John Erskine, Earl of Mar
The Earl of Mar was a Scottish politician who had helped pass the Union of 1707, served Queen Anne as secretary of state, offered his services to George I on the day the king landed and was refused, and within a year raised the Jacobite standard at Braemar and commanded the largest army the Stuart cause ever had in Britain, which he then did nothing with; the country called him Bobbing John for the sides he had changed. He was born in 1675, inherited an encumbered earldom at fourteen, and made his way by office. He was a commissioner for the Union treaty, one of the sixteen Scottish representative peers, and in 1713 secretary of state for Scotland in the Tory ministry that was quietly negotiating with the Pretender. The Hanoverian succession in August 1714 dismissed the Tories, and Mar, having written to the new king promising loyalty and been ignored, took ship to Scotland disguised as a workman in August 1715 and on 6 September at Braemar, under cover of a hunt, proclaimed James VIII. The clans came, and by October he had perhaps twelve thousand men at Perth against the Duke of Argyll's three or four thousand at Stirling, and he waited. He waited for the Pretender, for the French, for the English rising that was crushed at Preston in November, and when he finally marched south and met Argyll at Sheriffmuir on 13 November each army's right wing broke the other's left and both claimed the day. Mar, who had the numbers to try again, went back to Perth. James landed at Peterhead in December to an army melting away, was crowned nowhere, and in February 1716 the two of them took ship from Montrose for France, leaving the clans to the government's mercy and the forfeitures. Mar was attainted and lost the earldom. In exile he was James's secretary of state, was suspected of selling the cause to the British government for a pension, which he took, and was dismissed in 1724. He spent his last years drawing plans for a new Edinburgh that were built, roughly, by other men, and died at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1732.
- Lived: 1675 CE – 1732 CE
- Nationality: Scottish
- Roles: politician, general
