admitted advocate in 1717, one of the lords of session in 1724, when only thirty-two years of age, and lord justice clerk, or president of the criminal court, in 1735, which office, on being appointed keeper of the signet in 1748, he relinquished.
The acuteness of lord Milton's understanding, his judgment and address, and his intimate knowledge of the laws, customs, and temper of Scotland, recommended him early to the notice and confidence of lord Hay, afterwards duke of Argyle, who, under Sir Robert Walpole, and subsequent ministers, was entrusted with the chief management of Scottish affairs. As lord Hay resided chiefly at the court, he required a confidential agent in Scotland, who might give him all necessary information, and act as his guide in the dispensation of the government patronage. In this capacity lord Milton served for a considerable number of years; during which, his house was, in its way, a kind of court, and himself looked up to as a person little short of a king. It is universally allowed, that nothing could exceed the discretion with which his lordship managed his delicate and difficult duties; especially during the civil war of 1745. Even the Jacobites admitted that they owed many obligations to the humanity and good sense of lord Milton.
In February, 1746, when the highland army had retired to the north, and the duke of Cumberland arrived at Edinburgh to put himself at the head of the forces in Scotland, he was indebted to lord Milton for the advice which induced him to march northward in pursuit; without which proceeding, the war would probably have been protracted a considerable time. After the suppression of the insurrection, Milton applied himself with immense zeal to the grand design which he had chiefly at heart—the promotion of commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, in his native country; and it would be difficult to estimate exactly the gratitude due to his memory for his exertions towards that noble object. After a truly useful and meritorious life of seventy-four years, his lordship expired at his house of Brunstain, near Musselburgh, on the 13th of December, 1766.
FORBES, Alexander, lord Pitsligo, was the only son of Alexander, third lord Pitsiigo, and lady Sophia Erskine, daughter of John, ninth earl of Marr. He was born on the 22nd of May, 1678, and succeeded his father in his titles and estates in 1691, while yet a minor. He soon after went to France; and during his residence in that country, embraced the opinions of madame Guion, to whom he had been introduced by Fenelon. On his return to Scotland, he took the oaths and his seat in parliament, and commenced his political career as an oppositionist to the court party. He joined the duke of Athole in opposing the union; but on the extension of the oath of abjuration to Scotland, he withdrew from public business. A Jacobite in principle, he took an active part in the rebellion of 1715; but escaped attainder, though he found it expedient to withdraw for a time to the continent, after the suppression of that ill-judged attempt In 1720, he returned to his native country, and devoted himself to the study of literature and the mystical writings of the Quietists, at his castle of Pitsligo, in Aberdeenshire. His age and infirmities, as well as experience, might have prevailed upon him to abide in silence the result of prince Charles's enterprise in 1745; but, actuated by a sense of duty, he joined that enterprise, and was the means, by his example, of drawing many of the gentlemen of Aberdeenshire into the tide of insurrection ; no one thinking he could be wrong in taking the same course with a man of so much prudence and sagacity. Lord Pitsligo arrived at Holyroodhouse some time after the battle of Prestonpans, and was appointed by prince Charles to command a troop of horse, chiefly raised out of the Aberdeenshire gentry, and which was called Pitsligo's
