world, and by her rare skill as a hostess made his home at Linlathen a centre of christian sympathy and refinement. Erskine was an accomplished scholar, but next to the Bible his favourite literature was the plays of Shakespeare and the ‘Dialogues’ of Plato, especially the ‘Gorgias.’ Erskine devoted much attention to the manifestations produced by Irving's preaching, and spent some weeks in the company of those who were said to possess these gifts. At first he maintained the genuine miraculous character of these utterings, but two years later he expressed his mistrust of them.
During the political troubles of 1848 Erskine held it a duty to remain at home in order to relieve the distress of his own neighbourhood. He found employment for a large number of those out of work, but he viewed with great misgiving the democratic tendencies of modern legislation. In later life Erskine was not seen much out of Scotland, his summers being spent at Linlathen, and his winters in Edinburgh. Erskine survived all his own people, his sister Christian dying in 1866, and his younger sister, David, the widow of Captain Paterson, in 1867. At length, on 20 March 1870, he died quietly and peacefully, with his door open, and his friends coming in and out, as had been his often-expressed wish.
[Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, edited by W. Hanna, D.D.]
ERSKINE, THOMAS ALEXANDER, sixth Earl of Kellie (1732–1781), was born 1 Sept. 1732, and succeeded his father, the fifth earl, in 1756. He devoted himself to music, and, going to Germany, studied at Mannheim under the elder Stamitz, with the result that he became a most accomplished player on the violin and a talented composer. Dr. Burney said that he was possessed of more musical science than any dilettante with whom he was ever acquainted (General Hist. of Music, iv. 677), and he composed with extraordinary rapidity (Robertson, Enquiry into the Fine Arts, pp. 437–8, where Lord Kellie's music is described as characterised by ‘loudness, rapidity, and enthusiasm’). ‘The musical earl’ was for many years the director of the concerts of the St. Cecilia Society at Edinburgh. He died at Brussels unmarried on 9 Oct. 1781.
Lord Kellie's coarse joviality made him one of the best-known men of his time. Foote implied that his rubicund countenance would ripen cucumbers; Dr. Johnson is supposed to have alluded to him in his censure of a certain Scotch lord celebrated for hard drinking (Boswell, ed. Croker, p. 551); and Henry Erskine [q. v.], the lord advocate, made his cousin's habits the subject of numberless jokes and parodies (Fergusson, Life of Henry Erskine, pp. 140–6, and a note by the same in Notes and Queries, 6th ser. ix. 424). He was compelled to sell in 1769 all his estates except the mansion house of Kellie (Wood, The East Neuk of Fife, p. 213). The greater part of his musical compositions is believed to have been lost, though a collection of his charming minuets was published in 1836, with an introductory notice by C. K. Sharpe, and several of his overtures have been preserved. Lord Kellie was also something of a rhymester; but the neat little piece, ‘A Lover's Message,’ usually attributed to him, has been discovered to have been written before his birth, though he undoubtedly set it to music; and the only genuine production of his that is still in existence is a fragment or two of a lyric piece entitled ‘The Kelso Races.’
[Fergusson's Life of Henry Erskine; Sharpe's introductory notice to Lord Kellie's minuets; Douglas's Peerage (Wood), ii. 20; Musical Cat. in Brit. Mus.]
ERSKINE, WILLIAM (d. 1685), master of Charterhouse, was the seventh son of John, second or seventh earl of Mar [q. v.], by his second wife, Lady Mary Stewart, daughter of Esme, duke of Lennox. In 1677, on the death of Martin Clifford, he was elected master of Charterhouse, which office he held till his death on 29 May 1685. He was a member of the Royal Society, and his name appears in the list of the first council named in the royal charter, under date 22 April 1663, but he took no active part in the scientific proceedings of the society. He also held the appointment of cupbearer to Charles II.
[Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, ix. 264; Douglas and Wood's Peerage of Scotland, ii. 216; Hist. of Colleges of Winchester, Eton, &c., 1816; Royal Society's Lists.]
ERSKINE, Sir WILLIAM (1769–1813), major-general, was the only son of William Erskine of Torry, Fifeshire, whose father, Colonel the Hon. William Erskine, was deputy governor of Blackness Castle, and elder son of David Erskine, second lord Cardross, by his second wife, Mary, daughter of Sir George Bruce of Carnock. He was born in 1769, entered the army as a cornet in the 15th light dragoons in 1786, and was promoted lieutenant in 1788, and captain on 23 Feb. 1791. He was created a baronet on 21 June 1791, and first saw service in the campaigns of the Duke of York in Flanders in 1793–5. He was one of the officers who saved the Emperor Leopold by their famous
