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Walter Scott genealogy
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Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Contents

1 Sir Walter Scott 1st Baronet

2 Additional Biography

3 Sources

4 Additional Sources

Sir Walter Scott 1st Baronet

Walter Scott is Notable.

Walter Scott is a member of Clan Scott.

Walter Scott is a member of Clan Rutherford.

Early Years

Walter Scott was born in 1771 in the Old Town of Edinburgh. His father, Walter Scott, was a lawyer and his mother, Anne Rutherford, was the daughter of a physician.

In 1773, at the age of two, he contracted polio, which left him with a pronounced limp. His family attempted various cures for their son including sending him to live in the rural Scottish Borders at his grandparents farm at Sandyknowe. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny. He returned to Edinburgh in January 1775 and that summer went with his aunt Jenny to take spa treatment at Bath, England.

Sir Walter's mother had been better educated than most Scotswomen of her day. After her death, Sir Walter remembered his mother fondly, writing in a letter to Lady Louisa Stewart:

She had a mind peculiarly well stored with much acquired information and natural talent, and as she was very old, and had an excellent memory, she could draw, without the least exaggeration or affectation, the most striking pictures of the past age. If I have been able to do anything in the way of painting the past times, it is very much from the studies with which she presented me. She connected a long period of time with the present generation, for she remembered, and had often spoken with a person who perfectly recollected the battle of Dunbar and Oliver Cromwell's subsequent entry into Edinburgh.

The day before her death she had told Mr. and Mrs. Scott of Harden, "with great accuracy, the real story of the Bride of Lammermuir, and pointed out wherein it differed from the novel. She had all the names of the parties, and pointed out (for she was a great genealogist) their connection with existing families."

In October 1779 he began study at the Royal High School of Edinburgh, where he received private tuition from James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing. After finishing school he was sent to stay for six months with his aunt Jenny in Kelso, attending the local grammar school where he met James and John Ballantyne. The Ballantynes later became his business partners and printed his books.

Scott's meeting with Blacklock and Burns

Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of only 12. In March 1786 he began an apprenticeship in his father's office to become a Writer to the Signet. Scott saw Robert Burns at their only meeting Burns had noticed a print illustrating the poem "The Justice of the Peace" and asked who had written the poem, only Scott knew that it was by John Langhorne, and was thanked by Burns.

He returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in Moral Philosophy and Universal History in 1789-90 After completing his studies in law, he became a lawyer in Edinburgh as a lawyer's clerk he made his first visit to the Scottish Highlands he was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792.

In the middle of the 1790s Walter Scott became interested in German Romanticism, Gothic novels, and Scottish border ballads he collected stories, he recorded what he heard using carvings on twigs, the local story tellers believed that such stories were neither for writing down nor for printing. At the age of 25 he began to write professionally, translating works from German, his first publication were ballads by Gottfried August Bürger in 1796. He then published a three volume set of collected ballads of his adopted home region, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border this was the first sign of his interest in Scottish history.

Marriage and family

On a trip to the Lake District with old college friends he met Charlotte Genevieve Charpentier (or Carpenter) he proposed three weeks later and they were married on Christmas Eve 1797 in Carlisle Cathedral.[1] They had five children who were baptized by an Episcopalian clergyman. In 1799 he was appointed Sheriff-Depute of the County of Selkirk. He was often referred to as "The Shirra", the Scottish word for Sheriff.

Poetry

In 1796, Scott's friend James Ballantyne founded a printing press in Kelso, in the Scottish Borders. This is were Scott published his first works and his poetry. In 1805, The Lay of the Last Minstrel after this was publised his career as a writer was established.

Over the next ten years he published many other poems, including the popular The Lady of the Lake, printed in 1810 and set in the Trossachs.In 1809, Scott became a partner with James Ballantyne and his brother after they moved to Edinburgh.

Novels

Next Scott started to write stories and novels he wrote five novels over the next five years, each with a Scottish historical setting.Because of his reputation as a poet, he published the novels under the name "Author of Waverley" or as "Tales of..." during this time Scott became known by the nickname "The Wizard of the North".

Recovery of the Crown Jewels

As Walter Scott's became more famous , the Prince Regent (the future George IV) gave Scott permission to search for the long lost Crown Jewels Honours of Scotland, which during the years under Cromwell had been hidden away and had last been used to crown Charles II. In 1818, Scott and a small team of military men dug up the Jewels from the depths of Edinburgh Castle a grateful Prince Regent granted Scott the title of baronet.

Death

Walter Scott was ruined financially with the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business in 1825, the company had debts of £130,000. He didn't want to declare himself bankrupt, or to accept any kind of financial support from his many supporters and admirers (including the king himself), he placed his house and income in a trust belonging to his creditors, and determined to write his way out of debt. He kept writing fiction as well as producing a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1831 he was in poor health. He went on a grand tour of Europe after he returned to Scotland, in September 1832, he died (in unexplained circumstances) at Abbotsford, the home he had designed and had built, near Melrose in the Scottish Borders.[2] His wife, Lady Scott, discharged his debts shortly after his death.

"Although primarily remembered for his extensive literary works and his political engagement, Scott was an advocate, judge and legal administrator by profession, and throughout his career combined his writing and editing work with his daily occupation as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire, an office he held until his death in 1832." (wikipedia.com noted in sources)

Legacy

The town and county of Montrose, Colorado are named after Scott's Novel A Legend of Montrose

Additional Biography

— the following additional biography and additional sources for Sir Walter Scott focus primarily on his relationship to William Gifford and John Murray, editor and publisher, respectively, of the influential conservative periodical the Quarterly Review. The biography and sources are by Jonathan Cutmore, author of John Murray's Quarterly Review: Letters 1807-1843 (Liverpool University Press, 2019), from his Writing and Reading the Quarterly Review (manuscript, 2015), used by permission. Jonathan Cutmore (c) 2021

Scott was born at Edinburgh, the tenth of thirteen children of Anne Rutherford (1739?–1819) and Walter Scott (1729–1799), ‘Writer to the Signet’ (a lawyer). In infancy, Scott contracted polio; it left him lame in one leg. Some biographers speculate Scott productivity as lawyer, poet, novelist, and letter writer can in part be attributed to Adlerian compensation for his lameness.

During his attendance at the Edinburgh High School (1779 to 1783), he befriended Robert Dundas, the son of Lord Melville, the powerful Pittite minister. When, years later, Scott was helping to set up the Quarterly Review, in Oct. 1808, Dundas was one of the first men he contacted for political support. ‘Though no literary man’, he told George Ellis, ‘[Dundas] is judicious clair voyant and uncommonly sound headed like his father Lord Melville’ (QR Letter 5). In 1783,

Scott attended Kelso grammar school where he met and befriended James Ballantyne, his future business partner. The commencement of Scott’s friendship with Ballantyne was one of the starting points of the Quarterly Review, for in 1808 when the young London publisher, John Murray, latter the Quarterly Review's publisher, was seeking an opportunity to insinuate himself into Scott’s affairs with an eye to becoming his publisher, he struck up an alliance with Ballantyne. During a visit to Scotland, in late Sept. he met with Ballantyne who then arranged a meeting with Scott at Ashestiel. At the famous meeting of 2-4 Oct. 1808, the Quarterly Review was effectively set on foot.

The set of friendships Scott made during his study of early Romances was an important element in the matrix that produced the Quarterly Review. As Fiona Robertson puts it, Scott was at the center of a group of scholars, collectors, editors, and writers scattered through the British Isles but in regular contact with each other through personal correspondence or through the periodical reviews. These collectors and scholars of romance [included] Robert Southey, Francis Douce, Joseph Ritson, George Ellis, Henry Weber, Richard Heber, Sharon Turner, William Owen, and William Taylor of Norwich’ (‘Romance and the Romantic Novel’, p.293).

Researching his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802), Scott became familiar with many of the men who were later associated with the Quarterly, including Southey, Heber, and Ellis. He met the bibliophile Richard Heber in the fall of 1799, in Constable’s shop in Edinburgh, and in Mar. of the following year he first corresponded with George Ellis, the author of Specimens of Early English Poetry (1805). Heber had introduced Scott to Ellis; Ellis in turn introduced Scott to the statesman George Canning.

His discontent with the Edinburgh Review and with its publisher Archibald Constable partly derived from Constable’s attitude toward this ‘romance project’. When in 1808 Constable declined to publish ‘a general collection of romances’, Ellis told Scott that the reason he had refused was ‘the anti-romantic taste which the ferocious Edinburgh Reviewers have endeavoured, not perhaps entirely without success, to instill into the public’ (National Library of Scotland MS. 3877 ff. 134-45, 23 Sept. 1808).

In an effort to advance their romance project, in a letter of 6 May 1808 William Stewart Rose suggested to Scott that they establishing ‘a society in which an esprit de corps may be generated’ for the republication of old dramatic authors.

There is a curious overlap between the participants Rose suggested for the proposed society and the men who eventually supported or contributed to the Quarterly Review: Rose named George Canning, John Hookham Frere, George and Charles Ellis, Francis Douce, Richard and Reginald Heber, John Hoppner, Samuel Rogers, William Sotheby, and Sharon Turner, Quarterly Review contributors or patrons all (NLS MS. 3877 ff. 45-46).

Scott came to know the publisher John Murray and the man of letters William Gifford (the first editor of the Quarterly Review) by another route. Gifford’s name was introduced to him in 1804 in connection with the editing of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and, over the following four years Octavius Gilchrist often mentioned Gifford to Scott in that context (National Library of Scotland MS. 3876-3877). So far as we know, Scott and Gifford’s first direct communication was in Oct. 1808, after planning for the Quarterly had begun in earnest.

As for Murray, on 16 Apr. 1806 Scott replied in the affirmative to a request from Murray that he take part in a projected monthly literary magazine Murray intended to publish under the editorship of the Whig poet Thomas Campbell (Grierson, ed., Scott Letters, II, pp.45-46; Campbell to Murray, 3 Mar. 1806, in s. Smiles, Memoir of John Murray, I, p.324). Scott promised to find contributors for the journal, should it get off the ground. Although the magazine did not go forward, Scott’s willingness to work with him in bringing out a periodical and the invitation Scott extended to him to visit the next time he was in Scotland Murray encouraged Murray to seek new opportunities to connect with Scott.

Following initial engagements in 1799 and 1802 with James Ballantyne as his printer, Scott signed a partnership with Ballantyne in 1805. Scott advanced Ballantyne money and Ballantyne borrowed against projected future earnings on Scott’s works. Consequently, when in 1808 Murray plotted to form a connection with Ballantyne, and through Ballantyne drive a wedge between Scott and Constable, he was attempting to insinuate himself into existing personal and financial arrangements. It must therefore have been blindingly obvious to Scott that the London publisher was trying to get to him through his friend and business partner. Scott must also have known that, by advancing the idea of a new conservative journal, Murray wished to emulate Constable by establishing a successful periodical that would gain him a steady income and lend prestige to his firm. Other aspects of Murray’s strategy must also have been obvious. Murray wanted to expand his business northward by taking advantage of his McMurray origins. He also had a living connection with the Scottish bookselling and publishing fraternity he wished to build on: his wife was the daughter of a prominent Scottish bookseller, Charles Elliot. Murray clearly had his eye on Scott as one of Constable’s chief literary properties.

Scott’s warmly greeting Murray at Ashestiel on 2 Oct. 1808 and insisting that the publisher extend his stay suggests his state of mind in Oct. 1808. He was unconcerned by Murray’s transparent maneuvering and, indeed, wished to take advantage of the opportunities the London publisher might offer. Scott was ready to edge away from Constable and to abandon the Edinburgh Review. It served his enemies to retail the story that he helped establish the Quarterly in a fit of pique over Francis Jeffrey’s negative review of Marmion in the Apr. 1808 Edinburgh. Scott denied that the Marmion review offended him. Scott’s denials aside, the Marmion review reinforced the discontent he felt toward Constable and the Edinburgh. Other factors, practical and psychological, also influenced his support for a new conservative journal. His relationship with Constable had been deteriorating for some time. The bad behaviour of Constable’s partner, Alexander Hunter, was partly to blame, as was Constable's resistance to Scott's pet project, the publication of old romances. Too, Scott wanted to gain a start for James Ballantyne's brother, John, in the Edinburgh publishing business, to upset Constable’s near-monopoly in the Edinburgh publishing trade. Scott was on the lookout for partners to the share the financial risk of supporting the Ballantynes and for an opening for them in the London market. Murray offered both those advantages.

Scott had ample justification for distancing himself from the Edinburgh. He was put off by what Robert Southey called the Edinburgh’s ‘peacemongering’ policy; he was offended by Jeffrey’s badgering reviews of Romantic poets; and, along with a great number of other readers, the journal’s anti-religious tone upset him. Southey believed that his refusal in Dec. 1807 of Scott’s request that he become a contributor to Constable’s journal pricked Scott’s conscience (Southey, Life and Corr., III, pp.124-28; SL, I, pp.386, 389, 400-401). In that light, notably in a letter of Apr. 1808 Scott wrote that he was deeply impressed by the ‘upright undeviating morality’ of Southey and Wordsworth in ‘all they think and say and write’ (Grierson, ed., Scott Letters, II, pp.49-52).

So while he was certainly offended by the anti-aristocratic sentiments Henry Brougham expressed in an Oct. 1808 Edinburgh Review article, ‘Don Pedro Cevallos’, that article only reinforced Scott’s discontent with the Edinburgh over its pacifist line on Spain, over its sympathetic portrayal of Napoleon, and over its drum beat condemnation of the government’s general conduct of the war. As the ‘Don Pedro Cevallos’ article almost certainly arrived in the week following Murray’s visit, not, as Smiles suggests, during their meeting, the article at best confirmed a decision Scott had already taken. ‘Don Pedro Cevellos’ gave him an excuse to cancel his subscription and to withdraw as a contributor to the Edinburgh Review.

Neither Scott nor Murray expected events to unfold as rapidly as they did. The plan they agreed at Ashestiel was for Scott to come to London to meet with George Canning and probably with members of the old Anti-Jacobin group to ‘urge some very formidable plan into activity’ (QR Letter 8n4). Preparatory to that trip, only a day or two after Murray left Ashestiel, Scott wrote to his best friend William Erskine’s the brother-in-law, the Scottish Lord Advocate Archibald Campbell-Colquhoun, to recommend that he ‘think of some counter-measures against the Edinburgh Review which politically speaking is doing incalculable damage’.

Thus spurred on by Scott, the Lord Advocate wrote to Canning to secure political sponsorship. Canning immediately contacted William Gifford to offer him the editorship, contingent, apparently, upon Scott’s refusal of the position (it appears that a the Ashestiel meeting Murray had urged the editorship upon Scott). On 12 Oct., Gifford tentatively accepted the editorship. Although a lack of clarity in the record makes it impossible to know for certain, it appears that when Scott heard through the Lord Advocate about Gifford’s willingness to become editor, he now finally declared to Erskine, and through Erskine to Campbell-Colquhoun (Grierson, ed., Scott Letters, II, 101-102n), his intention not to take up the editorship.

With the position of editor settled, on 25 Oct. Scott wrote a lengthy letter to Gifford, what J. O. Hayden calls his ‘letter of policy’. Sharon Ragaz in her essay in Conservatism and the Quarterly Review work nicely outlines the contents of this ‘pivotal letter’: ‘Scott laid out plans, including editorial guidance and business arrangements and established principles that were to define the review in its early stages and contribute to its enduring success and stability’. Although Gifford received Scott’s communication apparently with grace and gratitude, over the next two years his behaviour confirms Ragaz’s suspicion that he rankled at being the principals’ second choice and expressed sensitivities that made Scott uncomfortable. These circumstances, as Ragaz points out, ‘later may have been contributing factors in Scott’s apparent decision further to limit his participation’ in the journal.

In the months leading up to the publication of the Quarterly's first number, Scott was actively involved in preparations. To Murray he supplied close to twenty names of men he would attempt to recruit as contributors (see Appendix C in Contributors to the Quarterly Review). By including close friends in his list, Erskine, Morritt, Sharpe, Tytler, Heber, Baillie, Dundas, and others, Scott demonstrated his commitment to the project, for not only was he throwing his own hat into the ring, he was willing to bring his associates along. Scott’s visit to London in Apr. was his last major push for the Quarterly Review. He contributed nothing to the journal’s third number (the London trip probably made it difficult for him to produce an article), and he now sought reasons to withdraw from active participation.

In 1810 most of the energy he expended on the Quarterly was in trying to get Gifford to admit articles his friends had submitted; he had limited success. In 1811 Scott made the decision more or less to withdraw; whether it was a conscious and definite decision we cannot now know. Fortunately, with the publication in 1810 of some sparkling articles by Robert Grant, the Quarterly’s fortunes had begun to turn, and so Scott now happily wrote to his friend Morritt in Apr. 1811 regarding the Quarterly that ‘It is astonishing how closely they are beating up to the Edinburgh in popularity’ (National Library of Scotland MS. 853, copy).

Gifford then heard nothing from Scott for months. Alarmed and disappointed by his putative co-editor’s lack of activity, in an Oct. 1811 letter Gifford bluntly told Scott: ‘This is not what was promised me both by the Government of Scotland and England when I undertook the care of it. Here am I, a miserable invalid, old in years, older in constitution; without eyes, without strength, without anything, grubbing on, while the mighty men of war are satisfied with looking at me’ (QR Letter 111). Scott was unmoved. As he never formally announced his withdrawal, it took almost a year of fruitless entreaties before Gifford finally accepted that the great man of the north had left him behind.

The total number of articles Scott contributed during Gifford’s editorship is high when compared with the majority of the journal’s contributors, about twenty-five articles. But detrimental to Gifford’s planning, they came in bunches. In 1809 Scott contributed nine articles; in 1810 between two and four (the evidence is unclear); in 1811, one or two. For the next five years he contributed next to nothing. He then enjoyed a brief second season with the Quarterly in the period 1815 to 1818, when he contributed or collaborated on another nine articles.

At the end of 1815, Murray convinced Scott to return to the journal with a review of Jane Austen's novel Emma. Gifford asked, ‘Have you any fancy to dash off an article on Emma?—it wants incident and romance and imagination—does it not—none of the author's other Novels have been noticed and surely Pride & Prejudice merits high consideration’ (National Library of Scotland MS. 3886, ff. 261-62, 25 Dec. 1815).

Scott worked quickly; he had a draft in Murray’s hands by 19 Jan. Gifford, who never forgave or forgot slights, in his congratulatory note reminded Scott of his desertion. He wrote on 6 Mar.: ‘It is with feelings of peculiar pleasure that I see you once more in the lists. You contributed mainly to our first success in the field .... I willingly granted you leave of absence .... I hail your return most cordially’ (National Library of Scotland MS. 3887 ff. 17-18). Lamentably, Scott’s return to Gifford’s list of contributors was brief. At the end of 1817 he fell out with Murray over problems with the publication of Tales of My Landlord.

The quality of Scott’s total contribution was uneven—‘O that Scott!’ Gifford ejaculated when one of his articles showed signs of haste, as many did. But he also contributed some of the journal’s finer reviews, of the poets Campbell and Byron, and of novelists, his future protégé Maturin, and of course, Austen. In the famous review of Emma and in a review of Montagu he praised women’s writing and encouraged the education of girls and women. Upon the death of George Ellis, who had been the Quarterly’s regular reviewer of Lord Byron, Murray and Gifford entrusted Byron to Scott. In his Byron reviews, Scott is remarkably sympathetic both to the poetry and to the man.

Scott came back to the Quarterly in 1820, this time not as a contributor but to solicit employment for his soon-to-be son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart. As was usually the case in his treatment of Scott’s nominees, Gifford found a way to subvert Scott’s intentions. This time he feared that Lockhart’s ‘military engagements’ would make it ‘impossible for him to think of criticism, at least, for the present’. Lockhart had wished to review Milman’s Fall of Jerusalem, but to guarantee a laudatory article the editor handed it instead to Milman’s friend Reginald Heber (QR Letter 221).

Sources

↑ "England Marriages, 1538–1973 ", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NVMJ-DV4 : 12 March 2020), Margaret Charlotte Carpenter in entry for Walter Scott, 1797.

↑ Death registration for SCOTT, WALTER Parents/Other: ----- Age: 61 Sex: M Date: 21/09/1832 Parish No.: 799/ Ref: 50 464 Parish: Melrose. Published by Scotland's People. https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

Wikidata: Item Q79025

Walter Scott Digital Archive

Sir Walter Scott Wikipedia

Encyclopedia Britannia

Genealogical Memoirs of the Family of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 1877

"Public Member Trees", database, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/61168516/person/100084096119/facts : accessed 8 June 2017), profile for Sir Walter Baronet Scott.

The Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, Vol 1 and 2, by John Grbson Lockhart. Chapter "Autobiography" list Walter Scott and Anne Rutherford as his parents. Further in the "pedigree" chapter ties to Sir Walter to Sir Robert Scott (1699-1775) son of Sir Walter Scott "Beaddie"; son of Sir William Scott (1590-1656); to Sir Walter Scott (1540-1631).

Additional Sources

National Library of Scott MS. corr. with Murray, Gifford, and Ellis in the Scott papers and in the National Library of Scotland, John Murray Archive; see Millgate Union Catalogue, <www.nls.uk>.

The Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 28 vols (1834–36).

J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 7 vols (1837–38).

The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, ed. C.C. Southey, 6 vols (1849–50).

The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, ed. H.J.C. Grierson et al., centenary edn, 12 vols (1932–79).

E. Johnson, Sir Walter Scott: the Great Unknown, 2 vols (1970).

The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, ed. W.E.K. Anderson (1972).

J.C. Corson, Notes and Index to Sir Herbert Grierson’s Edition of the Letters of Sir Walter Scott (1979).

W. Scott, ‘Memoirs’, Scott on Himself, ed. D. Hewitt (1981).

J. Mitchell, Scott, Chaucer, and Medieval Romance: A Study in Sir Walter Scott’s Indebtedness to the Literature of the Middle Ages (1987).

J. Sutherland, The Life of Sir Walter Scott (1995).

F. Robertson, ‘Romance and the Romantic Novel: Sir Walter Scott’ in A Companion to Romance: from Classical to Contemporary, ed. C. Saunders (2004), pp.287-304.

J. Cutmore, ed., Conservatism and the Quarterly Review (2007).

J. Cutmore, Contributors to the Quarterly Review, A History (2008).

J. Cutmore, John Murray's Quarterly Review. Letters, 1807-1843 (2019).

Priv. corr. with J. Millgate and S. Ragaz.

See also:

'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell, published by The Hogarth Press, Pimlico, London in 1996. ISBN 0 7126 7450 0, includes extensive family trees. Hundreds of friends, professional connections and people in the 'Bloomsbury set' are also mentioned in the text.'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell

'Jane Austen's Family through Five Generations' by Maggie Lane, published by Robert Hale Limited, London. ISBN 0 7090 4832 7. Includes extensive family trees. Details of contemporaries and other connections are also mentioned in the text.Jane Austen's Family through Five Generations