Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 | Page 8

He graduated as Master of Arts in the
University of Edinburgh in 1664. He went to France to study in 1665,
and returned from abroad in 1667. He was 'admitted' as an advocate in
1668. He was married in 1669 to Janet, daughter of Sir Andrew
Ramsay of Abbotshall,[18] Provost of Edinburgh, afterwards a Lord of
Session. In 1674, along with the leaders of the bar and the majority of
the profession, he was 'debarred' or suspended from practising by the
king's proclamation for asserting the right of appeal from the decisions
of the Court of Session, and was restored in 1676. He was knighted in
1681. In the same year his father, who was then eighty-six years old,
purchased the lands of Woodhead and others in East Lothian. The
conveyance is to John Lauder of Newington in liferent, and Sir John
Lauder, his son, in fee. The lands were erected into a barony, called

Fountainhall. In 1685, he was returned as member of Parliament for the
county of Haddington, which he represented till the Union in 1707. In
1686 his wife, by whom he had a large family, died. In 1687 he married
Marion Anderson, daughter of Anderson of Balram. He was appointed
a Lord of Session in 1689, and a Lord of Justiciary in 1690. He
resigned the latter office in 1709, and died in 1722. His father had been
made a baronet in 1681 by James VII. The succession under the patent
was to his son by his third marriage; but in 1690, after the Revolution, a
new patent was granted by William and Mary to Sir John Lauder,
senior, and his eldest son and his heirs. The first patent was reduced in
1692, and in the same year Fountainhall succeeded on his father's
death.
[17] 'Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall is deschended of the Lauders of
that ilk, and his paternall coat is immatriculate and registrate in the
Lyons Book of Herauldrie.'--Unprinted MS. by Lauder, in possession
of Sir T.N. Dick Lauder. A Genealogical Roll in MS., of the Lauder
Family, compiled by Sir T. Dick Lauder, also in the present baronet's
possession, has afforded much useful information; and for Lauder's
family connections, I have also consulted Mrs. Atholl Forbes's
Curiosities of a Scottish Charter Chest, and Mrs. Stewart Smith's
_Grange of St. Giles_.
[18] See Appendix III.
The following estimate of his character in Forbes's Preface to the
Journal of the Session (1714), a rare book, is quoted by Mr. Laing, but
is too much in point to be omitted here. 'The publick and private
character of this excellent judge are now so well known that I need say
no more of him than that he signalized himself as a good patriot and
true Protestant in the Parliament of 1686 in defence of the Penal Laws
against Popery. This self-denyed man hath taken no less pains to shun
places that were in his offer than some others have been at to get into
preferment. Witness his refusing to accept a patent in the year 1692 to
be the King's Advocate, and the resigning his place as a Lord of
Justiciary after the Union, which Her Majesty with reluctancy took off
his hand. In short, his lordship is (what I know by experience) as
communicative as he is universally learned and knowing. He hath
observed the decisions of the Session from November 1689 till
November 1712, which I have seen in Manuscript; but his excessive

modesty can't be prevailed on to make them publick.'
There are no materials for expanding Mr. Laing's sketch of
Fountainhall's life, except in so far as the notes of his travels and his
expeditions into the country, and the accounts, here printed, give some
glimpses of his habits and his domestic economy in his early
professional years. He lived in troubled times, but his own career was
prosperous and comparatively uneventful. The modesty which
Professor Forbes truly ascribes to him disinclined him to take a part, as
a good many lawyers did, in public affairs, except for a short period
before the Revolution, as a member of Parliament; and, together with
his prudence and strong conscientiousness, preserved him from mixing
in the political and personal intrigues which were then so rife in the
country. The same modesty is apparent in his writings in mature life to
a tantalising degree. It may not be so conspicuous in his boyish journal,
when he was ready enough to throw down the gauntlet in a theological
discussion; but in the later voluminous MSS., when even dry legal
disputes are enlivened by graphic and personal touches, the author
himself rarely appears on the scene. We miss the pleasant details of
Clerk of Penicuik's _Memoirs._[19] We learn little of the author's daily
walk and conversation. It does not even