William Johnstone Pulteney
Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet (October 1729 – 30 May 1805), known as William Johnstone until 1767, was a Scottish advocate, landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1768 and 1805. He was reputedly the wealthiest man in Great Britain. He profited from slave plantations in North America, and invested in building developments in Great Britain, including the Pulteney Bridge and other buildings in Bath, buildings on the sea-front at Weymouth in Dorset, and roads in his native Scotland. He was a patron of architect Robert Adam and civil engineer Thomas Telford. Early life William Johnstone, as he was born, was the second son of Sir James Johnstone, 3rd Baronet of Wester Hall, Dumfries, and his wife Barbara Murray, the oldest sister of the literary patron Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank. His older brother was the soldier and politician Sir James Johnstone, 4th Baronet. His younger brothers included the politician and naval officer George Johnstone ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Much Honoured
The Much Honoured (abbreviated to The Much Hon.) is an honorific style applied to the holders of certain Scottish feudal baronies. Overview There were around 350 identifiable local baronies in Scotland by the early fifteenth century and these could mostly be mapped against local parish boundaries. In addition, there are a small number of feudal earldoms (Aboyne, Angus, Arran, Breadalbane, Crawfurd-Lindsay, Dunbar, Errol, Lennox, Nithsdale, Orkney, Rothes, Wigtown), one feudal marquessate (Huntly) and one feudal dukedom (Hamilton), all held ''in baroneum'', where there is entitlement. Of these, two earldoms are unclaimed, one is in dispute and the dukedom and marquessate are held by senior members of the Scottish peerage. The highest-ranking feudal baron in Scotland is The Much Hon. The Baron of Renfrew, HRH The Duke of Rothesay; by tradition both titles being held concurrently by the heir apparent to the British throne. The Marquess of Huntly and The Earl of Eglinton and Wint ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bath, Somerset
Bath () is a city in the Bath and North East Somerset unitary area in the county of Somerset, England, known for and named after its Roman-built baths. At the 2021 Census, the population was 101,557. Bath is in the valley of the River Avon, west of London and southeast of Bristol. The city became a World Heritage Site in 1987, and was later added to the transnational World Heritage Site known as the "Great Spa Towns of Europe" in 2021. Bath is also the largest city and settlement in Somerset. The city became a spa with the Latin name ' ("the waters of Sulis") 60 AD when the Romans built baths and a temple in the valley of the River Avon, although hot springs were known even before then. Bath Abbey was founded in the 7th century and became a religious centre; the building was rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century, claims were made for the curative properties of water from the springs, and Bath became popular as a spa town in the Georgian era. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Faculty Of Advocates
The Faculty of Advocates is an independent body of lawyers who have been admitted to practise as advocates before the courts of Scotland, especially the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary. The Faculty of Advocates is a constituent part of the College of Justice and is based in Edinburgh. Advocates are privileged to plead in any cause before any of the courts of Scotland, including the sheriff courts and district courts, where counsel are not excluded by statute. History The Faculty has existed since 1532 when the College of Justice was set up by Act of the Parliament of Scotland, but its origins are believed to predate that event. No curriculum of study, residence or professional training was, until 1856, required on entering this profession, but the faculty always had the power of rejecting any candidate for admission. Subsequently candidates underwent two private examinations; one in general scholarship that could be substituted by evidence of an equivalen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jacobitism
Jacobitism (; gd, Seumasachas, ; ga, SeacaibÃteachas, ) was a political movement that supported the restoration of the senior line of the House of Stuart to the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, British throne. The name derives from the first name of James II and VII, which in Latin translates as ''Jacobus (name), Jacobus''. When James went into exile after the November 1688 Glorious Revolution, the Parliament of England argued that he had abandoned the Kingdom of England, English throne, which they offered to his Protestant daughter Mary II, and her husband William III of England, William III. In April, the Convention of Estates (1689), Scottish Convention held that he "forfeited" the throne of Scotland by his actions, listed in the Articles of Grievances. The Revolution thus created the principle of a contract between monarch and people, which if violated meant the monarch could be removed. Jacobites argued monarchs were appointed by God, or Divine right of kings, divine right, a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alexander Murray Of Elibank
Alexander Murray of Elibank (9 December 1712 – 27 February 1778) was the fourth son of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank and brother of Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank.Hugh Douglas, âMurray, Alexander, of Elibank, Jacobite earl of Westminster (1712–1778)€™, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 14 June 2013. Horace Walpole said that Murray and his brother were "both such active Jacobites, that if the Pretender had succeeded, they could have produced many witnesses to testify their zeal for him; both so cautious, that no witnesses of actual treason could be produced by the government against them". Early life Murray took a commission in the 26th (Cameronian) Regiment of Foot on 11 August 1737, eventually becoming a lieutenant. A marriage of convenience gave him an annual income of £3,000. This enabled him to lend to Charles Edward Stuart hundreds of pounds at high interest at a time when Charles was short of money. This also ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Johnstone (East India Company)
John Johnstone (28 April 1734 – 10 December 1795) was a Scottish nabob, a corrupt official of the British East India Company who returned home with great wealth. Described as "a shrewd and unscrupulous business man", he survived several scandals and became a major landowner when he returned to Scotland in 1765. Johnstone sat in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1774 to 1780, having bribed his way to a victory in the Dysart Burghs. Early life and family Johnstone was born in Edinburgh, the fifth son of Sir James Johnstone, 3rd Baronet (1697–1772) and his wife, Barbara (died 1773), daughter of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank. The Jacobite plotter Alexander Murray of Elibank was his uncle. His brothers included the British Army officer and politician Sir James Johnstone, 4th Baronet (1726–1794), the wealthy lawyer and politician William (later Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet (October 1729 – 30 May 1805), kno ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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English East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world. The EIC had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three Presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British army at the time. The operations of the company had a profound effect on the global balance of trade, almost single-handedly reversing the trend of eastward drain of Western bullion, seen since Roman times. Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade dur ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Johnstone (Royal Navy Officer)
George Johnstone (1730 – 24 May 1787) was a Royal Navy officer who saw service during the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence, rising to the rank of post-captain and serving for a time as commodore of a British naval squadron. In a multifaceted career he was also a member of parliament, a director of the East India Company, a member of the Carlisle Peace Commission and the first Governor of West Florida from 1763 until 1767. Johnstone was born into a gentry family in 1730, and embarked on a naval career. Early in his service there occurred several incidents which revealed both positive and negative aspects of his character. He was involved in encounters with the enemy where he was praised for his bravery, and incidents where he was censured for disobedience. He rose through the ranks to his own commands and had some success with small cruisers against enemy merchants and privateers. After the end of the Seven Years' War he ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sir James Johnstone, 4th Baronet
Sir James Johnstone, 4th Baronet (23 January 1726 – 3 September 1794)) was a Scottish officer in the British Army and then a politician. He sat in the House of Commons of Great Britain for all but one of the years 1784 to 1794. Sir James was the son of Sir James Johnstone, 3rd Baronet and his wife Barabara, daughter of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank. In about 1759 he married Louisa Maria Elizabeth Colclough, the widow of Rev. John Meyrick, vicar of Edwinstowe, East Retford, Nottinghamshire. They had no children. He joined the marines in 1748 as a Second Lieutenant, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1772. Johnstone first tried to enter Parliament at the 1774 general election, when he began canvassing Dumfries Burghs, where the interest of the 3rd Duke of Queensberry was dominant. However, he made little progress and withdrew in favour of Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, who was also unsuccessful. Queensberry's candidate William Douglas took the seat. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank
Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank (1703–1778) was a Scottish soldier, lawyer, author and economist. Life He was the son of Alexander Murray, 4th Lord Elibank (1677-1736), and his wife Elizabeth (née Stirling; died 1756), daughter of George Stirling of Keir, and an eminent surgeon in Edinburgh. General James Murray (1721-1794) was his younger brother; as was Alexander Murray, who gained some notoriety as a Jacobite, not least during the 1750 by-election in Westminster. He was uncle of Major Patrick Ferguson killed at the Battle of King's Mountain in 1780. Although admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates in 1722, he soon turned from legal to military pursuits, becoming an ensign in the army, and subsequently major in Ponsonby's foot and lieutenant-colonel in Wynyard's marines. With the latter regiment he served at the Battle of Cartagena de Indias in 1740. After the failure of that expedition Murray quit the army. He had married in 1735, and had succeeded his fath ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dumfries
Dumfries ( ; sco, Dumfries; from gd, Dùn Phris ) is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is located near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth about by road from the Anglo-Scottish border and just away from Cumbria by air. Dumfries is the county town of the historic county of Dumfriesshire. Before becoming King of Scots, Robert the Bruce killed his rival the Red Comyn at Greyfriars Kirk in the town on 10 February 1306. The Young Pretender had his headquarters here during a 3-day sojourn in Dumfries towards the end of 1745. During the Second World War, the bulk of the Norwegian Army during their years in exile in Britain consisted of a brigade in Dumfries. Dumfries is nicknamed ''Queen of the South''. This is also the name of the town's professional football club. People from Dumfries are known colloquially in Scots language as ''Doonhamers''. Toponymy There are a number of theories on the etymo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thomas Telford
Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE, (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and related bridges, he was dubbed ''The Colossus of Roads'' (a pun on the Colossus of Rhodes), and, reflecting his command of all types of civil engineering in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a post he held for 14 years until his death. The town of Telford in Shropshire was named after him. Early career Telford was born on 9 August 1757, at Glendinning, a hill farm east of Eskdalemuir Kirk, in the rural parish of Westerkirk, in Eskdale, Dumfriesshire. His father John Telford, a shepherd, died soon after Thomas was born. Thomas was raised in poverty by his mother Janet Jac ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |