The most powerful interest in Perthshire was that of the 4th Duke of Atholl, a supporter of government, whose uncle Gen. James Murray was the sitting Member in 1790 and whose family had enjoyed general supremacy since the Union. His chief aristocratic rival was the Whig 4th Earl of Breadalbane, but in county politics party strife was usually a sub-plot to the main theme of conflict between Atholl and the ‘independent freeholders of middling estates’, who were thick on the ground.1 While some were always and others generally inclined to follow his lead, provided lip-service was paid to their ‘independence’, groups and individuals among them made sporadic challenges to his hegemony which were enthusiastically supported by Breadalbane and his fellow travellers in opposition.

In 1790 Murray was opposed by John Drummond of Megginch, sitting Member for Shaftesbury, who sought ‘to break the influence’ of the Atholl family. Drummond supported Pitt in the House, but his campaign in Perthshire was backed by Breadalbane, the 10th Earl of Kinnoull, the 7th Lord Kinnaird and other ‘friends of the opposition’. A general move in 1789 against the ‘undue multiplication’ of nominal votes seems to have had some effect in reducing the roll, but thereafter the number of voters again increased steadily. Murray, backed by government, easily beat off the attack from Drummond and his allies, which was reported to have cost Breadalbane £10,000.2

When Murray’s health collapsed early in 1794 Atholl decided to replace him with Thomas Graham of Balgowan, who had stood in independent opposition to the Atholl interest in 1773, but, since his marriage to Atholl’s wife’s sister in 1774, had avoided active involvement in county politics, though remaining ambitious for the seat. In the 1780s his sympathies had been decidedly Whiggish, but his unreserved support for the French war removed any political obstacles to his receiving Atholl’s support. His former association with the independent cause was at once an asset and a potential embarrassment, but Graham handled his campaign skilfully. He talked Atholl out of attempting a blatant coup de main and persuaded him to opt for public declarations of intent from Murray and himself, carefully synchronized with last-minute private notifications to Breadalbane, Kinnoull and ministers. Henry Dundas was annoyed, ostensibly at their failure to consult him before taking a step which opened the county to the threat of a contest, and said he would take no part in the election. The real reason for his ill humour was that Atholl had scotched his secret plan to put up his son Robert Dundas*, with Breadalbane’s support, when Murray retired. Graham could scarcely credit the rumours to this effect, but the story was confirmed 18 years later by Robert Dundas himself. Dundas was additionally hamstrung by his marriage the previous year to Graham’s cousin and by his current warm support for Graham’s application to raise a regiment of the line; and he told his friend Alexander Campbell* of Monzie, whose kinsman Breadalbane immediately stepped in with an offer of support free of political strings, to stay clear of the business, as he was unable ‘at this time’ to oppose Graham. While Graham was ‘satisfied’ with Dundas’s declaration of neutrality, Atholl took umbrage and provoked an exchange of bad-tempered letters with the minister. With Atholl’s apparent concurrence, Graham pitched his personal appeal to the independent interest and played down his connexion with the duke. Kinnoull pledged support on these terms but Breadalbane, still searching for a candidate, remained silent. Graham had sufficient backing from the independents to set Breadalbane at defiance in a letter (not meant, as Graham confided, for Atholl’s eyes) which insisted that Atholl’s ‘material support’ did not invalidate his claim to independence. It concluded with the observation that ‘the cause of independence in the county will rather be hurt by splitting that interest which, if united, may always maintain it’. This may have been a hint that it would be to Breadalbane’s long-term advantage not to divide the anti-Atholl interest. Murray died, probably before he took the Chiltern Hundreds, and Graham came in unopposed.3

Kinnoull told the Duke of Portland, 1 Nov. 1795, that ‘all party in the county has subsided’ and that Graham, who supported government when not absent on active service, had ‘a very firm seat’. There was no disturbance in 1796 and a threat of opposition in 1802 came to nothing. In March 1806 Campbell of Monzie announced his intention of standing at the next election, claiming that Breadalbane had authorized him to say that ‘government will support the candidate of his choice’. Graham (who declared his support for the ‘Talents’) and Atholl pressed William Adam to intercede with ministers. Lord Grenville initially declined to commit himself, but it soon became clear that Monzie’s half-hearted canvass was utterly futile and he withdrew three weeks before the election, in which ministers had evidently decided to take no part.4

Graham expressed regret at the dismissal of the ‘Talents’ and attacked their successors, 25 Mar. 1807. He heard soon afterwards that ‘great efforts’ would be made to dissuade Atholl from supporting him in the event of a dissolution. After consulting a few of Graham’s former independent supporters, led by Sir Alexander Muir Mackenzie and George Paterson, who turned against him and withdrew their support because he had declared himself a party man, Atholl arranged to put up his son Lord James Murray as a supporter of government. Graham, perhaps misguidedly, surrendered the seat without a fight. Angered by the presumption of a few men who had ‘independence more in their mouths than in their practice’ in setting themselves up as the spokesmen of the whole electorate, he wrote a petulant parting address, which he later admitted to have been imprudent. In it he ascribed his declaration of support for the late ministers to his approval of their conduct on the Catholic issue, but denied any previous party predilection in their favour. He privately believed that the move against him was inspired by party passion.5

Lord James Murray was a political cypher and during his tenure of the seat the bulk of county business was conducted by Sir Patrick Murray* of Ochtertyre, the Member for Edinburgh, Lord Melville’s wife’s brother-in-law and husband of Graham’s first cousin. Graham, who became a major-general in 1809 and had a successful military career in the Peninsula, moved markedly towards the Whigs in sympathy and pinned his hopes of retrieving the seat on their return to office. Their failure to do so prompted him, as he explained to Earl Grey, 3 Jan. 1812, to defer ‘taking any decision about becoming again a candidate for Perthshire’, despite the pressure of ‘many of my personal friends’.6

In December 1811 Lord James Murray was promised a lordship of the bedchamber as soon as the Regent’s household was established, and early in January 1812 Atholl told Sir Patrick Murray, in confidence, that he intended to replace Lord James with his son-in-law James Drummond, heir to the Strathallan estates. Murray swallowed his personal disappointment, but on learning shortly afterwards that the Dundases intended to turn him out of Edinburgh at the next general election, he pressed his own claims to the Perthshire seat on Atholl. He was rebuffed and appealed to the 2nd Viscount Melville, hinting that he was prepared to contest the seat against Drummond with Breadalbane’s support, provided it was offered spontaneously and without party political conditions. Melville urged Murray’s pretensions on Atholl as being superior to Drummond’s, passed on his hint about the possibly unpleasant consequences of a contest and mentioned his late father’s wish that, in the event of Lord James’s retirement, Sir Patrick should have the seat, provided his first preference, Graham, did not want it. Atholl insisted that ‘the interest of a son-in-law must have a prior claim’. Melville reported the outcome sympathetically to Murray but, stating that government were bound to support Atholl’s as the leading friendly interest, advised him to retire from the House with a baron’s gown. He failed to prevent Murray announcing his intention, 21 Feb. 1812, of standing at the next general election, it being then too late to come forward on the present vacancy.7

Neither Graham’s friend Robert Graham of Fintry, who was looking after his estate in his absence, nor his agent Robert Graeme had any clear idea of the general’s intentions and they had made no move on his behalf, though they resented Atholl’s unfounded assertion that he had renounced his pretensions to the seat. Fintry sounded Murray, who professed willingness to support Graham if he could credibly present himself as a truly independent candidate, but said that his ‘certainty of Graham’s political sentiments and convictions being at present opposed to those of the majority of the county’ made it incumbent on him to come forward himself as the champion of independence. On 27 Feb. 1812 the 8th Baron Kinnaird, a partisan and meddlesome Whig, circulated an announcement that Graham was to stand on the present vacancy. As soon as he got wind of this, Murray took steps to vacate his seat and declared that he had now decided to come forward at the by-election. Robert Graeme had strongly resisted Kinnaird’s initiative, but, being powerless to prevent it, tried to ensure that Graham’s candidature was publicized as having been ‘proposed and supported not by any one exclusive party, but upon the independent interest’. When informing Graham of the move, he argued that while he could always disavow the action of his friends if he disapproved, and the chances of success on the present occasion were slim, it was essential to prevent Murray from monopolizing the support of the anti-Atholl interest if Graham had ‘any future ideas of the county.’ Graeme was rebuked by Graham’s brother-in-law Lord Cathcart for his unauthorized acquiescence in what appeared to be a piece of Whig chicanery; but his action seemed to have been vindicated on 29 Feb. when Murray, having accepted an offer of support from Breadalbane on a mutual understanding that if Graham stood he was to have the preference and that Murray was under no tie as to ‘party politics’, agreed to unite his interest with Graham’s.8

Yet the same day Murray made another bid for ministerial support by informing Melville of this ‘triple alliance’, portraying Graham as ‘the certain opponent of government’ and himself as their reliable supporter, and asking him to press Drummond to stand down in order to preserve the interests of both government and Atholl. Melville sent Drummond a copy of Murray’s letter, expressed a hope that, if Murray’s assertions of relative strengths were accurate, Drummond would be prepared to compromise to keep out the ‘common enemy’, but indicated that he thought Murray was probably exaggerating his power to do damage. Drummond, backed by Atholl, retorted that if anyone should retire it was Murray, who had no chance and was solely responsible for any threat to the ministerial and Atholl interests. Graeme, meanwhile, had evidently received from Graham a letter written on 3 Feb. in which he said that the failure of the Whigs to come in had decided him ‘to let things take their course’ in county politics, and he hoped that his friends would not involve him in ‘a useless contest to please themselves’. While Graeme was inclined to withdraw the general’s name immediately, Fintry argued that as he was unaware of the new situation in Perthshire he should be kept in the running until he ruled otherwise, when fully apprised of the facts. At a meeting with Murray it was decided that Graham’s candidature should be confirmed and that Murray should announce to Graham’s supporters that he intended to vote for him, and remained a candidate himself only to cover the ‘remote’ contingency that Graham might be withdrawn. Murray’s initial hope that Graham’s associations with the Whigs would deter many independent freeholders from voting for him was realized in some instances, but it had become clear to him that Graham would draw off far more votes from Drummond than he would. Yet he did not fail to remark, when informing Melville that Graham was almost certain to win, that he would then ‘have to congratulate you on your opposition Member’. He justified his determination to support Graham by depicting his motive as a desire to destroy Atholl’s exclusive ‘family system’, implied that matters could still be set to rights if Melville forced Atholl to climb down, and, after predicting that the duke would rat if the Whigs came in, added enigmatically that Melville should ‘look well to your own interests in Perthshire’, which were not too different from his own. His request for a free return for Elgin Burghs, currently represented by William Dundas, who was to replace him at Edinburgh, was ignored.9

As the canvass progressed Murray repeatedly protested to Graeme and Fintry against any move to withdraw Graham, even if instructions were received from the general himself to that effect, maintaining that great exertion could carry the day for him, whereas it was ‘very improbable’ that he himself could win. At the same time he told Graeme that Graham’s ‘unlucky letter’ of April 1807 would be ‘a difficult pill for many people to swallow’, and another correspondent that in the ‘unforeseen event’ of Graham’s being withdrawn, ‘there is a great probability of carrying it for me, so great, as may perhaps induce the opposite party to come to terms’. He also gave Graeme, without permission, an extract of the passage in Melville’s earlier letter to Atholl (of which Melville had sent Murray a copy) which alluded to the late Lord Melville’s desire to see Graham or himself returned. Graeme, whose general line in the canvass was to admit Graham’s unshakeable pro-Catholic sentiments, but to deny any wish on his part to ‘clog the wheels of government’ by partisan opposition, made use of it in ‘one or two instances’. He perceived that one of the strongest motives for Murray’s zeal on Graham’s behalf was his belief that in the general’s success lay his only real hope of gaining the prize himself on a future occasion. Two days before the election, when he, Fintry and Kinnaird were reconciled to defeat by five or six votes, he began to suspect that the baronet ‘was not playing quite fair with us’ and was thinking of proposing on the day to withdraw Graham and stand himself, on the pretext that he could make ‘the best show’ against the Atholl interest. Graeme scotched Murray’s scheme, if such it was, by informing him that he had no authority from Graham to sanction such a futile gesture and that many of Graham’s supporters would not in any case submit to being transferred. In truth, Graeme was anxious to prevent Murray from stealing Graham’s thunder as the leading challenger to the Atholl interest, and he admitted in private to Graham that there was a slim chance that ‘more of your votes would have transferred themselves to him, than of his to you’. Graeme claimed that his remonstrance was effective and was generally satisfied with Murray’s conduct thereafter, though he detected symptoms of personal disappointment in the egotistical tone of the first part of his speech at the election meeting, 19 Mar., when Murray withdrew and proposed Graham. Having accepted defeat as inevitable, Graham’s supporters abandoned plans to contest the election of praeses and clerk, and did not dispute suspect votes on the Atholl interest or poll their full available strength. Drummond consequently won by 18 votes. Graeme attributed defeat mainly to lack of time, but apportioned some blame also to the ‘ineffectiveness’ of the ‘miserably managed’ Breadalbane interest. At the same time, he saw excellent prospects of success at the general election and an immediate canvass was started for the dissolution. Shortly afterwards letters were received from Graham acquiescing in what had been done in his name.10

Murray meanwhile had burned his boats with Melville, who on 15 Mar. had written him a stern letter of rebuke, conceding the justice of his pretensions to the seat, but upbraiding him for supporting an opponent of government from no other motive than ‘personal pique and resentment’, and demanding an explanation of his allusion to the future security of Melville’s ‘interest’ in Perthshire. Murray replied in a long letter of defiant bluster, redolent of resentment at his subjugation to the Dundases and his treatment by Atholl, in which he now argued that Graham could not be considered as the ‘determined partisan’ of opposition and admitted that his earlier representation of him as such had been a ploy, designed to secure government intervention for himself. His separate and ‘most confidential’ explanation of his remarks about Melville’s ‘interest’ involved much idle speculation about the future disposition of political forces in the county, but amounted to nothing more than a bid for Melville’s support at the general election. It is clear that the minister was unimpressed by either effusion.11

While Graham’s supporters awaited his decision about the general election they began to prepare for a renewed assault. Murray concerted arrangements with Breadalbane, Kinnaird and Peter Drummond Burrell*, another Whig, who had acquired an interest in the county through his marriage and had aspirations to the seat, but found a berth at Boston in April 1812. When it was reported that Atholl, Muir Mackenzie and others were dividing superiorities, Murray, holding out the threat of public exposure of the duke’s inconsistency in view of his co-operation in the 1789 purge of nominals, and of counter-measures by himself and his allies, offered to act as mediator in the arrangement of a compromise similar to that of 1789. His approach was ignored and both sides continued to prepare for the manufacture of fresh votes. On 30 Mar. 1812 Murray informed Graham that his pro-Catholic views, his ‘party’ declaration and address of 1807 would remain ‘insurmountable obstacles’ to his success, unless there was a change of government or he furnished a convincing explanation. He professed willingness to support Graham at the next election but asked to be told ‘under what circumstances’ he might put himself forward. Graeme, who attributed Murray’s distorted picture of county politics to egotism rather than deliberate misrepresentation, was disturbed by the drift of this letter and privately warned Graham to disregard Murray’s exaggerated account of the residual hostility to his conduct in 1807. When Graham wrote to Graeme, 22 Apr. 1812, he had probably not received Murray’s letter and certainly not the agent’s criticisms of it, but he was aware that the baronet required firm handling and wrote him a stalling letter thanking him for his support but indicating that he seriously doubted the point of renewing the attack on the Atholl interest. Yet only a week later he composed an address announcing his intention of contesting the next election as an ‘independent’ and repeating his support for Catholic relief, and wrote to Adam and Grey to enlist their aid in counteracting the ‘weight of the Treasury’. He sent a curt reply to Atholl’s letter of 26 Mar., an attempt to warn him off by insinuating that he had been used as a stalking-horse for Murray, and turned to the task of clinching the support of the baronet. He declined to try to explain away his ‘party’ declaration of 1807, insisted that he was bound to be explicit about his pro-Catholic views, admitted the ‘intemperance’ of his 1807 address, but saw no point in apologizing for its tone at this late stage. He professed complete concurrence in Murray’s hostility to Atholl’s ‘family system’ and a sincere desire to see him eventually occupying the county seat and, while refusing to issue specific instructions to cover ‘contingencies’, argued that Murray’s best chance of securing it lay in unconditionally supporting himself at the next election. When Murray received Graham’s first letter in mid May, he lamented its ‘indecision’, but conceded the justice of its observations on the ‘dormant and passive independency of the freeholders’. He toyed with the idea of trying to ‘rouse the right spirit’ through ‘some club or association founded upon principles of independence, and not of party’, yet feared that it ‘could not be disconnected sufficiently from party politics’ and would ‘immediately lead to a counter-plot’. Receipt of Graham’s decision at the end of the month was the signal for a full-scale canvass, which was countered by Drummond and Atholl, both of whom were suspected by Graham’s supporters of political trimming during the current period of political uncertainty. Late in June Graeme told the general that although ‘the duke’s attentions have done your cause some injury since the last election’, it was clear that whether the election occurred in the autumn or the following year, when new votes on both sides would have become eligible, ‘the contest whichever way it goes will be almost equally near’. Graham, who had become plagued by persistent eye trouble, obtained leave of absence to have the affliction treated and arrived home late in August 1812.12

Drummond told Melville that although he was confident of success, he had found ‘several disposed to change sides’ on a ‘general cry’ that ‘the Atholl family have had the county long enough’, whereupon Melville ordered the lord advocate to make every exertion for him. Murray, who warned Graham that Kinnaird’s Whig fanaticism made his support more of a liability than an asset, obtained the general’s blessing for a public dinner in his honour, at which he planned to launch an ‘Independent Club’. The dinner, at which Breadalbane presided, was held on 28 Sept., but the newspaper report makes no mention of Murray’s plan for a club being taken up. A self-styled, though probably informal ‘association’ was in existence by November 1812, when Graham subscribed £300, and Breadalbane later directed his agent to co-ordinate their own vote-creating activities with those of the association; but the initiative seems to have been taken by Balgowan and Graeme after the election. Murray, who was apparently not present at the inaugural meeting, later wrote that he had subscribed nothing to its funds.13

When Parliament was dissolved there was a lively public debate over Graham’s attitude to Catholic relief and to party. In his address of 6 Oct., he vaunted his pro-Catholic sentiments and was challenged in a public letter by Muir Mackenzie, who argued that he had been turned out in 1807 not because of his support for Catholic relief, but because he had enlisted as a party man with the fallen ministers. Graham disputed the charge, insisted on his personal independence of party, invoked the late Lord Melville’s wish to see him reinstated in the seat and claimed that the exertion of government influence against him did not betoken outright ministerial hostility, for which there was no justification, but was the ‘unauthorized act’ of Melville and his Scottish acolytes. At the election meeting Lord James Murray was chosen praeses over Sir Patrick by 74 votes to 68. There was a greater transfer of votes from Drummond to Graham (five) than in the other direction (two) between March and October, and eight of Drummond’s former supporters did not vote on this occasion, as opposed to only three of Graham’s; but Drummond equalled Graham’s total of 17 votes mustered from freeholders who had not voted at the by-election and emerged with a majority of seven. Graham, who returned to the Peninsula in 1813, immediately announced that he would stand at the next opportunity and Murray that he would support him.14

Late in 1813 Murray, on tenterhooks at repeated rumours that Graham was to be made a peer, evidently wrote to him, via Graeme, advising him not only to ‘abstain from an avowed opposition to the government’, but actually to become ‘a friend to the ministry’. Graeme passed on the letter, but made clear to Murray his hostility to any departure from Graham’s ‘natural line’ of disavowal of party commitment. In May 1814 Graham accepted a peerage as Lord Lynedoch and transferred his ‘disposable interest’ to Murray, who announced his candidature for the next election. Breadalbane and Graeme had already agreed that the funds of the association should be applied ‘to get rid of all objectionable votes, as well as to increase the numbers of their friends by the purchase of qualifications’. By Michaelmas 1814, when 19 new votes were admitted on the interest of the anti-Atholl alliance, the roll had swollen to 210. In January 1815, when five Atholl votes were ordered to be struck off by the court of session and Murray alleged a further 27 favourable votes were in process of creation, the baronet, claiming to be back on personally friendly terms with Melville, boasted that his ‘political interests never looked so well’. Early the next year he predicted a large majority for himself at an election held after the next head court; but in March 1816 Roger Aytoun, the ‘general agent’ for the ‘independent interest’, reported to Graeme, at Murray’s request, that ‘all our efforts are paralyzed for want of funds’. Graeme agreed that effective measures were urgently necessary to consolidate the advantage gained since 1812, but little appears to have been accomplished and financial problems continued to hamper the association’s efforts.15

The revelation of these difficulties coincided with a crisis provoked when Murray moved resolutions supporting the retention of the property tax at a county meeting, 14 Mar. 1816. This outraged his Whig allies, and he compounded the blunder by proposing that the petition should be presented by Drummond in the Commons and, because of Atholl’s absence, by the Duke of Montrose in the Lords. Kinnoull, Breadalbane, Kinnaird, Lynedoch and Burrell sent him a stiff remonstrance. Lynedoch, who gave the others their head, supported this outburst as the means most ‘likely to make their spleen evaporate’, sending him advance warning:

you could not possibly have held a conduct more likely to expose you to the charge of courting beforehand the favour of government, and even the favour of the domineering interest in the county, to counterbalance which is the avowed object of the league for your support.

Murray denied both charges, arguing that he had never pretended to be other than ‘the decided friend of the present administration’ and that he was persona non grata with Atholl. His similarly high-spirited reply to the joint remonstrance did nothing to appease the peers. When Graeme pointed out the folly of his conduct Murray, who professed to see only Kinnoull’s wounded pride at having been passed over for Montrose behind the outcry, replied defiantly that while he was certainly dependent on their support for his ultimate success, they were no less so on him for the defeat of the Atholl interest, as it was quite ‘chimerical’ to entertain hopes of returning a Whig. Not for the first time, Graeme pleaded with him to contemplate the Perthshire political scene less from his own standpoint than from that of his allies, of whom only Breadalbane had ‘anything like a permanent or continued interest in opposition’ to Atholl.

Lynedoch’s hope that their ‘ill humour will evaporate before their assistance is required’ was realized, but the incident demonstrated the basic instability of the anti-Atholl alliance with Murray, rather than Graham, as its figurehead.16

Shortly before the dissolution of 1818 the 14th Lord Gray gave notice of a motion to place a portrait of Atholl in the county hall, ostensibly in recognition of his services as lord lieutenant. The leaders of the anti-Atholl league saw it as a political manoeuvre, which could hardly be defeated as ‘many, who might be disposed to oppose the Atholl interest in the county, would be rather inclined to catch at such an opportunity of paying the duke a personal compliment’. Attempts were made to persuade Gray to drop it, but he produced the motion at a county meeting, 30 Apr. 1818, when Murray’s amendment to postpone it until Michaelmas was defeated by 58 votes to 17. While Lynedoch thought ‘a passive kind of indifference’ would have been more appropriate, in that it would have ‘prevented the promoters from mustering so strong’, he had to admit that Kinnaird, Breadalbane and Burrell ‘much approved’ of Murray’s conduct.17

After all this Murray told Melville, 18 May 1818, that he had decided not to contest the forthcoming election, professedly because of the absence abroad of a number of his supporters. Although his capitulation, announced publicly at the end of the month, made him look ‘ridiculous’ in the eyes of his opponents, it had the approval of ‘the Perthshire cabinet’ of Whig lords, who had presumably baulked at exposing themselves to a humiliating defeat. Yet, even before the election, Graeme and Lynedoch were pressing for the establishment of the association on a more formal basis in future, with provision for an annual audit, though it is not clear whether they were successful. Under pressure from Aytoun, who confessed that Murray’s ‘personal friends would wish him out of the scrape of opposing ministers’, the baronet agreed that it would be ‘right for the sake of the independent interest of Perthshire hereafter that a show of attention should be made on the day of election’. He favoured an address in the press, while Aytoun wanted him to speak at the election meeting, but in the event no gesture of any sort seems to have been made and Drummond was quietly returned.18