# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Erskine, David Steuart

​ERSKINE, DAVID STEUART, eleventh Earl of Buchan (1742–1829), eldest son of Henry David, tenth earl, by his wife Agnes, daughter of Sir James Steuart, bart., of Coltness, was born 1 June 1742 (O.S.) He was a brother of the Hon. Henry Erskine [q. v.] and Thomas, lord Erskine [q. v.] During his father's life his title was Lord Cardross. He received his early education partly from his mother, who had studied mathematics under Colin Maclaurin, and partly from a private tutor, after which he entered the university of Glasgow. There he found leisure to study the arts of designing, etching, and engraving in the academy of Robert Foulis. An etching by him of the abbey of Icolmkill was prefixed to his account of that abbey in vol. i. of the ‘Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.’ After his university studies were completed his father endeavoured without success to obtain for him a commission in the guards, and he ultimately joined the 32nd Cornwall regiment of foot, with which he served for a few years. Through the interest of Lord Chatham he was in 1766 appointed secretary to the embassy to Spain, but, it is said, declined to proceed to Madrid on the ground that the ambassador, Sir James Gray, was a person of inferior rank to him. ‘Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘had he gone secretary while his inferior was ambassador, he would have been a traitor to his rank and family.’ According to another account he was prevented going to Spain by the illness of his father, who died shortly afterwards in 1767. The family were then staying at Walcot, near Bath, and the old earl, some time before his death, had joined the sect of the methodists patronised by the Countess of Huntingdon. The countess and her friends now exerted their influence to render the young earl ‘valiant for the truth,’ and with such success that ‘he had the courage to make public profession of his opinions, which drew upon him the laugh and lash of all the wits and witlings of the rooms.’ The countess and his mother also nominated three eminent ministers of the connexion as his chaplains, but it would appear that his methodist zeal did not long survive the change to Scotland. His special interest lay in the study of the history and antiquities of his native country, and there was always a substratum of sincerity underlying his eccentric vanity. At first, however, much of his attention was devoted to the improvement of his estates, which were much embarrassed. To encourage his tenants to introduce improvements he gave them leases of nineteen and thirty-eight years, an arrangement which has been intimately associated with the progress of agriculture in Scotland. Notwithstanding his expenditure of considerable sums on several eccentric projects, he accumulated immense wealth.
Shortly after succeeding his father, Buchan set himself to reform the method of electing Scotch representative peers. At the election of April 1768 he protested against the custom which had sprung up of lists being sent down by the government of the peers who they suggested should be elected; and by systematically protesting year after year he at last succeeded in abolishing the custom. On this subject he published in 1780 ‘Speech intended to be spoken at the Meeting of the Peers for Scotland for the General Election of their Representatives; in which a plan is proposed for the better Representation of the Peerage of Scotland.’ In 1780 he succeeded in originating the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the establishment of which was finally determined on at a meeting held at his house, 27 St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh, on 14 Nov. of this year. The original plan of the society included a department concerned with the natural productions of the country, and also a pretentious scheme of the earl's for a ‘Caledonian Temple of Fame,’ which, through an elaborate system of balloting, in some cases extending over a series of years, should enshrine the names of illustrious Scotsmen living or dead. The comprehensive plans of the earl in its institution caused some alarm to the principal and professors of the university, and the curators of the Advocates' Library, who united in opposing the petition for a royal charter of incorporation, which was nevertheless granted, probably through the earl's influence with George III. To the first volume of the ‘Transactions’ of the society, published in 1792, he contributed ‘Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Steuart Denham, Bart.’ (pp. 129–39), and ‘Account of the Parish of Uphall’ (pp. 139–55).
In 1786 the earl purchased the estate of Dryburgh, whither he retired in 1787, and where he chiefly spent the remainder of his life. On the important occasion he wrote a pompous circular Latin epistle to his learned friends, which was sent for publication to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ (vol. lvii. pt. i. pp. 193–4). He communicated an account of the old ​abbey of Dryburgh to Grose's ‘Antiquities’ (i. 101–9). In 1791 he instituted an annual festival in commemoration of James Thomson, at his birthplace, Ednam, Roxburghshire, and on his grounds at Dryburgh erected an Ionic temple, with a statue of Apollo in the inside, and a bust of the poet surmounting the dome. On the occasion he placed the first edition of the ‘Seasons’ on the bust, and crowned it with a wreath of bays, delivering at the same time a eulogy on the poet (see detailed account of the proceedings with the earl's address in Gent. Mag. vol. lxi. pt. ii. pp. 1019–20, 1083–5). He sent an invitation to Burns to be present on the occasion, who declined, but sent an ode on Thomson. After the death of Burns in 1796, the earl placed in his memory an urn of Parian marble beside the bust of Thomson. Another bombastic exploit of the earl was to erect on the summit of a hill on his estate a colossal statue of Sir William Wallace, which was placed on its pedestal 22 Sept. 1814, the anniversary of the victory at Stirling Bridge in 1297. A more useful structure was a wire suspension bridge over the Tweed near the abbey, constructed in 1817, but blown down in 1850.
Buchan was a frequent contributor to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ the ‘Bee,’ and other publications, his usual signature when his contributions were anonymous being ‘Albanicus.’ He published separately:
* ‘An Account of the Life, Writings, and Inventions of Napier of Merchiston,’ written in conjunction with Dr. Walter Minto, 1787.
* ‘Essays on the Lives of Fletcher of Saltoun and the Poet Thomson, Biographical, Critical, and Political, with some pieces of Thomson never before published,’ 1792.
* ‘Anonymous and Fugitive Essays collected from various Periodical Works,’ vol. i. 1812.
Along with Pinkerton he projected the ‘Iconographia Scotica,’ 1798. His relation to art, letters, and antiquities was, however, in great part that of a fussy and intermeddling patron. On matters of art he kept up an indefatigable correspondence with Horace Walpole, who ‘tried everything but being rude to break off the intercourse’ (Letters, viii. 302). Burns addressed him in terms of elaborate respect, suggestive of ironical intention, and sent him a copy of ‘Scots wha hae.’ On antiquarian subjects Buchan corresponded frequently with Nichols. In 1784 he sent two letters to Nichols containing ‘Some Remarks on the Progress of the Roman Arms in Scotland during the Sixth Campaign of Africanus,’ which were published in 1786 in vol. xxxv. of the ‘Topographia Britannica.’ Among the correspondents who perhaps relished their intercourse with him most were the members of the royal family. In certain conjunctures of affairs he was accustomed to send the king a letter of advice or of approval as seemed most fitting in the special circumstances, grounding his right to do so on ‘my consanguinity to your majesty,’ a claim of relationship with which, as laying emphasis on his descent from the Stuarts, the king seems to have been sincerely flattered (see letters to various members of the royal family in Ferguson's Henry Erskine and his Times, pp. 493–501). It was one of Buchan's foibles to claim the nearest kinship with persons of distinction to whom he was in the remotest degree related. Thomas Browne, author of the ‘Religio Medici,’ a remote progenitor, he deemed worthy to be named his grandfather, and he ‘gloried’ in the ‘illustrious and excellent Washington’ as his ‘cousin’ and ‘friend.’ On the latter account he was in the habit of showing special attention to the distinguished Americans who visited this country, and in 1792 he sent to Washington, then president of the United States, an elegantly mounted snuff-box made from the tree which sheltered Wallace. Colonel Ferguson, in a note to ‘Henry Erskine and his Times,’ states that for many years the earl had interested himself in the establishment of what he called his ‘Commercium Epistolicum Literarium,’ or depôt of correspondence. The number of letters included in this collection was 1,635. They were sent to the Advocates' Library in the hope that they would be purchased, but this was declined, and they were bought by David Laing, who sold a portion of them to Mr. Upcott, the London collector. Those formerly in possession of David Laing are now in the Laing Collection, University Library, Edinburgh (No. 364 in List of Manuscript Books of David Laing, and No. 588 of Addenda). Two volumes have been recovered by the Erskine family, and there are also a few of the letters in the library of the British Museum.
Buchan, through Lady Scott, prevailed on Sir Walter to accept as a burial-place the sepulchral aisle of Scott's Haliburton ancestors in Dryburgh. During Scott's serious illness in 1819, Buchan endeavoured to force his way into the patient's room. He afterwards explained that he had made arrangements for Scott's funeral, which he wished to communicate to Scott himself. Buchan was to pronounce a funeral oration (Life of Scott, chap. xliv.) After attending the earl's funeral at Dryburgh, 25 April 1829, Scott expressed his sense of relief that he had escaped the ‘patronage and fuss Lord Buchan would have bestowed on his funeral had he happened to survive him’ (ib. chap. lxxvii.) ​In ‘Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk’ Lockhart thus describes the appearance of the earl: ‘I do not remember to have seen a more exquisite old head, and think it is no wonder that so many portraits have been painted of him. The features are all perfect, but the greatest beauty is in the clear blue eyes, which are chased in his head in a way that might teach something to the best sculptor in the world. Neither is there any want of expression in these fine features, although indeed they are very far from conveying the same ideas of power and penetration which fall from the overhanging shaggy eyebrows of his brother.’ The portraits and busts taken of him were very numerous. The painting of him when Lord Cardross, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in a Vandyck dress, is in the hall of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. It was engraved in mezzotinto by Finlayson in 1765. A profile by Tassie in 1783 was published in 1797 in ‘Iconographia Scotica.’ A painting by Runciman is in the museum of the Perth Antiquarian Society. To the Faculty of Advocates he presented a portrait in crayons with an inscription in highly laudatory terms written by himself. His portrait when an old man, by George Watson, president of the Royal Scottish Academy, is engraved in Ferguson's ‘Henry Erskine and his Times.’ The earl is the subject of a very clever caricature in highland dress by Kay. He married at Aberdeen in 1771 his cousin Margaret, eldest daughter of William Fraser of Fraserfield, Aberdeenshire, but by her, who died 12 May 1819, he had no issue. He had, however, a natural son, Sir David Erskine, who is separately noticed.
He was succeeded as twelfth earl of Buchan by his nephew, Henry David, son of his brother, the Hon. Henry Erskine [q. v.] The twelfth earl, born in July 1783, died 13 Sept. 1857. He married thrice, and David Stuart Erskine, the eldest surviving son by his first wife, Elizabeth Cole, daughter of Brigadier-general Sir Charles Shipley, succeeded him as thirteenth earl of Buchan.
[Douglas's Peerage (Wood), i. 280; Kay's Edinburgh Portraits, i. 286–9; Gent. Mag. vol. xcix. pt. ii. pp. 75–8; Nichols's Illustrations, vi. 489–521 and passim; ib. Literary Anecdotes, passim; Lord Campbell's Life of Lord Erskine in Lives of the Chancellors; Works of Robert Burns; Lockhart's Life of Scott; Horace Walpole's Letters; Lord Brougham's Autobiography; Life of Archibald Constable; Ferguson's Henry Erskine and his Times, pp. 477–505 and passim.]
T. F. H.