Everything about John Clerk Of Penicuik totally explained
Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, 2nd Baronet,
1676 –
1755, was a
Scottish politician,
lawyer,
judge,
composer and
architect.
Early life
John Clerk was son of
Sir John Clerk, 1st Baronet by his first wife Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Henderson of Elvington, and succeeded his father in his title and estates in
1722.
Parliament
He was a Commissioner for the Union of Parliaments for the
Whig Party, and was appointed a
Baron of the Exchequer for Scotland on the constitution of the Exchequer Court,
May 13,
1708, a position he held for nearly half a century. With Baron Scrope, in 1726, he drew up an
Historical View of the Forms and Powers of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland, which was printed at the expense of the Barons of Exchequer for private circulation.
A leading supporter of the
Act of Union 1707 with the
Kingdom of England, Clerk wrote in his
memoirs of
English novelist,
journalist and
secret agent Daniel Defoe:
» "He was a spy among us, but not known as such, otherwise the Mob of Edinburgh would pull him to pieces."
He went on to become one of the first batch of
MPs from
Scotland to the new
Parliament of Great Britain (see
Scotland constituency).
Academic leanings
Of his other treatises, Clerk wrote papers in the
Philosophical Transactions: one an
Account of the Stylus of the Ancients and their different sorts of Paper, printed in 1731, and the others
On the effects of Thunder on Trees and
Of a large Deer's Horns found in the heart of an Oak, printed in 1739. He was the author of a tract entitled
Dissertatio de quibusdam Minumentis Romanis &c, written in 1730 but not published until 1750. For upwards of twenty years he also carried on a learned correspondence with
Roger Gale, the English
antiquary, which forms a portion of the
Reliquiae Britannica of 1782.
Patron of the Arts
Sir John Clerk was one of the friends and patrons of
Allan Ramsay who, during his latter years, spent much of his time at Penicuik House. Upon his death Sir John erected at his family seat an
obelisk to Ramsay's memory. He was a patron to various other artists and architects, and even dabbled in
architecture himself.
Musical talent
Clerk had a musical bent also, and was
tutored by the
baroque composer
Arcangelo Corelli, but most his own work has often been overlooked, primarily since the only record of his composition seems to be his own papers. One of his humorous Scotch songs was
O merry may the maid be that marries the miller.
Marriage
Sir John unsuccessfully courted Susanna, daughter of Sir Archibald Kennedy of Culzean, Baronet (ancestor of the
Marquess of Ailsa) and that correspondence is in the National Archives. She became the third wife of Alexander, 9th Earl of Eglinton.
He married, firstly, on
February 23,
1701, Lady Margaret, eldest daughter of
Alexander Stewart, 3rd Earl of Galloway who died in childbirth on December 26th of that year. Her son, John, survived, but died unmarried in 1722. Sir John remarried Janet, daughter of Sir John Inglis of Cramond, by whom he'd seven sons and six daughters.
He died at Penicuik House on
October 4,
1755.
Further Information
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