Southesk, James Carnegie, 5th Earl of
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- Southesk, James Carnegie, 5th Earl of
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(1692 - 1730), o. s. of 4th E. of Southesk [S]; sty. Ld. Carnegie to 1699 when suc. fa. as 5th E.; m. 1713 Ld.y Margaret Stewart, dau. of 5th E. of Galloway [S]; attainted and escaped to France 1716.
1709 Padua (26 Nov.) [England Dec. 1710]
1717 - 18 Florence, Pesaro (8 Mar. 1717), Venice (Mar.), Pesaro (by 24 Apr. - 29 May), Urbino ( - Nov.), Rome (by 13 Nov. 1717 - 20 Mar. 1718), Naples (Mar.), Rome (by 6 Apr. - Nov.)
1721 - 5 Rome (by Easter 1721 - Nov. 1725 - )
Lord Southesk first went to Italy as a young man in 1709. On 26 November he was in Padua with Robert Dall, another Scot and possibly his tutor.1 He visited Berlin and Hanover where he spoke with the Electress Sophia and returned home from Amsterdam in December 1710 (CP).
As an attainted Jacobite, Southesk lived abroad from 1716, the Earl of Mar then describing him as 'a very honest man, and zealous servant of our master's, to whom he is no expense'.2 Southesk was in France before coming to Italy to join the exiled court. He was said to have come to Venice from Florence in March 1717,3 and on 8 March he had passed through Pesaro,4 where he stayed from at least 24 April to 29 May 1717.5 In July Alexander Cunningham reported from Venice that Southesk was one of the Jacobites who were disputing with the court at Rome 'about ye Ceremll'.6 He was then in Urbino, which he left for Rome, apparently in November. On 13 November he told Paterson that he had been 'very impatient to leave Urbino'; he had stayed 'twenty days' there, but had not been in good health and had not enjoyed the Jacobite company; now he was 'free from the chagrin of seeing myself looked down on by those who can pretend to no more than to be my equals'.7 He stayed in Rome until 20 March 1718 when he left for Naples; he was back in Rome by 6 April, sharing a house with Mar, who noticed that Southesk knew 'all the ways of this place pretty well'.8 He was probably the 'Milordo Sudeschi' living by the Strada Vittoria at Easter 1718,9 since he was noticed in Rome by George Berkeley at the end of April.(10)
Southesk was in Paris in June 1720, when his wife was in Scotland,11 but they are recorded several times in Rome during the next six years. Southesk was probably the 'Milord Giaco Sudasch' living with Clephane by the Strada Vittoria in Rome at Easter 1721.9 Colonel John Hay refers to him in a letter from Rome of 10 November 1722: 'My Lady S - que is in Scotland, at least her husband believes so. He expects her over, but I am affrayed she won't meet him so soon as he believes'.(12) He was certainly in Rome by April 1723, when Stosch reported that Southesk was preparing to leave; but he was still in Italy on 22 May and on 12 June Stosch said he had been seized by creditors.(13) Lord and Lady Southesk were in Rome in November when Lady Southesk visited the Pretender's wife with a Mrs Stafford,14 but the main purpose of this visit was for Southesk to deliver a memorandum from the Earl of Mar to the Pretender.15 On 24 September 1724 Rawlinson in Rome heard that Lady Southesk 'was lately delivered, and the infant baptized by the Revd Mr Berkeley [Barclay] one of the Church of Scotland Chaplain here in the Chevalieres court';16 the girl was called Clementina (she d. 1730 in Edinburgh). On 19 November 1725 Lady Southesk accompanied Princess Clementina when she left the Palazzo Muti and retired to a convent.17 In 1726 Southesk wrote a melancholy but eminently sensible letter to the Pretender begging him to restore 'peace and tranquility in your Royal Family'.18 An undated caricature of Mylord Southesk by P.L. Ghezzi was sold in 1979 (Sotheby's, 10 Dec.). Southesk died in Paris in 1730.
1. Brown 1342 - 3. 2. HMC Stuart, 3:80. 3. SP 99/61, f.332 (Cunningham, 26 Mar. 1717). 4. HMC Stuart, 4:114. 5. Ibid., 114, 209, 287. 6. SP 99/61, f.382 (30 Jul. 1717). 7. HMC
Stuart, 5:205. 8. Ibid., 6:168, 264 - 5. 9. AVR sa, S.Lorenzo in Lucina. 10. Berkeley Letters, 110. 11. Tayler 1938, 103. 12.Tayler 1938, 127. 13. SP 85/14 (Walton, Apr., 22 May, 12 Jun. 1723). 14. Ibid. (6, 20 Nov. 1723). 15. Tayler 1938, 128. 16. Rawlinson jnl.MSS. 17. Tayler 1939, 65. 18. Tayler 1938, 44.