James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount of Stair

From 1661 Dalrymple, by now Viscount Stair, was active in the Court of Session and sat on many commissions through which he was connected to important moments in Scottish history."

Next year he went to Edinburgh, probably with the intention of studying law, but the troubles of the times, then approaching a crisis, led him to change his course, and we next find him serving in the Earl of Glencairn's regiment in the War of the Covenant.

His activity and skill in matters of college business were praised by his colleagues, who numbered amongst them some of the leading Covenanting divines, and his zeal in teaching was gratefully acknowledged by his students.

Three years later, on the death of James Learmonth, Lord Balcomie,[4] Stair was appointed one of the Commissioners for the Administration of Justice in Scotland, on the recommendation of Monk.

[3] He was also put on various important commissions, busied himself with local and agricultural affairs, and, like most of the Scottish judges of this and the following century, acted with zest and credit the part of a good country gentleman.

His daughter Janet, who had been betrothed to Lord Rutherfurd, was married to Dunbar of Baldoon, and some tragic incident occurred on the wedding night, from the effects of which she never recovered.

[3] In 1670 Stair served as one of the Scottish commissioners who went to London to treat of the Union, but the project, not seriously pressed by Charles and his ministers, broke down through a claim on the part of the Scots to what was deemed an excessive representation in the British parliament.

Stair also had a minor share in the form which this law finally took, but it was confined to the insertion of a definition of "the Protestant religion", by which he hoped to make the test harmless, but his expectation was disappointed.

Argyll, who declared he took it only insofar as it was consistent with itself and the Protestant religion, was tried and condemned for treason and narrowly saved his life by escaping from Edinburgh Castle the day before that fixed for his execution.

Stair, dreading a similar fate, went to London to seek a personal interview with the king, who had more than once befriended him, perhaps remembering his services in the Netherlands, but the Duke of York intercepted his access to the royal ear, and when he returned to Scotland he found a new commission of judges issued, from which his name was omitted.

[3] He retired to his wife's estate in Galloway, and occupied himself with preparing for the press his great work, The Institutions of the Law of Scotland, which he published in the autumn of 1681, with a dedication to the king.

While there he published the Decisions of the Court of Session between 1666 and 1671, of which he had kept a daily record, and a small treatise on natural philosophy, entitled Physiologia nova experimentalis.

The cause of their abandonment was the appointment of his son, the Master of Stair, who had made his peace with James II, as Lord Advocate in place of Mackenzie, who was dismissed from office for refusing to relax the penal laws against the Roman Catholics.

The Master only held office as Lord Advocate for a year, when he was "degraded to be Justice Clerk" the king and his advisers finding him not a fit tool for their purpose.

An unscrupulous opposition, headed by Montgomery of Skelmorlie who coveted the office of Secretary for Scotland, and Lord Ross, who aimed at the presidency of the court, sprang up in the Scottish parliament, and an anonymous pamphleteer, perhaps Montgomery himself or Ferguson the Plotter, attacked Stair in a pamphlet entitled The Late Proceedings of the Parliament of Scotland Stated and Vindicated.

[6] The massacre of the Macdonalds of Glencoe (13 February 1692), which has marked his son, the Master of Stair, with a stain which his great services to the state cannot efface—for he was undoubtedly the principal adviser of William in that treacherous and cruel deed, as a signal way of repressing rebellion in the Highlands—was used as an opportunity by his adversaries of renewing their attack on the old president.

It was alleged that he had as a privy councillor declined to receive Glencoe's oath of allegiance, though tendered, on the technical ground that it was given after the day fixed, but even this was not clearly proved.

Two bills were introduced without naming him but really aimed at him—one to disqualify peers from being judges and the other to confer on the Crown a power to appoint temporary presidents of the court.

The complaint against him was remitted to a committee, which, after full inquiry, completely exculpated him, and the two bills, whose incompetency he demonstrated in an able paper addressed to the commission and parliament, were allowed to drop.

He was also one of a parliamentary commission which prepared a report on the regulation of the judicatures, afterwards made the basis of a statute in 1695 supplementary to that of 1672, and forming the foundation of the judicial procedure in the Scottish courts for many years.

[7] In 1695 there was published in London a small volume with the title A Vindication of the Divine Perfections, Illustrating the Glory of God in them by Reason and Revelation, methodically digested By a Person of Honour.

"The family of Dalrymple", observed Sir Walter Scott, "produced within two centuries as many men of talent, civil and military, of literary, political and professional eminence, as any house in Scotland.