Talk:Sir John Clerk, 2nd Baronet

Information on John Clerk(s) of Penicuik
From www.sonnetusa.com/bio/maxbio.pdf

1997 Sonnet Software, Inc.,

THE LIFE OF JAMES CLERK MAXWELL WITH A SELECTION FROM HIS CORRESPONDENCE AND OCCASIONAL WRITINGS AND A SKETCH OF HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE

BY LEWIS CAMPBELL, M.A., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS AND WILLIAM GARNETT, M.A. LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM

WITH THREE STEEL PORTRAITS, COLOURED PLATES, ETC.

London MACMILLAN AND CO. 1882

.....

THE CLERKS OF PENICUIK AND MAXWELLS OF MIDDLEBIE.

MISS ISABELLA CLERK, of 3 Hobart Place, London, has kindly furnished me with the following statement, to which I have added some annotations. These are chiefly derived from a book of autograph letters, which was long kept at Glenlair, and is now in the possession of Mrs. Maxwell.


 * "The Clerks of Penicuik are descended from John Clerk, of Kilhuntly, in Badenoch, Aberdeenshire, who attached himself to the party of Queen Mary, and had to leave that part of the country in 1568 during the troubles. His son, William Clerk, was a merchant in Montrose; he lived in the reigns of Mary and James the Sixth, and died in 1620.


 * "''John Clerk, his son, was a man of great ability. He went to Paris in 1634, and having acquired a large fortune there in commerce, returned to Scotland in 1646, and bought the barony of Penicuik, and also the lands of Wright's Houses. He married Mary, daughter of Sir William Gray, of Pittendrum. This lady brought the necklace of Mary

Queen of Scots into the family, through her mother, Mary Gillies, to whom it was given by Queen Mary before her execution. He died in 1674. His eldest son John was created a Baronet of Nova Scotia in 1679.''"

This Sir John Clerk (the first baronet) records a singular affray with sixteen robbers who attacked tile house of Penicuik in 1692. He kept them at bay until the neighbouring tenants came to his relief. His pluck, sagacity, presence of mind, good feeling, and piety, are conspicuous in the narrative.


 * ''"He served in the Parliament of Scotland, and acquired the lands and barony of Lasswade. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Henderson, Esq., of Elvington, and grand-daughter of Sir William Drummond, of Hawthornden, the poet. Sir William Drummond had only two daughters, the younger of whom married W. Henderson. Their daughter Elizabeth was wonderfully talented and accomplished, and had a special gift for music. Sir John died in 1722. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Sir John Clerk, a man of great learning, who was appointed in 1707 one of the Barons of the Exchequer in Scotland, which judicial employment he retained during

the remainder of his life. He was also one of the Commissioners of the Union."''

The Baron's precepts to his son George when at school in Cumberland are worthy of Polonius. He advises him to be kind to his companions, as he could not tell what they might be able to do for him thereafter, and to be sure to take the opportunity of “learning the English language,” in which the Baron himself regrets his own deficiency. “You have nothing else to depend on but your being a scholar and behaving well.” He is described in the autumn of his days as “humming along and stuffing his pipe in order to whip it away for half an hour,” while “my lady is engaged reading over some newspaper. Miss Clerk is labouring with great industry at a very pretty open muffler. Mrs. Dean is winding three fine white clews upon a fourth one,” etc. “My lady's” letters to her son George dwell much on family matters, and are full of old-fashioned piety.


 * ''"He was highly accomplished in music, painting, and languages. At the age of nineteen he went abroad for three years to finish his education. He studied one year under the celebrated Dr. Boerhaave at Leyden, where he was a pupil of William Mieris in drawing. He afterwards went to Florence and Rome, where he had lessons in

music from Antonio Corelli, and in painting from Imperiale. He wrote an opera which was performed in Rome. His brother, William Clerk, married Agnes Maxwell, heiress of Middlebie, in Dumfriesshire."''

William also was at Leyden before going into business as a lawyer, and kept a journal of his tour in Holland, which, like other writings of the Clerk family, is furnished with pen and ink sketches of what he saw. His letters are interesting from the combination of earnest, Covenanting piety, with a gay and chivalrous bearing in what was evidently the one serious love-passage of his life. His letters to his wife in the years after their marriage are as full of tenderness as that in which he makes his first proposal is instinct with old-world gallantry.


 * "They left an only daughter, Dorothea, who married her first cousin, afterwards Sir George Clerk Maxwell."

This George Clerk Maxwell probably suffered a little from the world being made too easy for him in early life. Such a misfortune was all but inevitable, and the Baron seems to have done his best to obviate it by good counsel; but the current of circumstances was too strong. George was in the habit of preserving letters, and from those received by him before succeeding to Penicuik it is possible to form a tolerably full impression of the man. In some respects he resembled John Clerk Maxwell, but certainly not in the quality of phlegmatic caution. His imagination seems to have been dangerously fired by the “little knowledge” of contemporary science which he may have picked up when at Leyden with his elder brother James (see p. 19, ll. 18, 25). We find him, while laird of Dumcrieff, near Moffat, practically interested in the discovery of a new “Spaw,” and humoured in this by his friend Allan Ramsay, the poet:—by and by he is deeply engaged in prospecting about the Lead Hills, and receiving humorous letters on the subject from his friend Dr. James Hutton, one of the founders of geological science, and author of the Theory of the Earth.11 After a while he has commenced active operations, and is found making fresh proposals to the Duke of Queensberry. Then to the mines there is added some talk of a paper manufactory, and the Duchess playfully “congratulates” his “good self on every new sprouting up manufacture by means of so good a planter and planner.” But by this time it has been found advisable to add to his studies some more certain source of income, and he applies for the Postmastership, and (through the Duke of Q.) obtains an office in the Customs. In this, as in all relations of life, he seems to have won golden opinions. And ere he succeeded to Penicuik, the loss of Middlebie proper and Dumerieff had doubtless taught the lesson of prudence which his father the Baron had vainly tried to impress upon his youth. The friendship of Allan Ramsay and the affectionate confidence of the “good Duke and Duchess of Queensberry,” sufficiently indicate the charm which there must have been about this man.


 * "Sir John Clerk (the Baron of Exchequer) married Janet Inglis of Cramond, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Sir James Clerk, in 1755. Sir James died without children in 1782, and was succeeded by his next brother, Sir George Clerk, who had married his cousin, Dorothea Maxwell, heiress of Middlebie."

The betrothal of George Clerk and Dorothea Clerk Maxwell is said by the Baron (in a special memorandum) to have been in accordance with her mother's dying wish. (Dorothea was seven years old when Agnes Maxwell died!) They were married privately when he was twenty and she was seventeen, but “as they were too young to live together,” he was sent to join his brother James at Leyden. After a short interval the marriage was declared, and they lived very happily at Dumcrieff.


 * "Sir George Clerk Maxwell was a Commissioner of Customs, and a trustee for the improvement of the fisheries and manufactures of Scotland. His brother, John Clerk of Eldin, was the author of the well-known work on Naval Tactics. He was the father of John Clerk, a distinguished lawyer in Edinburgh, afterwards Lord Eldin, a Lord of Session."

Tyrenius 07:13, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

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