page_title: Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange
section_title: Marriage and children
hierarchical_section_title: Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange / Marriage and children
caption_attribution_description: Picture of Gladstone's Land on Edinburgh's Royal Mile
context_page_description: Rachel Chiesley, usually known as Lady Grange, was the wife of Lord Grange, a Scottish lawyer with Jacobite sympathies. After 25 years of marriage and nine children, the Granges separated acrimoniously. When Lady Grange produced letters that she claimed were evidence of his treasonable plottings against the Hanoverian government in London, her husband had her kidnapped in 1732. She was incarcerated in various remote locations on the western seaboard of Scotland, including the Monach Isles, Skye and St Kilda.
  Lady Grange's father was convicted of murder and she is known to have had a violent temper; initially her absence seems to have caused little comment. News of her plight eventually reached her home town of Edinburgh and an unsuccessful rescue attempt was undertaken by her lawyer, Thomas Hope of Rankeillor. She died in captivity, after being in effect imprisoned for over 13 years. Her life has been remembered in poetry, prose and plays.
context_section_description: The date of Chiesley's marriage to James Erskine is uncertain: based on the text of a letter she wrote much later in life, it may have been in 1707 when she was about 28. Erskine was the younger son of Charles Erskine, Earl of Mar and in 1689 his older brother John Erskine, became Earl of Mar on their father's death. These were politically troubled times; the Jacobite cause was still popular in many parts of Scotland, and the younger Earl was nicknamed "Bobbing John" for his varied manoeuverings. After playing a prominent role in the Jacobite rising of 1715 he was stripped of his title, sent into exile, and never returned to Scotland.
  The young Lady Grange has been described as a "wild beauty", and it is likely the marriage only took place after she became pregnant. This uncertain background notwithstanding, Lord and Lady Grange led a superficially uneventful domestic life. They divided their time between a town house at the foot of Niddry's Wynd off the High Street in Edinburgh and an estate at Preston (now part of Prestonpans in East Lothian), where Lady Grange was the factor (or supervisor) for a time. Her husband was a successful lawyer, becoming Lord Justice Clerk in 1710, and the marriage produced nine children:
  Charlie, born August 1709.
  Johnie, born March 1711, died age two months.
  James, born March 1713. He married his uncle "Bobbing" John's daughter Frances. Their son John eventually became Earl of Mar after the title was restored.
  Mary, born July 1714, who married John Keith the 3rd Earl of Kintore in August 1729.
  Meggie, who died young in May 1717.
  Fannie, born December 1716.
  Jeannie, born in December 1717.
  Rachel.
  John.
  In addition, Lady Grange miscarried twice and one of the above children is known to have died in 1721.
caption: Gladstone's Land (at centre) on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh was built in 1620[4][5] and would have been a familiar sight to the Erskines.
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