the brother of John, duke of Argyll and Greenwich, who was entrusted with the government of Scotland by Sir Robert [see Campbell, Archibald, third Duke of Argyll]. In particular, Lord Stair objected to Islay's plan of drawing up a government list of the sixteen Scotch representative peers previous to each election, and asserted the right of the peers to elect freely at Holyrood, and in consequence he was deprived of his post of vice-admiral of Scotland in April 1733. This disgrace only increased his opposition to Walpole and Lord Islay, and on 17 April 1734 he was deprived of his colonelcy of the Inniskilling dragoons. He was also not re-elected a representative peer in the same year, and then devoted all his energies to organising an opposition to Walpole and Islay in Scotland. He and his brother malcontents were quite successful, and in 1741 no less than two-thirds of the Scotch M.P.'s were returned in the anti-Walpole interest.
On Walpole's fall Stair was created a field-marshal on 28 March 1742, and made governor of Minorca, with leave not to reside there. He also received the command-in-chief of the army sent to act upon the continent in conjunction with the Dutch and Austrian forces when England decided to support the claims of Maria Theresa and insist upon the performance of the pragmatic sanction. In imitation of his great master, the Duke of Marlborough, Stair moved rapidly into Bavaria to join the Austrian general, Count von Khevenhüller. He was, however, out-manœuvred by the French general, Noailles, who had gained great strategic advantages, when George II came to Germany in person to take command of the army. The battle of Dettingen was then fought, in which Lord Stair showed his usual gallantry, but was nearly taken prisoner owing to his shortsightedness and audacity. When the victory was won, Lord Stair proposed various plans for the allies to follow, but the king, relying, it was said, upon his Hanoverian councillors, rejected them all, and Stair sent in the resignation of his command. It was many times refused, until he sent the king a most remarkable memorial, printed by Mr. Graham in his ‘Annals and Correspondence of the Viscount and the first and second Earls of Stair,’ ii. 454–6, of which the conclusion is worth quoting: ‘I shall leave it to your majesty as my political testament, never to separate yourself from the House of Austria. If ever you do so, France will treat you, as she did Queen Anne, and all the courts that are guided by her counsels. I hope your majesty will give me leave to return to my plough without any mark of your displeasure.’ To the credit of George II be it said that he in no way disgraced the old field-marshal for his behaviour, for in April 1743 he was once more appointed colonel of the Inniskilling dragoons. In the following year, when a Jacobite rising was expected, he offered his services to the king once more, and was made commander-in-chief of all the forces in south Britain, and he was also elected a representative Scotch peer in the place of the Earl of Lauderdale. In 1745 he was again made colonel of his old regiment, the Scots greys, in the place of his gallant brother-in-law, Sir James Campbell, who was killed at the battle of Fontenoy. In 1746 he received his last appointment as general of the marines, and on 9 May 1747 he died at Queensberry House, Edinburgh, leaving a great reputation as a general and a diplomatist, and was buried in the family vault at Kirkliston, Linlithgowshire. His countess survived him twelve years, and remained till the day of her death the most striking figure in Edinburgh society (see Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, pp. 76–82).
[The leading authority for the life of Lord Stair is The Annals and Correspondence of the Viscount and the first and second Earls of Stair, by J. Murray Graham, 2 vols. 1875, who had the use of the Stair papers for the embassy to Paris, and of Stair's letters to the Earl of Mar for the Marlborough campaigns. Two biographies, published directly after his death, the one by Alexander Henderson and the other anonymously, have formed the basis of previous biographical articles, but they are both extremely incorrect. For his embassy see also Stanhope's History of England from 1713 to 1783; Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XV; and Saint-Simon's Mémoires; and for the campaign of Dettingen, Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great.]
DALRYMPLE, JOHN, fifth Earl of Stair (1720–1789), was eldest son of George Dalrymple of Dalmahoy, fifth son of the first earl of Stair, and a baron of the court of exchequer of Scotland, by his wife Euphame, eldest daughter of Sir Andrew Myrton of Gogar. He passed advocate of the Scottish bar in 1741, but afterwards entered the army and attained the rank of captain. He was a favourite with his uncle John, second earl of Stair, who having in 1707 obtained a new charter containing, in default of male issue, a reversionary clause in favour of any one of the male descendants of the first viscount Stair whom he should nominate, selected him to succeed him in the states and honours on the death of the second earl. He therefore, in 1745, assumed the title, and voted as Earl of Stair in 1747, but by a decision of the House
