Here's his sister-in-law's biographer having a go at him right when he's introduced to the tale. The Sister-inlaw was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the bit about Paradise and Hell is what she, her sister Frances and their friends as young girls had invented as catagories for suitors - "Paradise" is the guy you want yourself, "Hell" is an unwanted guy your family makes you wed, and "Limbo" is a compromise guy who you don't love but think you can get along with for life. Lady Mary, btw, had married a limbo, but one she'd picked for herself.
Meanwhile the prospect of sister Frances's wedding crept closer. It was two years since Frances had confided to Philippa her misery at losing her Paradise and her belief that 'ev'ry living body shou'd fear hell above all other things'. Now her father had chosen for her a widower fifteen years her senior, father of a schoolboy son: John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar. He was a Tory (though his family were Presbyterians), markedly Scottish in his speech. His portraits show him as handsome, though his body was said to be crooked. He claimed to have been long in love with Lady Frances. He was doing well under Queen Anne, as a Privy Counsellor and Secretary of State for Scotland (a post carrying a house in the Privy Garden, Whitehall), and a pension of 3.000 Pounds secured for him by Lord Oxford. But neither his circumstances nor his character would stand scrutiny. His rental income was only 261 Scottish Pounds (with odd shillings). His debts and his late father's came to over 150,000 in the same currency, though he gave assurances that they could not 'touch' his estate or the money he would receive from Lady Frances. Besides, as she was later to know too well, the rental from Scottish estates was by custom paid in arrears, and in kind. The initial arrears would be doubled by the haggling ncessary to convert kind to cash. And Mar's character: an associate later thought it 'impossible for him to even play a fair game, or to mean but one thing at once'. A historian calls his letters 'models of ineptitude and tergiversation'. For Lord Mar the beneffits of this marriage were clear: Lady Frances was a catch. Twelve years later he tried to justify his second marriage to his son by his first (who might 'repine' at the income he proposed to leave his second wife if he died). He insisted he had married to serve 'the good of the family'. He could hardly have been more open about his marrying for what he could get. On the other side, it was a strange marriage for a daughter of Evelyn Pierrepoint, Marquess of Dorchester. Lady Mary thought Frances was pressured by Aunt Cheyne and a Mar relative. One of Dorchester's Whig circle wrote, 'there's a good Whig marr'd by taking a Scotch Jacobite for her Husband'. Did Dorchester miscalculate, seeing the high office and the estates, failing to note the debts? His 'design to marry himself' made it urgent for him to dispose of his remaining single daughter. But also, with Queen Anne's health in rapid decline and the succession uncertain, eminent Whigs were hedging their bets. Marlborough did this; Dorchester may have done so, too. If the Elector of Hanover succeeded to the throne, well and good; but if it should be James III. after all, a Scotch Jacobite son-in-law might be handy.
Re: Earl of Mar
Meanwhile the prospect of sister Frances's wedding crept closer. It was two years since Frances had confided to Philippa her misery at losing her Paradise and her belief that 'ev'ry living body shou'd fear hell above all other things'. Now her father had chosen for her a widower fifteen years her senior, father of a schoolboy son: John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar. He was a Tory (though his family were Presbyterians), markedly Scottish in his speech. His portraits show him as handsome, though his body was said to be crooked. He claimed to have been long in love with Lady Frances. He was doing well under Queen Anne, as a Privy Counsellor and Secretary of State for Scotland (a post carrying a house in the Privy Garden, Whitehall), and a pension of 3.000 Pounds secured for him by Lord Oxford.
But neither his circumstances nor his character would stand scrutiny. His rental income was only 261 Scottish Pounds (with odd shillings). His debts and his late father's came to over 150,000 in the same currency, though he gave assurances that they could not 'touch' his estate or the money he would receive from Lady Frances. Besides, as she was later to know too well, the rental from Scottish estates was by custom paid in arrears, and in kind. The initial arrears would be doubled by the haggling ncessary to convert kind to cash. And Mar's character: an associate later thought it 'impossible for him to even play a fair game, or to mean but one thing at once'. A historian calls his letters 'models of ineptitude and tergiversation'.
For Lord Mar the beneffits of this marriage were clear: Lady Frances was a catch. Twelve years later he tried to justify his second marriage to his son by his first (who might 'repine' at the income he proposed to leave his second wife if he died). He insisted he had married to serve 'the good of the family'. He could hardly have been more open about his marrying for what he could get.
On the other side, it was a strange marriage for a daughter of Evelyn Pierrepoint, Marquess of Dorchester. Lady Mary thought Frances was pressured by Aunt Cheyne and a Mar relative. One of Dorchester's Whig circle wrote, 'there's a good Whig marr'd by taking a Scotch Jacobite for her Husband'. Did Dorchester miscalculate, seeing the high office and the estates, failing to note the debts? His 'design to marry himself' made it urgent for him to dispose of his remaining single daughter. But also, with Queen Anne's health in rapid decline and the succession uncertain, eminent Whigs were hedging their bets. Marlborough did this; Dorchester may have done so, too. If the Elector of Hanover succeeded to the throne, well and good; but if it should be James III. after all, a Scotch Jacobite son-in-law might be handy.