‘Sir Thos.  Dick Lauder, Bart.’

‘The publication,’ as Mr. Laing says in his Preface, ’intended to form two volumes in octavo, under the title of Historical Notices of Scottish Affairs, had actually proceeded to press to page 304 in 1825, when the misfortunes of the publisher put a stop to the enterprise.  After an interval of several years the greater portion of Sir Thomas’s transcripts was placed at the disposal of the Bannatyne Club.’  The result was the publication of the Observes and the Historical Notices.  Mr. Laing adds, ’If at any subsequent time some of his missing MSS. should be discovered, another volume of Selections, to include his early Journal and extracts from his smaller notebooks, might not be undeserving the attention of the Bannatyne Club.’  The Journal in France, though never printed, was reviewed by Mr. Cosmo Innes in 1864 in the North British Review, vol. xli. p. 170.

OUTLINE OF FOUNTAINHALL’S LIFE

A short relation of Lord Fountainhall’s life is given in Mr. David Laing’s preface to the Historical Notices.  He was born in 1646.  His father was John Lauder, merchant and bailie of Edinburgh, of the family of Lauder of that Ilk.[17] He graduated as Master of Arts in the University of Edinburgh in 1664.  He went to France to study in 1665, and returned from abroad in 1667.  He was ‘admitted’ as an advocate in 1668.  He was married in 1669 to Janet, daughter of Sir Andrew Ramsay of Abbotshall,[18] Provost of Edinburgh, afterwards a Lord of Session.  In 1674, along with the leaders of the bar and the majority of the profession, he was ‘debarred’ or suspended from practising by the king’s proclamation for asserting the right of appeal from the decisions of the Court of Session, and was restored in 1676.  He was knighted in 1681.  In the same year his father, who was then eighty-six years old, purchased the lands of Woodhead and others in East Lothian.  The conveyance is to John Lauder of Newington in liferent, and Sir John Lauder, his son, in fee.  The lands were erected into a barony, called Fountainhall.  In 1685, he was returned as member of Parliament for the county of Haddington, which he represented till the Union in 1707.  In 1686 his wife, by whom he had a large family, died.  In 1687 he married Marion Anderson, daughter of Anderson of Balram.  He was appointed a Lord of Session in 1689, and a Lord of Justiciary in 1690.  He resigned the latter office in 1709, and died in 1722.  His father had been made a baronet in 1681 by James VII.  The succession under the patent was to his son by his third marriage; but in 1690, after the Revolution, a new patent was granted by William and Mary to Sir John Lauder, senior, and his eldest son and his heirs.  The first patent was reduced in 1692, and in the same year Fountainhall succeeded on his father’s death.