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 Margaret Douglas,
duchess of Douglas (1714–1774), noblewoman, was
the eldest daughter of James Douglas
(formerly Campbell) of Mains, Dunbartonshire, a member of a cadet branch
of the family of the earls of Morton, and his wife, Isabel, daughter of
Hugh Corbet of Hardgray. She probably had very little formal education,
and in later years was renowned for her lack of sophistication. Homely in
appearance but shrewd and with an outspoken wit, Douglas (usually known as
Peggy) remained unmarried for many years. About 1746, when a friend teased
her about being an old maid, she retorted in typically jocular manner that
she would never marry unless she could be duchess of Douglas. According to
tradition, twelve years later she visited Douglas Castle in Lanarkshire to
persuade the duke to grant her nephew an army commission. She was by then
forty-three.
Archibald Douglas,
duke of Douglas (bap. 1694, d. 1761), was sixty-three, still a
bachelor, and, according to C. K. Sharpe, ‘a person of the most wretched
intellects—proud, ignorant and silly, passionate, spiteful and
unforgiving’. However, ‘he possessed a handsome form’ (Wilson), and Peggy
told him briskly that he needed a wife. Not long afterwards, on 28
February 1758, she drove up to the castle in a hired chaise for their
wedding.
Within months there was trouble between them. A fire
started in a small room next to the duchess's bedchamber, all her jewels
were destroyed in the blaze, and the duke refused to replace them. They
then became embroiled in a violent argument over the parentage of his
sister's supposed twins. Lady Jane Steuart
claimed that, at the age of nearly fifty, she had produced two baby
boys. One had died, but she asserted that the other,
Archibald Steuart, was her
brother's heir. Peggy was inclined to believe the story but the duke did
not, and they quarrelled so fiercely about it that they separated, he
promising her £250 sterling a year on condition that she make no effort to
see or speak to him. A few months later, however, they were reconciled and
he replaced her jewels at a cost of more than £3000 sterling.
Peggy
subsequently managed to convince the duke that Archibald was indeed his
nephew. She and her husband had not agreed a marriage contract before
their wedding, but they now signed a post-nuptial contract stating that,
if there were no children of their own marriage, the Douglas estates
should go to Archibald instead of the duke's kinsman, James George
Hamilton, seventh duke of Hamilton, as he had previously intended. When he
died in 1761, Peggy renewed her efforts on the young man's behalf, even
visiting France in an attempt to prove that he really had been born there
to Lady Jane. The prolonged legal struggle became famous as the ‘Douglas
cause’, and when in 1767 the court of session in Edinburgh delivered a
verdict in favour of the duke of Hamilton, Duchess Peggy and her lawyers
immediately appealed to the House of Lords. After a dramatic debate, the
Lords reversed the previous decision and found that Archibald was the true
heir to the Douglas estates.
Duchess Peggy enjoyed her triumph for
another seven years. In 1773, during the last months of her life, Boswell
and Dr Johnson met her at a tea party in Edinburgh. As usual, she was
ostentatiously clad, ‘with all her diamonds’ (Wilson), a fellow guest
noticed, and although Johnson described her as ‘an old lady who talks
broad Scotch with a paralytic voice and is scarce understood by her own
countrymen’ (ibid.), he could not resist the attentions of a duchess and
allowed himself to be monopolized by her all evening, Boswell struggling
to translate ‘the unintelligible gaucherie of her ladyship into palatable
commonplaces for his guest's ear’ (ibid.). She was remembered as ‘the last
of the nobility to be attended by halberdiers when going about the
country. When she visited she left her dress behind her as a present’
(GEC, Peerage, 4.440n.). Duchess Peggy died at
Bothwell Castle, Lanarkshire, on
24 October 1774 and was buried beside her husband in a vault beneath the
new church at Douglas. Her deliberately cultivated eccentricities had
shocked and amused polite society, but Archibald Steuart's triumph in the
courts owed much to her energy and determination.
See also:
1.
The Douglas Cause
2. Testament
of Margaret, Duchess of Douglas
3.
The Trustee on
the Estate of Walter Monteath, against Colin Douglas and Others.
4. Case against Colin Douglas
5. Douglas Support
Errors and Omissions
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