James Scrimgeour
James Scrimgeour (d. 1612) Scottish landowner and Constable of Dundee.
He was the son of John Scrymgeour and Margaret Campbell. In his father's lifetime he was known as feuar of Dudhope. He became Constable and Provost of Dundee.
He was sent with the ambassador George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal to Denmark in June 1589 as a commissioner to negotiate the marriage of James VI to Anne of Denmark. His companions were Andrew Keith, Lord Dingwall, John Skene, William Fowler, and George Young.[1] In November the Scottish party divided into two factions, supporters of the Earl Marischal and supporters of the Chancellor, John Maitland of Thirlestane. Scrimgeour and Lord Dingwall sided with Marischal. The argument was over precedence and custody of the dowry money. According to James Melville of Halhill the king sided with Maitland and came to regret sending Marischal, Scrimgeour, and Dingwall.[2]
Scrimgeour's role in the royal proxy marriage was celebrated in a Latin poem by the Edinburgh schoolmaster Hercules Rollock, which describes him swallowing a huge gulp of red wine while toasting Christian IV, and also alludes to his exile in Denmark in the 1580s during the ascendency of James Stewart, Earl of Arran.[3]
His wife Magdalen Livingstone was appointed to welcome Anne of Denmark at Leith, with Isobel Hamilton, Lady Seton and Margaret Montgomerie, Lady Seton, Mary Beaton, Lady Boyne, and the Lady Chancellor. Scrimgeour was knighted at the queen's coronation.[4]
On 25 May 1598 he came to the banquet for the queen's brother the Duke of Holstein at Holyrood Palace and brought gifts of moor fowls, capercaillies, black cocks, kids, roe deer, and dotterels.[5]
He died in 1612 at Holyrood Palace in the lodging of Christian Lindsay, poet and baker, and wife of William Murray, Master of the carriage.[6]
Marriages and children
He married firstly, Margaret Carnegie, daughter of Robert Carnegie of Kinnaird and Margaret Guthrie. Their children included:
- Elizabeth Scrimgeour, who married John Campbell
- Margaret Scrimgeour, who married James Haliburton of Pitcur
- John Scrimgeour, who married Margaret Seton, a daughter of David Seton of Parbroath
- Catherine Scrimgeour, who married Willian Ochterlony of that Ilk.
He married secondly Magdalen Livingstone, daughter of Alexander Livingston, 5th Lord Livingston and Agnes Douglas. She had been a lady in waiting to Mary, Queen of Scots and had previously been married to Arthur Erskine of Blackgrange.
References
- Miles Kerr-Peterson, A Protestant Lord in James VI's Scotland: George Keith, Fifth Earl Marischal (Boydell, 2019), pp. 47-9: Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 10 (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 103, 123.
- Miles Kerr-Peterson, A Protestant Lord in James VI's Scotland: George Keith, Fifth Earl Marischal (Boydell, 2019), pp. 52, 54: Thomas Thomson, James Melville, Memoirs of his own life (Edinburgh, 1827), p. 374
- Hercules Rollock, 'De augustissimo Iacobi VI Scotorum Regis, & Annae', translated by David McOmish, Bridging the Continental Divide: Miles Kerr-Peterson, A Protestant Lord in James VI's Scotland: George Keith, Fifth Earl Marischal (Boydell, 2019), p. 47.
- Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 10 (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 186, 300.
- Report on the manuscripts of Colonel David Milne Home of Wedderburn Castle (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 69, 71.
- A. H. Millar, Wedderburne Compt Buik (Edinburgh, 1898), pp. xxi, 91: Pamela Giles, 'Lindsay, Christian', Elizabeth Ewan, Siân Reynolds, Rose Pipes, Jane Rendall, Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh, 2018), p. 246.