John Ker

[2] The 1690s were a time of extreme economic hardship and famine in Scotland, known as the seven ill years; in December 1696, the city of Edinburgh set up a refugee camp in Greyfriars kirkyard to house starving rural migrants.

[5] In 1713, if his own story is to be believed, business of a semi-diplomatic nature took Ker to Vienna, where, although he failed in the principal object of his errand, the Emperor made him a present of his portrait set in jewels.

Ker also occupied his time in Vienna, he says, by gathering information which he forwarded to the electress Sophia; and in the following year on his way home he stopped at Hanover to give some advice to the future King of Great Britain as to the best way to govern the English.

Although in his own opinion Ker materially assisted in placing George I on the British throne, his services were unrewarded, owing, he would have us believe, to the incorruptibility of his character.

Similar ingratitude was the recompense for his revelations of the Jacobite intentions in 1715, and as he was no more successful in making money out of the British East India Company, nor in certain commercial schemes which engaged his ingenuity during the next few years, he died in a debtor's prison.