Family and Education

b. c.1672, 2nd s. of Hercules Scott of Brotherton, Kincardine by Jane, da. of Sir James Ogilvy, MP [S], of New Grange, Forfar.  m. Apr. 1712, Margaret, da. of Hugh Wallace, MP [S], of Ingliston, Midlothian, 1s. 1da.

Offices Held

Ensign, 3 Ft. Gds. (Scots Ft. Gds.) 1692, lt. and capt. 1693, capt. and lt.-col. 1694, 2nd maj. 1713, 1st maj. 1717, lt.-col. comdg. 1723–43; brevet col. 1712; brig.-gen. 1735, maj.-gen. 1739, lt.-gen. 1743.

Biography

Scott was a grandson of ‘Provost Scott’ of Montrose (d. 1658) and thus a first cousin once removed of James Scott I*. Commissioned in the Scots Foot Guards in the year of Steenkerk, he was to serve the regiment for over 50 years, the last 20 in command. Although his father and uncle had been nominated to local office as excise commissioners for Kincardineshire after the Revolution, the family’s political sympathies were not unequivocally Williamite: his father stood security for rebels in 1691 and was reported to be ‘well affected’ to the Pretender in 1706. Scott’s father-in-law, an associate of Sir James Montgomerie of Skelmorlie, had been suspected of disloyalty in 1690 and forfeited his seat in the Scottish parliament three years later by failing to sign the Assurance.1

Scott stood for Kincardineshire in 1710 and 1713, at first unsuccessfully but subsequently unopposed, having acquired some property in the county in 1708, presumably from the estate of his uncle John Scott of Commieston, who died that year (although the lion’s share of the inheritance seems at first to have gone to his elder brother). In Lord Polwarth’s list he was put down as a ‘Jacobite’ (a Tory). If he spoke at all in this Parliament his words have passed unrecorded, but on 8 Apr. 1714 he told with George Lockhart in favour of the election of John Houstoun* for Linlithgowshire, and on 12 May he voted against extending the schism bill to cover Catholic education. On the other hand, he signed the proclamation of George I, as one of the Scottish MPs then in London, and was described as a Whig in the Worsley list. Re-elected in 1715, Scott proved himself a loyal servant to the Hanoverians, voting consistently for the Court in all divisions until the 1734 election, at which time he stood down, in the vain hope that his son would succeed him in the seat. Scott died in 1747.2

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

• 1. Burke, Commoners, iv. 544; Reg. PC Scotland, 1690, p. 23; 1691, pp. 149, 703; APS, ix. 10, 20, 249; Leven and Melville Pprs. (Bannatyne Club, lxxvii), 514; Lockhart Letters ed. Szechi, 70.
• 2. SRO Indexes, iii. 735–6; Services of Heirs (ser 1), i. 23; Macpherson, Orig. Pprs. ii. 5; Boyer, Pol. State, viii. 118.