page_title: Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville
section_title: Family
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville / Family
context_page_description: Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, PC, FRSE was a Scottish advocate and Tory politician. He was the trusted lieutenant of British prime minister William Pitt, and the most powerful man in Scotland in the latter decades of the 18th century.
  Henry Dundas was instrumental in the encouragement of the Scottish Enlightenment, in the prosecution of the war against France, and in the expansion of British influence in India. An accomplished machine politician and scourge of the Radicals, his deft and almost total control of Scottish politics during a long period when no monarch visited the country, led to him being nicknamed King Harry the Ninth, the "Grand Manager of Scotland", the "Great Tyrant" and "The Uncrowned King of Scotland".
  He is commemorated by one of the most prominent memorials in Edinburgh, the 150-foot high, Category A listed Melville Monument at St Andrew Square, in the heart of the New Town he helped to establish. The monument was paid for mostly by friends and Naval personnel.
context_section_description: Lord Melville's first marriage was to Elizabeth Rannie, daughter of David Rannie, of Melville Castle, in 1765. She was only 14 at the time of the marriage. Almost all of his wealth (£10,000), as well as the castle, came to him through this marriage but he left Elizabeth in their country residence while he remained in Edinburgh, and she committed adultery (then known as "criminal conversation") with a Captain Everard Faukener in 1778. Within days she had confessed by letter to her husband, and approximately a month later they were divorced. She never saw her children again, dying in 1843. Henry Dundas, in accordance with the law of the time, kept all of the money and property.
  After this divorce Dundas was married again, to Lady Jane Hope, daughter of John Hope, 2nd Earl of Hopetoun, in 1793. He died in May 1811, in Edinburgh, aged 69, and was succeeded in his titles by his son from his first marriage, Robert. The Viscountess Melville later married Thomas Wallace, 1st Baron Wallace and died in June 1829.
  Dundas is buried in a vault in Old Lasswade Kirkyard, with most of his descendants.
caption: Elizabeth Rannie or Rennie, first wife of Henry Dundas
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