(1676 - 1744), e. s. of 4th E. of Nithsdale; sty. Ld. Maxwell 1677 - 83 when suc. fa. as 5th E.; m. 1699 Ldy. Winifred Herbert (d. 1749), dau. of 1st M. of Powis; attainted 1716 but escaped to France; KT [J] 1725; d. Rome.
1717 - 44 Pesaro (Apr. 1717), Rome, Urbino (Mar. 1718), Rome (1719 - 44)
Following the failure of the Jacobite rising in Scotland, Lord Nithsdale, Catholic and Jacobite, had been attainted and condemned to death, but he was rescued from the scaffold by his wife and Michele Vezzosi, a servant to the Venetian ambassador in London, and escaped to France in 1716. He came to the exiled Jacobite court at Pesaro in April 17171 and stayed in Italy until his death. In 1717 he lodged in Rome with Charles Wogan and a Mr Cameron, and he was in Urbino in March 1718.2
His Countess, whose mother had nursed the infant Pretender, was herself a personal friend of Queen Mary of Modena, and she was at La Fl?che from January to June 1718, begging the Pretender for a place in his Court when he was married.3 On the death of Mary of Modena in May 1718 Lady Nithsdale brought some of her jewellery from Paris to the Pretender at Urbino (GEC). She was in Rome with the Countess of Mar when the Pretender married the Princess Clementina Sobieska in 1719, and became governess to the Stuart Princes in 1725 and 1727.4 In July 1727 she brought Clementina from her convent to Rome,5 and Lord Nithsdale, who had been made a Knight of the Thistle by the Pretender in 1725, was then appointed the Princess's lord in waiting.6
Both Nithsdales were pensioners of the Jacobite court.7 In May 1727 their son William (Lord Maxwell) and daughter Lady Anne (see John, Baron Bellew) joined them in Italy, but Maxwell left Rome in June.8 In May 1736 Stosch said the Nithsdales had gone to live in Naples,9 but on 14 November 1736 Alexander Cunyngham [later Sir Alexander Dick] observed in the Jesuits Church in Rome 'the Chevalier and my Lord Nithsdale very piously employed at their devotions'.(10) In Rome in 1741 Lady Pomfret saw Lady Nithsdale 'now grown very old': she appeared nevertheless 'a woman of quality, and is in great esteem here: yet I was told that that since the death of her daughter, Lady Bellew [in 1735], she seldom goes out, except to Church'.(11) Both the Nithsdales died in Rome, he in 1744 and she in 1749.
1. HMC Stuart, 4:185, 286. 2. Skinner, Scots in Italy, 37. HMC Stuart, 6:237. 3. HMC Stuart, 5:397; 6:489, 500, 514. 4. Tayler 1938, 59n, 68, 136. Ruvigny. 5. Bernege letters MSS, f.495 (4 Jul. 1727). 6. Tayler 1938, 135. 7. Ibid., 59n. 8. SP 85/16 (Walton, 10 May, 21 Jun. 1727). 9. SP 98/37 (Walton, 26 May 1736). 10. Scots Charta Chest, 111. 11. Pomfret Corr., 3:63.