Roxburghshire

County

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Number of voters:

about 60

Elections

DateCandidate
4 Mar. 1715WILLIAM DOUGLAS
18 Apr. 1722SIR GILBERT ELLIOT of Minto
6 July 1726SIR GILBERT ELIOTT of Stobs vice Elliot of Minto, appointed to office
 John Scott
15 Sept. 1727WILLIAM DOUGLAS
16 July 1728DOUGLAS re-elected after appointment to office
30 May 1734JOHN RUTHERFURD
1 June 1741JOHN RUTHERFURD
18 Feb. 1742WILLIAM DOUGLAS vice Rutherfurd, appointed to office
14 July 1747WALTER SCOTT

Main Article

The chief interest in Roxburghshire was that of its hereditary sheriff, Archibald Douglas of Cavers, whose son, William, represented it in the 1715 and 1727 Parliaments. In 1722, when William Douglas moved to Dumfries Burghs, he was succeeded by Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, who was replaced in 1726 by his kinsman Sir Gilbert Eliott of Stobs. In 1734 and 1741, the Douglases having gone into opposition, John Rutherfurd, a member of the Squadrone, married to an Elliot of Minto, was returned. He was succeeded in 1742 by William Douglas, now the head of his family, who resigned the sheriffdom of the county to a younger brother. In 1747, though he was included in a ministerial list of proposed Members for Scotland, he was replaced by Walter Scott of Harden, in whose favour the Marquess of Lothian claimed to have ‘cast the balance’.1

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. Newcastle (Clumber) mss; Lothian to Newcastle, 27 Aug. 1747, Add. 32712, f. 438.