire. This was at the instigation of his family and the Duke of Montrose and with the concurrence of the minister, Addington, whom he was expected to support. He was challenged at the ensuing general election by Sir Robert Abercromby, Henry Dundas’s nominee, who on being defeated petitioned unsuccessfully against Fleeming. The grounds were that his qualification, based on the estate of his great-grandfather John, 6th Earl of Wigtown, which he had inherited in 1799 under an entail of 1741, was invalid. His return was unopposed in 1806 and 1807.

On the resumption of hostilities Fleeming commanded the Egyptienne, capturing several ships off the French coast 1803-5, which made him an absentee Member. He was listed one of the Prince of Wales’s friends in the spring of 1804, but as a supporter of Pitt’s second ministry in September 1804 and July 1805. He was reckoned a supporter of the Grenville ministry and voted for Brand’s motion following their dismissal, 9 Apr., against the address, 26 June, and for Whitbread’s motion on the state of the nation, 6 July 1807. Thereafter he was absent for five years on active service, though he continued to be listed a friend of the opposition. In February 1811 his uncle stated on his behalf that Fleeming’s politics were ‘to oppose a weak minister, and support a strong’.

In 1812, faced with a contest with a ministerialist for the county, after he had only just arrived home, he withdrew. He was then advised against standing for Stirling Burghs in place of Sir John Henderson*.4 He had remained preoccupied with his profession, but was never afloat again and did not return to Parliament until 1832. He died 30 Oct. 1840, aged 66, reported to have been ‘a terror to every ship’s company he commanded’.

P0008 · Persoon · 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.