Robert Barclay Allardice, “Captain Barclay”, (1779 – 1854), a life of spectacular pedestrian success, punctuated by excess, chaos and mediocrity in other aspects of his life

Introduction

Robert Barclay was born into a prominent Quaker family in the North East of Scotland in 1779.  His father had assumed the additional surname of “Allardice” on his second marriage in 1776, but the family was still generally known as “Barclay”.  During a short military career, Robert (1779) was in 1806 raised to the rank of Captain and was thenceforth popularly known as “Captain Barclay”.  0n the death of his mother in 1833 he inherited the Allardice estate in Kincardineshire, in addition to owning the Barclay estate of Ury in the same county.  He then became formally known as “Robert Barclay Allardice” but his many admirers continued to refer to him as “Captain Barclay”.

Like many well-to-do young gentlemen in Georgian and Regency times, his inheritance led Robert Barclay (1779) to associate with others of a similar background in a life of hedonism.   Diverse sporting pursuits, wagers, gambling and dissolute behaviour, mostly conducted in the fleshpots of England, far away from his native county of Kincardineshire, permeated much of his life.  Despite his lifestyle, he proved to be a remarkably able pedestrian (participant in any athletic event or challenge involving walking and/or running). Pedestrianism was a popular spectator sport in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.  Robert Barclay’s athletic achievements gained national recognition, his reputation long surviving the period of his sporting performances.

In other aspects of his life, such as participation in coaching and in agriculture, Robert Barclay (1832) gained prominence but only modest financial success, and, in the background, his personal life was consistently shambolic, even scandalous and his family and business records chaotic.  But despite his defects of character he is still, 200 years later, revered for his athletic prowess. 

This is the life story of the remarkable Robert Barclay Allardice, “Captain Barclay”, pedestrian extraordinary, breeder of shorthorn cattle and both part-owner and frequent driver of the “Defiance” coach.

Robert Barclay - Allardice 1779 - 1854

David Barclay’s struggles to gain the estate of Ury

To understand the circumstances into which Captain Barclay was born, it is important to look at the achievements of his forebears and relatives.  At the 1881 Census, “Barclay” was a predominantly Scottish surname, especially frequent in the Clyde – Forth corridor, Fife, Aberdeen, Banff, Kincardine and, to a lesser extent, Angus (Forfarshire).  The male line of Barclays extending back from the subject of this story is both long and distinguished and connects reliably in the North East of Scotland to the reign of William the Lion, King of Scotland from 1165 to 1214. The family surname was written “de Berkeley” when this group with Norman origins came to the Mearns (Kincardineshire) from Gloucestershire. 

In 1351 the estate of Mathers, near St Cyrus, Kincardineshire, was acquired through marriage and was the family seat of the de Berkeleys for more than 200 years.  David Barclay (the first family member to use the modern spelling) was the great, great, great grandfather of Captain Barclay and was born at Kirktounhill, Marykirk, in 1610.  At the time the family was in straightened circumstances and had to sell off much of their estate of Mathers.  Possibly for this reason, David Barclay left King’s College, Aberdeen without graduating.  During the 1630s he achieved prominence as a soldier, reaching the rank of colonel in the army of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who was involved in continental wars to defend the Protestant faith.  David Barclay’s military service abroad made him financially secure.  By 1638 he returned to Scotland, which was itself experiencing turbulent religious and political times.  After many years of involvement in the Civil Wars of the 1640s David Barclay was dismissed from office as a collaborator, on the defeat of the Royalists.  He married Catherine Gordon, a member of the most powerful landed family in the North East in 1648 and for some time lived on his wife’s estate at Gordonstoun.

During the 1640s, David Barclay had negotiated with William Keith, 7^th Earl Marischal, for the acquisition of the estate of Ury near Stonehaven, as a replacement for the Mathers estate.  Although he obtained a Crown charter to the lands of Ury from Charles II in 1651, it was not until 1679 that he formally gained the Barony of Ury (by Charles II and confirmed by his successor James II in 1685).  In the meantime, David’s tribulations continued.  During the 1660s he was repeatedly imprisoned, firstly in Edinburgh Castle in 1865 and subsequently in the Tollbooth at Montrose.  He returned to Ury in 1670.

The Quakers

During his imprisonment in Edinburgh David Barclay met John Swinton.  He was a Scottish politician who had sided with Cromwell but, on the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, was arrested and incarcerated in Edinburgh too.  Swinton had become a Quaker and the interactions between the two men led to David Barclay joining the Society of Friends.  Scotland at the time was in the grip of aggressive and intolerant Presbyterianism and religious dissent attracted great hostility.

Quakers believed in direct revelation of the spirit of God to all individuals without the intermediation of a clergy or the trappings of church and ceremony.  They also believed that litigation oaths and war were absolutely forbidden, and they even eschewed the use of weapons in self-defence.  Further beliefs which grated with the establishment were in the equal rights of women and denial of formal deference to men of position.  It is not difficult to comprehend the reasons for the hostility of the Presbyterian hierarchy against this challenge to the established religious order, which threatened the very existence of the clergy.

Although the Quakers were pacifists they did not hold back from confrontation with their oppressors.  After David Barclay’s return to Ury, when he paid visits to Aberdeen, he was often pursued by a hostile mob whipped up by their ministers.  The atmosphere was powerfully portrayed in the poem “The Laird of Ury”, the first verse of which reads:

“Up the streets of Aberdeen, by the Kirk and College Green,

Rode the Laird of Ury,

Close behind him, close beside, foul of mouth and evil-eyed,

Pressed the mob in fury”

Further persecution came in 1676 when David Barclay and others, including his son Robert, were incarcerated in the Tollbooth in Aberdeen and then tried for departing from the Presbyterian faith.  They were imprisoned but still managed to preach to the crowds through the windows of their cells.  Finally, the group was released in 1677, its individuals still refusing to act, except in accordance with their consciences.

Robert Barclay (1648), the “Apologist”

Robert Barclay, the eldest son of David Barclay, was born in 1648.  He was brought up in the Presbyterian faith at Gordonstoun and initially attended local schools.  Robert later moved to Paris to study at the Scottish Theological College but was recalled in 1663, lest he fall under Catholic influence.  When he visited his father during his imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle, he met John Swinton and soon Robert too converted to the Quaker faith.  (This Robert Barclay was the first of many in the lineage flowing from David Barclay to be named “Robert” so, to identify individuals of the same given name in this account, the date of birth has usually been added, eg “Robert Barclay (1648)”.)

Robert Barclay (1648) proved to have a powerful intellect and became zealous in the defence of his creed.  About 1667 he was made responsible for managing the Ury estate, in the absence of his incarcerated father, but he had an inadequate knowledge of, and interest in, such mundane matters.  Robert was helped to look after Ury by another young Quaker, David Falconer, who acted as estate factor.  The two also started to hold Quaker meetings at Ury, safe from the attentions of town mobs.  Through these meetings Robert Barclay (1648) met Christian Mollison, the daughter of an Aberdeen merchant.  They were married in her father’s house in 1669, but without the ceremony being conducted by a member of the clergy.  This contravention of societal norms generated further popular hostility against the Barclays.

The intellectual exploration of the Quaker faith by Robert Barclay (1648) led, from 1673, to a series of increasingly influential publications.  In 1676 there appeared “An Apology for the true Christian Divinity as the same is held forth and preached by the people called in scorn Quakers.  Being a full explanation and vindication of their principles and doctrines by many arguments deduced from Scripture and right reason and the testimonies of famous authors both ancient and modern.  With a full answer to the stringent objections usually made against them.”  This powerful treatise, usually known by the abbreviation “The Apology”, became accepted as the most authoritative exposition and justification of Quaker beliefs. Robert Barclay (1648) himself was dubbed “The Apologist”.  He travelled widely in Britain and on the Continent and became well-connected with those in power.  He lobbied Charles II for a more accommodating attitude towards the Quakers, many of whom had died while in prison.  Robert’s approach was successful.  In 1679 imprisonment of Quakers ceased and in the same year Charles II granted David Barclay a charter which designated the Ury estate as a free barony, with civil and criminal jurisdiction, to him and his heirs.

The Ury Estate 

  

When David Barclay took over the Ury estate it was in an unimproved state.  The land was covered, as was much of the North East of Scotland, with granite boulders brought down from the nearby Grampian mountains by glaciers during the last ice age.  A modern visitor to the area is immediately struck by the prevalence of dry stone walls surrounding many fields and of excess boulders from land clearance piled up in field corners, or on uncultivated land.  Such boulders were frequently used in the construction of buildings.

 

The original house on the Ury estate was burned down in 1645, before the accession of David Barclay.  He built a new Ury House of local granite blocks fashioned from the land clearance materials in 1670.  As soon as the house was completed, David Barclay handed the whole property over to his son Robert Barclay (1648), who had been married in the previous year.  In 1679 David Barclay employed architect James Smith to cover Ury House with freestone (a sedimentary rock capable of being cut in any direction and thus suitable for architectural purposes).  The house was decorated inside with “frescoes in the Italian fashion”.  Stonehaven, a small nearby port, was a significant transport asset of the estate, given the paucity and general condition of roads in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Ury House with Quaker Meeting House

 

The religious oppression that David Barclay had suffered caused him to erect a small building in the grounds of Ury to be used by local Quakers as a meeting house.  Further, religious intolerance shown towards the Quakers in the area had resulted in some Quaker corpses, which had been buried without religious ceremony, being exhumed by opponents and reburied in churchyards.  David Barclay then created a Quaker burial ground on top of a small hill on his estate.  Robert Barclay (1648) later surrounded this place with a wall and locked gates to keep out those who might be tempted to reopen the graves.  All the Barclays who resided at Ury were buried there.  Later still, about 1741, a small mausoleum was built over the Barclay lairs by David Barclay (1682) the brother of the Apologist.

The Ury Burial Ground

Robert Barclay (1672)

Robert Barclay (1672) became Laird of Ury in 1690 and devoted himself to the further improvement of the estate.  However, in 1698 an associate tried to persuade him to join a plot to reinstate the Catholic James II and, while he declined to become involved, rumour led to him and an associate, Alexander Jaffray, who was the Provost of Aberdeen and a Quaker, being sent to the Aberdeen tollbooth.  They were released after the intervention of Robert’s Gordon relative, the Marquis of Huntly.  Robert then continued with his estate development work by the acquisition of the lands of Finlayson and Redcloak from Earl Marischal.  He kept well clear of the 1715 Jacobite rebellion.

A good description of the Ury estate in 1722, when Robert (1672) was laird, has survived. “….being charmingly surrounded with very fine gardens the south wall of which is washed with the Water of Cowie and the east is so near a large brook that nothing interferes, but a slip of ground planted with fir trees for a fence to the garden.  This brook is well stockt with large fine trouts and runs through an enclosure of cow pasture.  It is a very healthy place upon a gravelly soil sloping to the south towards the river so that the gardens are very delightfully placed below one another quite to the river side and although standing upon an eminency which gives it a good prospect of the sea towards the south west yet by rising ground to east and north and trees towards the west is tolerably well guarded from all winds except south and south west.”

Robert Barclay (1672) and his mother, Christian Mollison, were both active Quakers and several times disrupted services in the local Presbyterian church at Fetteresso, for which they were fined.  But attitudes to the Quakers were changing and their beliefs, which previously were seen as grounds for oppression, instead started to gain acceptance as a mark of probity and dependability, especially in business dealings.

Like his father, Robert Barclay (1672) was intellectually gifted.  He devoted himself to a study of the Barclay family for many years and in 1740 published “A Genealogical Account of the Barclays of Urie, formerly of Mathers”.  Robert had identified nine separate Barclay families, five of which had become extinct.  Referring to this study, he wrote to a relative that, “male blood of the Barclays without mixture hath run in our veins upwards of 600 years”.  Today this would be called a “one-name” study.  Then as now, such studies often carry the erroneous implication that the male line is predominant in passing genetical information down the generations!

Robert Barclay (1699), “Robert the Strong”

As his informal name suggests, Robert Barclay (1699) was noted for his physical prowess and, like many of his relatives, he was also handsome.  In the mould of his father, Robert Barclay (1672) and his paternal grandfather, Robert was also intellectually capable and during his life he wrote several religious tracts and essays.  In 1725 he married Une Cameron, who was from a family with Jacobite sympathies.  During the 1745 Jacobite rebellion Robert took great care, in Quaker fashion, not to be associated with the move to put Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of James II, on the throne of Great Britain and Ireland.  Robert succeeded his father in 1747 but was not interested in agriculture and the Ury estate changed little during his time as Laird.  Robert the Strong died in 1760 and the lairdship of Ury passed to his eldest son, Robert (1732).

Robert Barclay (1732)

He was the most significant Laird of Ury, in terms of progress being made in the development of the estate.  Indeed, he was described as a “born improver” and became very knowledgeable on agricultural matters.  Robert Barclay (1732) personally laboured at this task for more than 20 years, rising before 5am every morning throughout the year to carry out clearing, draining and levelling operations.  He prioritised the land which lay furthest from Ury House for action, because “a tired man will struggle hard to reach home”.

 

Two small rivers flow into the sea near the town of Stonehaven, the Carron in the south and the Cowie in the north.  The original settlement consisted of only a few houses densely clustered around the harbour on the south bank of the Carron.   Robert Barclay (1732) expanded the Ury estate by buying the land of Arduthie about 1760 and this allowed him to create much of the new town of Stonehaven, located between the two rivers, by granting feus on liberal terms on the links of Arduthie.  Robert was responsible for the layout of the new town on a grid pattern, with a central market square and associated granite market buildings, including a steeple, with clock and bell.  He named many of the streets after his own family, eg Robert street, Barclay street and Allardice street.  The two parts of the town were connected by a bridge over the Carron and Stonehaven’s population quickly grew to about 3000.  It became the county town of Kincardineshire.

Robert Barclay (1732) was MP for Kincardineshire from 1788 until his death in 1797, being re-elected in 1790 and 1796 and was a friend of William Pitt the Younger (1759 – 1806), the United Kingdom’s youngest-ever prime minister.  Robert was also involved in local affairs in Kincardineshire as a Commissioner of Supply and as a member of the Board of Agriculture.  He was married twice, firstly to his cousin, Lucy Barclay, the daughter of David Barclay of Cheapside (see below).  Lucy Barclay died in childbirth and Robert Barclay secondly married Sarah Ann Allardice, who had inherited the substantial estate of Allardice, south of Stonehaven.  She also had a distinguished genealogy, connecting back to the Earls of Airth, Menteith and Strathearn and, ultimately, to King Robert II of Scotland (1360 – 1390), the grandson of Robert the Bruce.  This was to become a major distraction for Robert (1732)’s descendants.  On his second marriage in 1776, Robert (1732) formally assumed the surname “Allardice”, though he did not generally use it.

Being a Member of Parliament for Kincardineshire at the end of the 18^th century caused some logistical problems associated with travel.  By 1788, when Robert Barclay (1732) first became an MP, the introduction of Turnpike Trusts was gradually establishing a network of usable roads between the major towns and cities in the United Kingdom.  Even in Medieval times, the poor, tinkers and the likes, travelled long distances on foot and those with the means could travel by horse.  From about 1750 the wealthy could travel over long distances using their own horse-drawn coaches and from 1754 a stage coach was operating from London to Edinburgh, but that journey took 10 days, due to the state of the roads!  Mail coaches, which often took a few passengers, were introduced between London and Edinburgh in 1786 and soon afterwards they travelled onwards to Aberdeen.  The journey between Stonehaven and London several times a year, by whatever means, must have been both exhausting and time-consuming for the local MP.  The distance from Ury to London was 510 miles.

But Robert Barclay Allardice (1732) was not an average mortal.  He was both physically strong and mentally hardened by his work on the Ury estate.  Thomas Pennant, a naturalist and antiquarian who toured Scotland in 1769 and 1772, visited Robert Barclay (1732) and made the following observations on the agricultural and pedestrian capabilities of the Laird of Ury.  “This gentleman by the example he sets his neighbours in the fine management of his land is a most useful and worthy character in his country.  He has been long a peripatetic observer of the different modes of agriculture in all parts of Great Britain his journeys being on foot followed by a servant with his baggage on horseback.  He has more than once walked to London and by way of experiment has gone 80 miles in a day.  He has reduced his remarks to practice much to his honour and emolument.  The barren heaths which once surrounded him are now converted into rich fields of wheat, beans or oats.  He is likewise a great planter.  The land thus improved was originally heath and even that which was arable produced most miserable crops of a poor and degenerate oat and was upon the whole not worth two shillings an acre but in its present improved state is worth twenty and the tenants will live twice as well as before the improvement.  The first turnips for feeding cattle were raised by this gentleman and the markets are now plentifully supplied with fresh beef.  Before that period fresh meat was hardly known in these parts during the winter and spring months.”

 

Robert Barclay (1732) died at Ury in 1797.  He had maintained Quaker habits all his life and was buried at Ury.  As with the deaths of other famous men, what was then said publicly about him was eulogistic, making prominent his perceived good points and overlooking any defects.  Robert Barclay had certainly worked hard and effectively to improve Ury but he had little idea about estate economics and left Ury over-borrowed, so that management of debt interest became a problem both for his eldest son, Captain Barclay, the next Laird and the guardians who advised him until he reached his majority.

Some other prominent Barclay relatives of Robert Barclay (1648), the Apologist

David Barclay (1682) was the second son of Robert Barclay (1648), the Apologist.  David took his second son’s inheritance, 9000 Merks (about £500 Sterling) and travelled to London, where he initially became an apprentice glover.  He married first to Ann Taylor and secondly, after the death of Ann in 1720, to Priscilla, the daughter of John Freame, a goldsmith and banker in Lombard street, where Freame traded with his partner Thomas Gould.  The Freames were another Quaker family.  David Barclay became a successful merchant, including trading with the American colonies.

David’s house in Cheapside was very grand and afforded an excellent view of the Lord Mayor’s procession.  Five different monarchs visited the Cheapside house to view this spectacle, Charles II, William and Mary, Queen Ann and George III.  Because of the family’s Quaker faith, they continued to wear plain clothing during the royal visits. On the death of David Barclay (1682) in 1769 his estate was valued at £100,000 (about £16 million in 2018 money).

James Barclay (1708) was the first son of David Barclay’s marriage to Ann Taylor.  He married his aunt Sarah Freame in 1733, the sister of his mother, Priscilla Freame.  (This was one of the forbidden marriage relationships drawn up by the Church of England in 1560 and is still precluded by law today.)  James became a partner in John Freame’s business in 1736, the first Barclay to be associated with the tree of companies which later became Barclay’s Bank.  John Barclay (1728) was the first son of David Barclay (1682) and was born after a sequence of six daughters.  He also became established in the business of John Freame and Thomas Gould. This branch of the Barclay family continued to provide partners in the bank (which went through several different names, as the partnership changed composition) until 1896 when it became a joint stock bank under the name of “Barclay and Co Ltd”.  Barclays Bank, of course, still exists and in 2017 Barclays Group had an income of £21 billion and a profit before tax of £3.5 billion.

Another son of David Barclay (1682) was Alexander (1711).  In contrast to many of his relatives he did not employ his inheritance prudently, quickly burning through money left to him by his mother, Anne Taylor.  He subsequently left for the Quaker colony in Philadelphia to work in his father’s business there.  His only son, Robert Barclay (1751) returned to London and was set up in a brewery business, a partnership which had been left in trust to him by his grandfather, David Barclay.  The Anchor Brewery in Southwark was very successful and the next four generations of this line of Barclays was also involved in its ownership and management.

The tree of descent leading from Robert Barclay (1648) is very extensive and contains many successful individuals.  The brief and partial summary given above merely indicates some examples of successes arising in this talented lineage.  Interestingly, despite the increasing separation of the generations and geographical distance, the various lines descending from Robert Barclay (1648), the Apologist, retained contact with each other.  There are some further significant generalisations which need to be made.  Most of the Barclays remained hefted to the Quaker faith, though some drifted away, for example finding it difficult to sustain the Quaker tenet of pacifism because it was seen as being incompatible with responsible citizenship.  The Quakers, a minority and formerly oppressed sect, tended to associate with each other and there were frequent marriages between families, for example between the Barclays, the Gurneys and the Galtons.  In the Barclay genealogy there are frequent examples of consanguineous marriages, usually of first cousins, but occasionally of closer genetic relationships, such as the marriages between the Freames and the Barclays.  A related phenomenon is also present.  These families practised endogamy ie, marrying others of similar social status.  The Barclays and the Galtons intermarried (both Quaker families).  But the Galtons also intermarried with the Darwins and, in turn, they intermarried with the Wedgewoods (both non-Quaker families).  All these families were wealthy and prominent. 

  

Business success also seems to have been associated with Quaker families and it is to be wondered if Quaker tenets and Quaker history were influential in this regard.  To adhere to the Quaker faith throughout a long period of hostility and oppression, from virtually all other organised and hierarchical faiths, must have required great determination and belief in the validity of their religious tenets by individual Quakers.  Further, these very tenets produced Quaker business people having a code of ethics, which generated a reputation for fair dealing and reliability – important ingredients in business success.  Did these factors act as a filter in recruiting intelligent and mentally resilient individuals to the Quaker community?  Did such a mechanism, in turn incidentally equipped its members well for business life?

The children of Robert Barclay (1732)

Robert Barclay (1732) married Lucy Barclay in 1756.  He was a great grandson and she was a granddaughter of Robert Barclay (1648), the Apologist.  Lucy died in childbirth the following year, though her daughter, also Lucy, survived.  Lucy junior married Samuel John Galton (1753).  One of their sons, Samuel Tertius Galton (1783) married Francis Ann Violetta Darwin, the cousin of Charles Darwin of “Origin of Species” fame.  In turn, one of their children was Francis Galton (1822) an outstanding 19^th century polymath, responsible for major contributions in many fields of study, such as the identification of individuals by their fingerprints and the inheritance of human genius. 

For 20 years after the death of his first wife, Lucy, Robert Barclay (1732) remained single but then married again, rather late in life, to Sarah Ann Allardice.  At marriage, Sarah was aged 20 and Robert was 48, 24 years her senior.  The couple had a family of eight, Anne (1777), Une Cameron (1778), Robert (1779) (the subject of this story), twins Margaret and Mary (1780), Rodney (1782) (female!), James (1784) and David Stuart (1787).

 

At the end of December 1792, Sarah Anne Allardice gave birth to a male child.  The time of the child’s conception seems to have corresponded with Robert Barclay (1732)’s absence in London on Parliamentary duties.  He clearly knew that he was not the child’s father.  In 1795 he divorced Sarah Anne, on the grounds of her adultery with their footman, John Nudd.  The couple married in Southwark immediately after the divorce and Sarah Ann, her new husband and their young son, John Nudd (1792), then went to live in Norwich, far away from Ury.  Little is known about John Nudd senior, though “Nudd” was a highly localised Norfolk surname.  Had John Nudd been recruited through the contacts between the Barclays of Ury and the Gurneys, who were a prominent Norwich banking family?

In 1797 Robert Barclay (1732), the Laird of Ury, died.  He was 65 and left seven children from his second marriage, aged from 19 down to 10 years.  The eldest child, Anne had died in 1782 and the next oldest, Une Cameron, had nursed him devotedly at Ury during his last illness.  Robert, his senior son and the new laird was not yet 18 years of age.  Sarah Anne, the mother of these children, was not present to take her part in their upbringing.  The children were effectively orphans.  These circumstances of his wife’s infidelity and their subsequent divorce probably led Robert Barclay (1732) to write his will with extensive provisions for the upbringing of his young family, in the event of his death before they reached their majorities.

These were difficult times for Robert (1779) and his siblings, especially given the reason for their mother’s departure from Ury, but at least with their heritage they were as well provided for as was possible in the circumstances.  They were part of a caring Quaker community, they had concerned relatives, many of whom were wealthy and well-connected, their near forebears were intelligent, good-looking and physically strong and the estate of Ury, though carrying a significant debt, provided an income.

The Guardians of Robert Barclay (1732)’s children

Robert had nominated twelve “curators” to act as guardians of his children.  This number seemed excessive and was probably too large for them to act together in a coordinated fashion.  Six nominees were local to Ury but most of the others lived in London.  Many were relatives, others were business associates of relatives.  One had legal training.  Some were landholders.  One seems to have been chosen specifically to provide advice on estate management.  All were well-to-do and well-connected. The list was as follows.

Lord Adam Gordon was a member of the influential Gordon family.  He followed concurrent careers as an Army officer and as an MP, firstly for Aberdeenshire and then for Kincardineshire.  He owned a property in Kincardineshire, The Burn at Edzell, which lies about 25 miles from Ury.  He lived there in retirement and died in 1801

.

Sir David Ogilvie 5^th Bt. Of Barras, Kincardineshire, was a local landowner living just south of Stonehaven.  His father had married an aunt of Robert Barclay (1732).

John Durno, who was an advocate in Aberdeen

James McDonald of Inglismaldie, Marykirk, Kincardineshire, about 16 miles south west of Ury, was the factor for the Earl of Kintore’s southern estates.

Joseph Stratton of Kirkside, St Cyrus, Kincardineshire, was a freeholder in 1809

Ewen Barclay was an uncle of the children and brother of Robert Barclay (1732)

Samuel Galton was the husband of their half-sister, Lucy.  He was an arms manufacturer (despite his Quaker faith) and a member of the Lunar Society, a famous Midlands dining club for industrialists and intellectuals.

David Barclay (1729) of Walthamstow was a Banker in London and a grandson of the Apologist

Robert Barclay (1758) was a banker in London and a great grandson of the Apologist

Robert Barclay (1751) was a brewer in London

John Henry Tritton, a banker from London and a member of a prominent family of Quakers from Kent.  He was a partner in one of the early versions of the bank which ultimately became Barclays Bank.

Abel Chapman was a merchant in the City of London.

The early life of Robert Barclay (1779)

 

Robert was born at Ury on 25 August 1779 and in 1787, at the age of eight, he was sent to Richmond School in North Yorkshire where he spent four years before moving to an academy at Brixton Causeway a few miles south of central London.    Unlike many of his forebears, he was not intellectually gifted and disinclined to study, but he had good looks, showed early signs of athletic talent, had a strong will and great determination.  Ominously, he did not lack a belief in his own abilities.

It has already been remarked that Robert’s father was an accomplished pedestrian, undertaking several long-distance walks.  He probably recognised his eldest son’s athletic potential at an early age and encouraged him to follow the discipline of long-distance walking.  In 1796 Robert Barclay (1879) undertook what was likely to have been his first walking race in London for a wager of 100gns (about £12,000 in 2018 money).  Young Robert must have soon gained the notion that pedestrian challenges did not just bring the thrill of vanquishing an opponent but could also bring the satisfaction of taking significant amounts of money from him.  He would soon find that wagers, if ill-judged, could also lead to significant losses but, nevertheless, he quickly developed an addiction to gambling on athletic events, especially his own pedestrian challenges and seeking the company of others who were similarly addicted.

The aftermath of Robert Barclay (1732)’s death

When Robert Barclay (1732) died at Ury on 8 April 1797, the plethora of talent that he had assembled to care for his young family and, particularly, to guide his senior son during the following three years and four months, until he reached his majority, should have ensured a smooth passage to adulthood for the young laird.  Unfortunately, events were to prove that he was disinclined to take the advice of his elders and betters.  It quickly became apparent to the guardians that the Ury estate, though in an excellent state of cultivation, was in financial difficulties.  Robert Barclay (1732), in pursuing his improvement plans had borrowed heavily on the security of the property.

 

The new laird, working independently, generated his own ideas.  In May 1797, he formulated his own sketchy plan for the recovery of the Ury estate.  The first priority was to for Robert to visit his brothers and sisters in England, then he would spend the rest of the summer of 1797 at Ury and the following winter he would study at Edinburgh University.  He proposed to study agriculture and work hard at making the estate a success, living frugally and progressively paying down the debt on the estate, before resuming the estate’s development plan.  This proposal was fine, as far as it went.  He put the plan to the guardians for approval.  A more prudent course would have been to ask these able and experienced friends of his father for their opinions, rather than suggest that he already had the answers.

The guardians had more immediate and practical concerns.  In June 1797, the six Scottish members concluded that some land would have to be sold.  Robert (1779), who was at school in Brixton, would have to return to Scotland immediately and Robert and his older sister Une would be given an allowance of £400pa on which to manage.  There was not a meeting of minds between Robert and his guardians and a pattern was quickly established of the guardians proposing an action, or series of actions and Robert proposing an alternative plan, or even ignoring proffered advice and taking his own decisions.  The relationship was not working well, and Robert told the English members that they did not understand Scottish life.  Another argument that Robert used in countering the guardians was to say that he knew how his father had intended to develop Ury.  However, this line of reasoning ran up against the fact that his father had chosen the guardians precisely because of their knowledge, experience and standing in society.  In February 1798, Robert’s half-sister, Lucy Galton, upbraided Robert about his unwillingness to take advice from the guardians.

Meantime an unwelcome distraction came on the scene in Kincardineshire.  The Mearnshire Volunteers, formed as part of a plan to create a volunteer military force to counter an expected French invasion, appointed Robert Barclay (1779) to the rank of captain, in place of the retiring Captain Gordon, in charge of a company of 50 men.  It is likely that Robert was nominated out of local deference to his late father.  Robert, of course, was totally unsuited to this role.  He completely lacking military experience or any semblance of mature judgement.  The guardians were not pleased by this diversion.

By May 1798 the state of hostility between Britain and France led to banking problems and the lenders to the Ury estate started to ask for the return of their capital.  The obvious way to deal with this was to sell land but much of the Ury estate itself was entailed, a Scottish legal device whereby a parcel of land could only be passed on in its entirety to named inheritors.  However, other Barclay landholdings were unentailed.  Hallgreen, Kinghornie and Dava, a part of the Allardice estate, were sold off.  But, in consequence, estate income then declined substantially.  Some of the guardians, most of whom were very wealthy, lent money to the estate.

Robert Barclay (1779) was clearly forming a strategy of keeping the guardians out of his hair so that he could please himself how he behaved.  He wanted to spin out the process of decision-making until he reached his majority in August 1800, when he would be free of their formal control.   Instead of going to Edinburgh University, as he had previously suggested, he appointed a personal tutor, William Paul, to teach him at Ury.  Paul immediately recognised Robert Barclay (1779)’s failings.  He was not interested in education and avoided learning when he could.  He needed to study more in all subjects.  William Paul reported his opinions to the guardians.  His views would not have come as a surprise.

Further displays of personal initiative, even defiance, followed from Robert Barclay (1779).  In August 1798, he rebelliously rented Lark Hall, a house near Bath and decanted there taking his tutor William Paul with him, possibly as a fig leaf for his real purpose.  Bath was about as far away from the influence of the guardians, based in Scotland, London and Birmingham, as Robert could get.  The environs of Bath and Bristol also had definite appeals for the young athlete.  There was a prominent boxing scene in the area and Robert was attracted to pugilism, with its associated activities of gambling and carousing.  The guardians were displeased with this development and put a measure of blame for it on William Paul.  They charged that he had no influence over Robert’s actions and upbraided him for not informing them of what was happening.  It is likely that Paul was on the horns of a dilemma.  He probably knew that he should have kept the guardians in the picture but feared dismissal from his position, if he appeared to Robert to be the guardians’ man.

While he was based at Lark Hall, Robert (1779) took part in another pedestrian challenge in the summer of 1798.  This race was against a man called Ferguson, a walking clerk in the City.  The contestants were to go from Fenchurch street, London, to the 10^th milestone beyond Windsor and back, a distance of 70 miles.  Robert completed the course in 14 hours, beating Ferguson by several miles.  Sporting activities were seen by the guardians as a frivolous diversion from getting an education and they told Robert so.

About October 1798, the guardians decided that Robert’s brother, James, who was then 14, should be found a job, possibly as a writer with the East India Company.  Henry Dundas, who was influential with the EIC, made such an offer the following year, to be taken up when James’ education was complete.  The twin girls, Margaret and Mary, together with Rodney, would go to Birmingham to continue their education and the youngest child, David, then 11 would go to school. Due to a lack of funds, it was necessary to have an economical arrangement for the girls.  They were placed under the vigilant eye of an able supervisor in rooms at Moseley, near the home of the Galtons.  One of the guardians, David Barclay (1729) of Walthamstow, interviewed E Crook who was engaged at £50pa to carry out this role.  This move was unsettling for the girls.  Mary and Rodney looked unwell and Mary, sadly, died in June 1799 at the house of the Galtons.

A life of university idleness

Also, in October 1798, the guardians, tiring of Robert Barclay (1779)’s prevarication, instructed him to enrol at Oxford University.  He gave up his lease to Lark Hall, near Bath and resigned his commission with the Mearnshire Volunteers.  But he did not fetch up at Oxford University.  In another act of defiance, he decided to enrol at Cambridge University.  This location would take him further from Moseley, and the disapproving attitudes of his brother-in-law, which was located less than 70 miles from Oxford by a direct route, whereas Cambridge was more than 100 miles distant and by slower, cross-country roads.  Cambridge was also near to the horse-racing centre of Newmarket, another of Robert’s sporting obsessions.

Robert Barclay was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge in November 1798.  Though he had hardly reached an educational level that would allow him to participate in the academic life of the institution, he revelled in swanning about in academic finery, which clearly gave him a sense of importance.  For the next 21 months, he largely ignored his academic studies while indulging in outdoor sports and student drinking (often heavy), card-playing and wagers (often for large sums).  Cambridge University was a pleasant way to fill the time until he was free of the guardians.  He did not sit his examinations and he returned to Ury on reaching his majority in the summer of 1800.  He was now clear of the oversight of those who had been placed in loco parentis and free to follow his own star, having regularly frustrated the guidance of the guardians.

Country sports

While Robert was at Ury he indulged in that regular sport of country landowners, shooting for game.  He was first recorded as paying Game Duty in Kincardineshire, as required under the Game Laws, in November 1799.  He appeared to repeat this practice in most years up to 1851.  At least from 1812 he employed a gamekeeper at Ury, for whom game duty was also payable.

Coursing with greyhounds was another occasional indulgence of Robert Barclay (1779).  At the spring meeting of the Turriff Coursing Club at Castlehaugh, near New Deer in 1817, Robert was re-elected a steward of the club.  Turriff lies about 50 miles north of Ury.

Fox hunting constituted another of Robert Barclay (1779)’s favourite sports.  He was a strong and skilful horseman and during the winter months he took every opportunity to indulge this obsession.  In 1808, a pack of fox hounds was established by subscription under his auspices in his native county.  Out of season, the pack resided at Ury but in season it spent long periods of time at either Turriff in Aberdeenshire, or at Beauchamp in Angus.  This arrangement involved Robert in a great deal of travel to satisfy his obsession, making a return journey twice a week, within a day, between Ury and Turriff.  For the 1810 hunting season, at the request of the Marquis of Huntly, Robert took on the role of Master of the Turriff Hunt.  The journey to Beauchamp was less onerous (35 miles) and he was in the habit of making this return journey from Ury three times a week. 

In England, the east midland counties were, and are, a major centre of fox hunting activity.  In early 1813, Robert Barclay (1779) leased a house at Fritwell, Oxfordshire to use as a base to hunt with packs in that area.  He probably repeated this pattern for the next five years and is known to have hunted for 82 days in the 1818 season with a string of 4 hunters, a performance requiring immense stamina on Robert’s part.

Although not strictly a country sport, Robert Barclay was often in attendance at race courses, not just because of the opportunity for gambling on the results, but also to meet with like-minded nobles, aristocrats and country gentlemen.  Negotiation of terms for pedestrian events and the trials themselves also frequently took place at, or near, major race courses (see below).  In 1817 Robert Barclay (1779) attended the October race meeting in Aberdeen for the counties of Aberdeen, Forfar, Kincardine and Banff.  The Caledonian Mercury described the event as, “attended by a very numerous and highly respectable assemblage of the nobility and gentry … a brilliant display of beauty and fashion.  Some of the horses were very superior”.  Robert appeared not to compete in such horse races, perhaps because of his large frame, but he did own a race horse called “Fancy Girl” about 1840.

 

Undesirable companions

After the death of his father in 1797, Robert started to associate with some rather unsuitable characters, many from the circles in which he moved in the North East of Scotland but, increasingly from London and the South of England.  These associates were similar to Robert himself, in having spare leisure, spare money and an obsession with sport and gambling.

William Maule (from 1831, Lord Panmure).  William Ramsay was born in 1771, the second son of George the 8^th Earl of Dalhousie.  In 1782 William inherited a fortune, the Panmure estate in Forfarshire and a new family name, Maule.  He lived at Brechin Castle, which was frequently the site of convivial, even rowdy, dinners with much consumption of alcohol.  William Maule kept racehorses and indulged in cock-fighting.  It was not surprising that Robert Barclay (1779) should have been attracted to Maule and the group that coalesced around the dissolute landowner. 

Robert Fletcher, a scion of the Fletcher family of Ballinshoe, Forfarshire (also known as Angus).  His brother was murdered in India and, as a result, Robert inherited the substantial proceeds of the sale of the estate in 1799.  He was a captain in the 17^th (Leicestershire) Regiment of Foot.  Robert Fletcher was a frequent gambler for large sums and gained the sobriquet of the “Daft Laird”, due to his regular losses.  His greatest joy was horse racing and in 1799 he had been a steward at the September meeting at Ayr.  He also owned race horses.  Robert Barclay (1779) and Robert Fletcher contested a series of wagers in 1800 and 1801 (see below).  Robert Fletcher finally ran through all his money and was imprisoned as a debtor in Liverpool, dying in detention in 1819.

Fletcher Reid was the uncle of Robert Fletcher, though close to him in age.  Reid lived at Logie, near Dundee, was a promoter of prize fights and a heavy gambler.  Fletcher Reid and Robert Barclay (1779) also contested wagers together.  In 1807 Fletcher Reid’s mother died and he inherited her estates.  He went on a drinking binge to celebrate his good fortune, then expired during the following night, thus terminating another life of pointless excess.

Robert Barclay (1797), Robert Fletcher and Fletcher Reid were all regular guests of William Maule (later Lord Panmure) at Brechin Castle.  They also met frequently together when out and about in England, especially when in London.

The lure of pedestrianism

Robert Barclay (1779)’s first pedestrian match for money took place in 1796 while he was still a schoolboy in Brixton.  At the time foot races and the wagers associated with them had made pedestrianism a very popular spectator sport, probably because the sums wagered were enormous compared with the earnings of most of those watching.  Robert’s first match was no exception, as the sum wagered was 100gns (about £12,500 in 2018 money).  His second match with Ferguson, the walking clerk, took place in 1798.

While still at Cambridge University, Robert undertook to walk from Fenchurch street, London to Birmingham via Cambridge, a distance of 150 miles, which he covered in two days in December 1799.  This journey did not involve a wager.  Robert was going to visit Samuel Galton, his wife Lucy (his half-sister) and his full sisters, Margaret and Rodney, who were still being schooled at Moseley.  A few days later he made the return journey via Oxford in a similar time.

Wagers with Robert Fletcher, the “Daft Laird”

In the autumn of 1800, Robert Barclay (1779) and his companion Robert Fletcher, the “Daft Laird” had attended Hamilton Races and had been unsuccessful with their bets.  The two discussed a wager, possibly during a drinking session.  Robert Fletcher claimed he could walk 60 miles in 14 hours.  This seemed preposterous to Robert Barclay, who had personal familiarity with the effort required, so he accepted the wager.  Robert Fletcher was not fit and clearly looked incapable of achieving this goal.  It is presumed that the terms on which the challenge would be conducted were written down as articles of association and signed.  The stake was to be £2,500 (£273,000 in 2018 money) each, an unbelievable sum to risk and possibly more than the annual income of the Ury estate!  Robert Barclay was about to learn an important lesson.  He had overlooked the fact that there was no time limit on when the contest should take place.  Robert Fletcher went into training and managed to cover 60 miles in less than the stipulated 14 hours.  He collected the prize and left Robert Barclay to ruminate over the fact that he had been outwitted by the so-called “Daft Laird”.

Robert Barclay (1779) almost immediately negotiated another wager with Robert Fletcher in an attempt to regain some pride.  Robert Barclay’s assertion was that he would cover 90 miles in 21 ½ hours, walking in every one of those hours, for a bet of 500gns.  As part of his training for the event he walked from Ury to Ellon, north of Aberdeen and back, a distance of 64 miles.  The training exercise was probably undertaken in the company of George Mollison, one of his tenants and a large man of some walking ability.  The pedestrians started from Ury at midnight, breakfasted at Ellon and returned to Ury which was reached before midday, the whole journey thus being completed inside 12 hours.  Robert Barclay continued with his training but on the due date for the contest he was ill and had to withdraw, thus forfeiting his stake.

This second setback did not deter Robert Barclay (1779), rather it spurred him on to get revenge over the “Daft Laird”.  The next challenge, held in early 1801, involved Robert attempting to walk 90 miles in 21 ½ successive hours for 2000gns a side, on the road from Brechin to Forfar.  The betting at the start was in favour of the Laird of Ury.  Brechin and Forfar are just under 13 miles apart, so seven traverses of the course would be required.  Robert’s initial pace was quick, and he had completed 67 miles in 13 hours, well ahead of schedule, when he rested and drank some brandy.  It made him very sick.  Robert then renounced the bet and the umpires retired but, after two hours’ rest, Robert had recovered and would probably have been able to complete the remaining distance within the allotted time, except that he had already conceded.  He had now lost three wagers with the “Daft Laird”.  Twenty-one-year-old Robert Barclay was carelessly squandering resources which would have been better invested in his indebted estate.

Robert Barclay (1779) was now completely out of control, throwing good money after bad in a wild attempt to get even with Robert Fletcher.  The next wager between the two men took place on Doncaster race course in the first week of March 1801.  On this occasion Robert Fletcher would attempt to walk 60 miles in 21 hours.  It is difficult to see why Robert Barclay agreed to this challenge, given that his adversary had already managed 60 miles in 14 hours.  The “Daft Laird” walked the distance in 16 hours and the Morning Post reporting that, “We understand Mr Fletcher has gained considerable bets in both” (ie the last two challenges).

The frenzied pace of challenges between the two men continued, not on foot but on horseback.  In 1801 Robert Barclay (1779) bought a horse called “Tally-Ho!” at Oxford races.  He then set up a challenge with Mr Graham’s horse “Wirly” to be run over ten miles at Montrose races in August 1801 for a stake of 200gns each, and both horses to carry 12 stone.  This was followed by “Tally-Ho!” being matched against Robert Fletcher’s horse “Rollicker” on the same terms.  The winners of these two races have not been discovered.

Triumph (at last) over the “Daft Laird”

William Maule now intervened to offer Robert Barclay (1779) some sage advice.  He should engage an experienced trainer to make sure he was in top condition for subsequent pedestrian competitions.  Maule recommended Jackie Smith, a tenant farmer from Oulston, 15 miles north of York.  In June 1801 Robert went to see Smith, walking the 300 miles from Ury to Oulston and completing the journey in five days, in spite of hot summer weather. Smith agreed to take on Robert Barclay’s training on a schedule of Smith’s design.

Robert Barclay (1779) now contacted the “Daft Laird” to agree a new pedestrian challenge.  In a clear attempt to get close to evens with his nemesis, a wager of 5,000gns a side was agreed.  Robert was required to walk 90 miles in 21 ½ hours.  The attempt was to take place in the month of November 1801 and eight days’ notice of the attempt was to be given.  This was a stupendous sum, £10,500 in 1801 approximately equating to £836,000 in 2018 money.  Such unimaginable sums, for most citizens, must have excited both fascination and horror in equal measure.  At the time it was probably the largest purse put at risk in a public wager.

At the beginning of September 1801, Robert Barclay returned to Oulston to submit to Jackie Smith’s punishing regime. Not all Smith’s methods had value.  They included bleeding, heavy sweating and administering an emetic in the fanciful belief that these “treatments” had the effect of “cleansing the system”.  Looking down with disdain from our position of scientific knowledge, we need to bear in mind that, even today, many people, including Royalty and celebrities, hold that health benefits can be derived from such quack procedures as cupping, detoxification, crystals, hot stones, homeopathy and colonic irrigation.  For some people, and that probably included Robert Barclay, unshakeable belief in a procedure was, and is, sufficient to trump a lack of hard evidence testifying to benefit.

 

However, not all of Smith’s programme was useless or harmful.  The body is served by many adaptive feedback mechanisms.  Exercise the muscles, they grow bigger; exercise the lungs, pulmonary capacity increases; pound the roads, the bones get stronger.  A routine was established for the first week which involved running in heavy clothing to make him sweat, followed by a tankard of strong malt liquor, followed by further exercise and sweating in the morning.  In the afternoon there was more running and general farm labouring.  The food provided by Smith was plain and plentiful and included raw eggs.  Robert Barclay readily accepted the blunt instructions of this son of the soil, though as a gentleman he would have been used to inferiors touching their forelock to him.  Accepting the opinions of another, without question, was surely a novelty for the rebellious and superior Robert Barclay (1779)?  The intensity of the training programme was progressively ramped up in the coming weeks.  During October1801, Jackie Smith set Robert Barclay a test to find if he was making progress in achieving his performance goal.  He gave Robert the task of walking 110 miles against the clock.  Robert started at midnight in driving rain and continued over a progressively muddier course until 7.27pm the same day, when he gained the desired target, comfortably exceeding what was required to win the wager.  Robert Barclay then gave notice to Robert Fletcher that the trial would take place on Tuesday 10^th November.  The Laird of Ury must have felt confident that, on this occasion, having undertaken proper preparation, including training and performance measurement, he would vanquish his tormentor.

The venue chosen for the walking trial was the first whole mile of the road, now the A1079, from Hayton towards Market Weighton in the East Riding of Yorkshire.  Robert was 5ft 11in tall and weighed 12 ½ stones at the start.  The course was not entirely flat, this venue being on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds.  It was illuminated by gas lamps.  The press had been trumpeting the event for some time and Robert Barclay (1779) started his quest at midnight on Monday 9^th - Tuesday 10^th November in the presence of hundreds of spectators, on foot and on horseback and “of all ranks”.  It was reported that many gentlemen from Scotland had travelled to Yorkshire to watch the event.  There was much betting on the outcome of the trial, the odds at the start being typically 4 :7 or 1:2 on Robert Barclay being successful.  It was reported that £20,000 had been bet on the result by the gentlemen of Yorkshire, Scotland and London.  Robert quickly established a rhythm, completing the out and return legs of the course, two miles, in 24 to 26 minutes and taking food every 15 miles.  On the attainment of 60 miles, the odds shortened to 1:5 or 1:6 that he would win.  The crowd was with him and sensed that he would succeed.

Trainer Jackie Smith’s son accompanied Robert Barclay for the last 30 miles of the challenge and horsemen had to be used to keep a space on the road in which he could walk.  At 8.21pm on Tuesday evening the target was reached and with an hour and nine minutes to spare in the allotted time.  There was much rejoicing by the crowd, not only around the venue and the local towns and villages, but also in the east of Scotland, once the news had travelled there.  Robert Barclay (1779) claimed the stake money of 10,000gns and the Caledonian Mercury described him as being “a gentleman of considerable fortune”.  But that was not the truth.  He had not even regained his previous losses to the “Daft Laird” and the estate at Ury was still heavily indebted.

Leisure time at Ury and in London

Immediately after his triumph in Yorkshire in late 1801, Robert Barclay (1779) returned to Ury but he did not remain there for long.  He was now a pedestrian celebrity and very welcome in the ranks of like-minded young men in London, which included his Forfarshire mates, Robert Fletcher and Fletcher Reid, the sporting practitioners and their supporters often being referred to as “the Fancy”.  Robert Barclay spent as much time as he could in the company of the “Fancy”, drinking, betting and partaking of physical exercise, such as boxing.  To make his sojourns in London more convenient he rented rooms in Great Suffolk street. 

The condition of the Ury estate did not seem to enter his mind, which was wholly occupied with personal gratification.  Or perhaps it did, but the responsibilities that he should have been shouldering were too much to bear and displacement behaviour won out?  Sixty years later, on the other side of the Grampians, another young laird, the 11^th Marquis of Huntley, Charles Gordon, when landed with a similar responsibility for an indebted estate at a young age, showed a similar pattern of behaviour.

Ploughing matches were a regular winter pastime of agricultural workers in the North East of Scotland and they gave an opportunity for ploughmen to show off their skills and take pride in the preparation of their horses.  Such competitions were also occasion for conviviality and were supported by the lairds.  In March 1802 a ploughing match was held on the Home Farm at Ury, with the support of Robert Barclay (1779).  Afterwards he entertained the ploughmen “with plenty of good beef and porter”.  

In August 1802 Robert was present at Ury and while there he undertook a long and demanding walk, apparently for his own amusement.  The journey was from Ury, near Stonehaven to Kirkmichael in Perthshire, a distance of 80 miles, to visit a Dr Grant.  It is likely that he travelled by a route skirting the southern boundary of the Grampian mountains.  He remained with Dr Grant for a day and a night but without sleeping and then returned to Ury by a longer route up Glenshee to Braemar and along Deeside to Banchory before taking the Slug road back to Stonehaven.  Robert arrived back at Ury in time for dinner on the third day after his departure.  The total distance he had covered was 180 miles, over poor or non-existent roads with significant gradients.

Robert Barclay (1779)’s sister, Une, had married John Innes in the summer of 1800, just before Robert reached his majority.  At the time of his marriage John was described as being “of Cowie” (ie living at Cowie, a village just to the north of Stonehaven.  John Innes came from a wealthy background.  He was a WS (Writer to the Signet, a legal society in Scotland).  His father was also a lawyer and had been Commissary for Aberdeen.  In 1795, John Innes was appointed as manager of the Durris estate, which lies about 10 miles north west of Ury.  By mid-1803 John was acting as agent for Robert Barclay (1779) and he may at that time have been playing a role in the management of the Ury estate when Robert was absent.  Certainly, John Innes was well-qualified for such a role.  In 1803 there were signs of increased economic activity on the Ury estate.  In early February a sale of 90 - 100 lean and fat cattle, 400 – 500 fat wedders (castrated male sheep) and 300 ewes with their lambs was advertised to take place by public roup on 18 April.  At the same time, grass parks on both the Ury and Allardice estates were to be let for the season.  Meanwhile Robert Barclay was occupied elsewhere. 

Since 1797 Britain had been more or less continuously at war with France.  In 1803 after a temporary truce, the Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, threatened invasion, leading to Britain declaring war on France.  War was to continue until terminated in 1815 by the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.  This had little effect on Robert Barclay (1877), who continued his life much as he pleased.  Perhaps his brother-in-law’s stewardship of the Ury estate allowed him to be self-indulgent? During 1803, while living in London, Robert was again involved in several wagers.  In June he was involved in a race over one mile against Joe Berks, a prize fighter who hung out with the London sporting crowd.  Fletcher Reid bet on Berks winning while Robert Fletcher bet on Robert Barclay succeeding.  Robert Barclay easily won the race.  The following month Robert was involved in another challenge, this time to walk from Suffolk street, Charing Cross, in London to Newmarket in Suffolk, about 64 miles, within ten hours.  Robert again bested the target, this time by two hours, in spite of the weather being hot.  His next challenge in December 1803 was an unusual one for Robert.  He undertook to run a quarter mile race against Jack Warr in Hyde Park.  Although the betting favoured Warr, Robert Barclay won in 56 seconds.

A military diversion and more athletic challenges

In early 1804, Robert Barclay (1779) joined the army.  His appointment was announced in the London Gazette.  “23^rd Regiment (the Royal Welch Fusiliers).  Robert Barclay Allardice Gent to be second lieutenant vice Graves”.  He appeared not to have purchased the commission. Why did he join up?  It hardly seems credible that, even though the country was at war, this move was motivated by patriotism.  Robert was self-absorbed and hedonistic and his actions all seemed to be directed towards him satisfying his sporting desires.  It may appear a cynical suggestion to the reader, but it seems much more likely that Robert had found someone in his brother-in-law, John Innes, who was competent to manage Ury and who was available and motivated to do so, thus relieving Robert of the need to be concerned with the upkeep of his estate.  Robert Barclay put the Ury estate under the legal trusteeship of John Innes for the duration of his army service.  But why join the army?  Many members of the “Fancy” were serving army officers and their military lives seemed to be entirely compatible with sporting activities and carousing with other like-minded gentlemen.  Perhaps this was the perfect billet from which Robert could continue having fun?  Certainly, many of his subsequent challenges involved army officers.

It did not take Robert Barclay (1797) long to get involved in a wager after he joined the army.  In February he agreed to walk from Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire to the Royal Exchange in the City of London, a distance of 23 miles.  The terms were that he would complete the journey in 3 hours for a stake of 200gns.  However, the contest did not take place because Robert Barclay was either ill on the day, or the roads were impassable due to snow and ice.  But his fame as a walker had made even the announcement that a competition would take place newsworthy.

By May 1804, Robert Barclay (1779)’s regiment, with others, had been sent to an encampment on the South Downs near Eastbourne to counter the invasion threat by Napoleon Bonaparte.  This was a period of extended inactivity.  Robert countered the boredom in his usual fashion, undertaking long walks over the Downs and getting involved in athletic competitions during the summer months.  One challenge was to run two miles in 12 minutes, which time he bettered by 2 ½ secs.  Another competition was against a fellow officer, Captain Marston, also well-known as a runner, over one mile for a stake of 200gns.  Robert Barclay won the race in a time of 5 min 7 sec.  In October he undertook a third challenge over one mile against John Ireland of Manchester for 500gns.  Ireland failed to complete the course, but Robert’s time was a creditable 4 min 50 sec.

At the end of 1804, Robert Barclay (1779) received both good and bad news.  His younger brother James, who had joined the colonial administration in India and had risen to the position of Collector of Customs at Trincomalee, Ceylon, died in Madras on 11 March.  More welcome was the announcement that Robert had been promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant.

Much of the year 1805 was spent by Robert Barclay (1779) like the previous year in military boredom enlivened by athletic challenges.  At least military activities were usually of a physical nature and kept him fit.  In March, after visiting his half-sister Lucy and Samuel Galton in Birmingham, Robert walked to Wrexham in North Wales, travelling by Shrewsbury.  The total distance of 72 miles was completed between breakfast and dinner at an average speed of over 6mph.  If the journey time was accurately recorded and if it was truly walking, ie with a foot always in contact with the ground, this was a remarkable walking average.  In June Robert took up a challenge by Captain Cook, a Guards officer, to run a half mile race.  This match was due to take place over the half mile course at Epsom racecourse and a crowd of spectators, including “many fashionable females”, was present.  Cook failed to show up and Robert Barclay ran the course alone, “winning the whole of his bets which were very considerable”.  The following month, July, Robert undertook another long walk for his own pleasure.  His starting point was his accommodation in Suffolk street, Charing Cross, to Seaford near Eastbourne in Sussex.  He completed the 64-mile distance in 10 hours, another remarkably fast journey.

Robert Barclay (1779) was now winning most of the athletic challenges that he was undertaking, in marked contrast to the period 1800 – 1801 and his wild behaviour with the “Daft Laird”.  However, the stakes were now more modest and, given his indulgent life style, he was not growing rich from his athletics triumphs.  Back in Ury his brother in law, John Innes was active in managing the affairs of the estate.  In May 1805 a notice to the heirs in entail of the Ury estate was published in the Caledonian Mercury advising them that a petition had been presented by Robert Barclay Allardice to exchange lands at Montquich for part of the entailed land of Ury, ie, certain parts of the land of Redcloak and Findlayston, the exchanged land to be settled on the heirs in entail, in lieu of the lands at Ury.  Although the petition must have been approved by and had formally come from Robert, it is likely that the move was instigated by John Innes.

In October 1805 the French fleet was finally and comprehensively defeated at Trafalgar, removing the immediate threat of invasion from France.  Napoleon’s campaigns then continued on continental Europe.  Lord Cathcard was Commander in Chief, Ireland for the British army between 1803 and 1805 but at the end of 1805 he was sent to command a British expeditionary force protecting Hannover from French troops.  This venture was short-lived and when Hannover was handed over to the Prussians in January 1806 and Cathcart and his army returned to Britain.  Robert Barclay (1779) was a member of the force commanded by Cathcart and this was as close as he got to real hostilities during the whole of his sojourn in the army.  It did not interrupt his real interests in life for long.

After the return from Hannover, the 23^rd Regiment was posted to Woodbridge in Suffolk.  Robert Barclay had been noted as a long-distance walker and to some extent also as a runner.  He was not noted as a weightlifter but, while at Woodbridge, Robert offered a bet of 1000gns, which was not taken up, that he could lift a weight of half a ton off the ground.  He achieved this objective by linking 21 half-hundredweight weights with a rope and lifting them collectively.  He then threw half a hundred-weight 24 ft with a straight arm throw and 15 ft with an overhead throw.  (Donald Dinnie the famed Deeside heavy athlete, who competed from the mid-19^th century, was credited with throws of up to 40ft with a 56lb weight, though he typically competed with a body weight of over 15 stone).  In the mess room, Captain Keith, the 18-stone 23d Regiment paymaster, stood upon Robert Barclay’s right hand and Robert then lifted him onto a table.  Robert Barclay was clearly a remarkable all-round athlete and not just a long-distance pedestrian.  Forty-five years later (1850) Robert was still able to repeat this feat of strength when visiting the Galtons at Leamington Spa.  He lifted Darwin Galton, who weighed 12 stone, from the floor onto a table with one hand. 

    

In February 1806, Robert Barclay (1779) was promoted, without purchase, to the rank of captain in the 71^st Regiment of Foot, the Nova Scotia Fencibles, replacing Captain Joddrell.  From this time onwards, Robert became popularly known as “Captain Barclay”.  According to Peter Radford, Robert Barclay soon moved back to his old regiment.

During June 1806, Robert Barclay (1879) walked from his rooms in Suffolk street, Charing Cross to Colchester in Essex, where his regiment was based, a distance of 55 miles.  His route took him south of the Thames to Gravesend, where he rowed across the river to the north bank and then on to Colchester.  He appeared to start early in the morning and completed the journey without stopping to eat breakfast.  August 1806 saw Robert Barclay involved in another athletics challenge.  He was matched in a quarter mile race against a colourful character, ex-Cornet Goulbourne, who had recently been forced out of the Royal Horse Guards after being sued for writing offensive verses about the shortcomings of senior officers.  The race took place at William Lord’s cricket ground in Marylebone and Robert Barclay was an easy winner.

About September 1806, the 23^rd Regiment was transferred from Colchester to Wrexham in North Wales.  This move was not welcomed by Robert Barclay, as it lengthened his journey to London and the activities of “the Fancy”.  By this time his youngest brother, David Stuart Barclay (1787) had also joined up and was with the 42^nd Highlanders in Liverpool.  (David Barclay (1787) eventually gained the rank of Major in the 28^th Regiment of Foot.  He died in 1826 at Otranto, Italy.)  Robert gained a period of leave on the pretext of visiting his brother, but his real intention was to travel to London to see a prize fight.  On his return journey, which was made in difficult weather, he called on Lucy and Samuel Galton in Birmingham, then completed his journey back to Wrexham on foot.

According to Peter Radford, Robert Barclay left Wrexham for Ury in December 1806 for his usual sporting activities of hunting and shooting.  How many journeys he made at the end on that year is unclear, because he had been at Ury on 15^th October for a meeting of the Northern Shooting Club.  He took with him Jem Belcher’s battle-scarred bull terrier “Trusty”.  The dog was given to Robert when Belcher went to gaol for debt.  (Belcher was a well-known pugilist).  Hard men liked to emphasise their “hardness” by being accompanied by a dog which was clearly also “hard”.  A not dissimilar phenomenon can be observed on the streets on big cities today.  Robert Barclay had also recruited another hardened character, William Cross, as a groom-cum-manservant.  He served Robert Barclay for the next 30 years, to 1836.

Back in Ury at the start of the Scottish winter of 1806 – 1807, which in the early 19^th century was much more severe than today, Robert Barclay (1779) continued with his pedestrian activities.  In December 1806 he undertook another fast walk, in the company of William Cross, from Ury over the Slug Road to Deeside, then onwards to Crathienaird just north of Balmoral.  They returned by the same route, the total journey occupying 19 hours at an average speed of 5 ¾ mph.  During the journey of 100 miles they endured a severe storm.  Separately William Cross walked 100 miles in 19h 17min on the Aberdeen road near Stonehaven.  Later, in May 1807, Robert Barclay walked from Ury, over the Slug road again, this time destined for a cattle sale near Boat of Forbes on the River Don.  He reached home after a return journey of 78 miles by 9.00pm.  His period of walking had occupied 14 hours.  This attendance at a cattle sale suggests that, at last, Robert was paying some attention to the affairs of the Ury estate.  This was confirmed by an advertisement in the Aberdeen Journal in March 1807 for the let of grass parks at Finlayson and Allardice.  George Morice, the overseer at Ury would show prospective bidders over the Finlayson site at Ury, while Robert Barclay would do the same for the Mains of Allardice land, near Inverbervie.

Increasing involvement in the fight scene

Early in January 1807 Fletcher Reid brought his own life of excess to an early end, removing a leading promoter of fights and other contests from the scene.  To some extent Robert Barclay (1779) filled the space thus vacated.  He promoted boxer Tom Cribb to beat Jem Belcher, a well-known bruiser.  The fight was arranged for Moulsey Hurst, west of London, conveniently near the home of the Duke of Clarence at Bushey House. (The Duke of Clarence was the third son of George III and would take the throne as William IV in 1830.)  Robert Barclay (1779) had made some elevated friends through his involvement with the “Fancy” and he took the Duke to see the contest, which Cribb won after a hard scrap.  At the end of July in the same year, Robert Barclay acted as umpire in another prize fight between Tom Belcher (brother of Jem) and Dutch Sam.  The end of the fight led to a controversy when Belcher was felled by a blow which may have been against the rules.  Robert Barclay thought the blow was illegal, but the other umpire had a contrary opinion.  In the end the fight was declared a draw.

Robert Barclay’s new-found role of boxing promoter and referee did not stop him taking on further pedestrian challenges.  His next adversary was Abraham Wood, a prominent Lancastrian pedestrian.  The event was fixed for 12 October 1807 over a measured mile at Newmarket.  Each man would walk as far as possible in 24 hours but, remarkably, Robert Barclay was granted an advantage of 20 miles at the start of the race.  The stake was 200gns a side.  Robert went into training and as part of his preparations he and Bill Warr walked the 115 miles from Sussex to Newmarket.  On the appointed day, in the presence of a large crowd, Wood went off at an excessive pace and after some hours was starting to flag.  He was given laudanum (extract of the opium poppy containing a variety of opioid alkaloids).  It did not help, and Wood gave up the race at 40 miles, realising that he would never overcome the handicap that he had conceded.

One thousand miles in one thousand hours

In October 1808, Robert Barclay (1779) agreed a wager with Wedderburn Webster that he (Robert) could walk 1000 miles in 1000 hours, completing a mile in every successive hour.  The stake was 1000gns.  This was a very daring challenge that Robert had undertaken, and it far exceeded any performance he had previously achieved.  Two events probably decided Robert to accept the challenge.  Firstly, a trial that had been undertaken at Ury by George Mollison one of the tenant farmers on the estate and a fit and determined man.  He walked a mile every hour for eight days and at the end of the trial he reported that he felt he could have continued with this schedule for six months!  Secondly, Robert Barclay himself undertook a test of his own ability to both walk a long distance and go without sleep.  He walked to Lieutenant Colonel Murray Farquharson’s house of Allanmore, far up the Dee valley near Braemar.  The house lay on the north bank of the Dee at the foot of the mountains leading to the Cairngorm Plateau.  While at Allanmore, Robert went out at 5 am grouse shooting, during which pursuit he walked, in demanding conditions, about 30 miles.  He returned to dinner at the Colonel’s house by 5pm and in the evening he set out for Ury, 60 miles away, which distance he walked, without a break, in eleven hours.  Robert Barclay attended to estate matters then, in the afternoon, he walked 16 miles to Laurencekirk, to attend a ball, returning to Ury by 7am.  Again, he did not sleep but spent the day partridge shooting.  In three days and two nights without sleep he had travelled on foot, in total, about 135 miles.

 

Who was Wedderburn Webster?  His father, David Wedderburn, was a Dundonian who had started a company, Wedderburn and Co in London.  He had also inherited a large sum of money, and a new surname, Webster, from his mother, who was in turn related to Fletcher Reid.  David’s son was christened “James Webster Wedderburn” but he had changed his name to “James Wedderburn Webster” in 1806 and was generally then known as “Wedderburn Webster”.  He was about ten years younger than Robert Barclay (1779) but had a similar addiction to gambling and drinking.  Wedderburn Webster was a good horse rider and an accomplished pedestrian.  On reaching his majority in 1809 he inherited a fortune and proceeded to spend lavishly.  Thus, he could easily afford the wager with Robert Barclay.  By 1813 Webster was broke, such was the scale of his excesses.  Wedderburn Webster died of a stroke in 1840.

The 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours challenge was to take place at Newmarket on 1 June 1809, more than half a year away, which gave Robert Barclay ample opportunity to undertake training.  In December 1808, Robert Barclay was involved in a contest with an employee of his relative, the Duke of Gordon.  The race was over 19 miles from Gordon Castle to Huntly Lodge.  Robert covered the distance in 2 hours 8 minutes and at the finish was about five miles ahead of his opponent.

Robert Barclay (1779) arrived at Newmarket a couple of days before the appointed start of the 1,000 -mile contest, Thursday 1 June 1809.  The course was along a public road over a measured distance of half a mile.  Thus, the journey out and back constituted the mile to be completed each hour.  The newspapers had stirred up considerable interest in this challenge and there was a large crowd present to witness the proceedings.  There was much betting on the outcome and right from the start the odds were in favour of Captain Barclay. 

Robert quickly established a routine.  According to Thom, his early biographer, he walked with “a sort of lounging gait without apparently making any extraordinary exertion scarcely raising his feet more than 2 or 3 inches above the ground.  His dress was adapted to the changing weather.  Sometimes he walked in a flannel jacket and sometimes in a loose dark grey coat, but he always used strong shoes and lamb-wool stockings”.  By timing his mile walks at the end and beginning of adjoining hour periods he was able to reserve about one and a half hours for calls of nature, eating sleeping, clothes changing and medical attention.  Again, according to Thom, “He breakfasted after returning from his walk at 5am.  He ate a roasted fowl and drank a pint of strong ale and then took two cups of tea with bread and butter.  He lunched at 12 noon, the one day on beef steaks, the other on mutton chops of which he ate a considerable quantity.  He dined at 6pm either on roast beef or mutton chops.  His drink was porter and 2 or 3 glasses of wine.  He supped at 11pm on cold fowl.  He ate such vegetables as were in season and the quantity of animal food he took daily was from 5 to 6 lbs”.

As the challenge progressed Robert began to suffer various afflictions in his feet and legs, but his main problem was with returning to wakefulness after a sleep and his manservant, William Cross, often had to use violence to make him regain consciousness.  With his enormous determination, which had characterised many of his Barclay forebears, he pressed on to the end.  On Wednesday 12 July 1809 at 3.37pm and with thousands of cheering spectators present, including “some very distinguished aristocratic company”, he completed the challenge.  Despite the enormous quantities of food that he had consumed during his trial, Robert Barclay’s weight dropped during its course from 13 stone 4lbs to 11 stone.  After finishing Robert took a bath and then slept, almost continuously, for 17 hours.

Shortly before Robert Barclay undertook the 1000 miles in 1000 hours challenge, his distinguished relative, David Barclay (1763), the last surviving grandson of the Apologist (Robert Barclay (1648)), had died.  His life of business success, moral rectitude, adherence to the Quaker faith, opposition to slavery and declination of public recognition, could not have been in more marked contrast to the dissolute life led by Robert Barclay (1779), who, ironically, had probably achieved more prominence than his relative, through his feats in the pedestrian arena.

The ill-fated Walcheren expedition

Since Lord Cathcart’s Continental expedition in 1805, Robert Barclay (1779) had had little to do with the Napoleonic Wars, which were continuing.  In 1809, Britain and Austria formed a coalition against France.  In an attempt to relieve pressure on their Austrian allies, Britain mounted the Walcheren expedition.  The purpose was to capture the major port of Antwerp which was under French control.  This port was ideally placed for a future attack on Britain.  Walcheren was a swampy, malaria-ridden island at the mouth of the River Scheldt.  Occupying it was the first stage in the campaign.  A large fleet was assembled off the Kent coast to take the British forces across the North Sea.  The 2^nd Division of the force was commanded by the 5^th Duke of Gordon (who was also Marquis of Huntly), Robert Barclay’s relative and Robert was appointed as his aide de camp.  However, Robert was unable to take up his position until his 1,000-mile challenge had been completed. One wonders if such latitude would have been extended to others lacking a family connection?

Robert Barclay (1779) posted to Ramsgate in Kent on 17 July, five days after the completion of the 1,000-mile challenge, apparently in excellent health and completely recovered from his protracted exertions.  Most ships of the expeditionary force left the Downs, a sheltered anchorage between the North and South Foreland, on 28 July to cross the North Sea, though it appears that Robert’s transport left at an earlier date.  The expedition was a failure.  The French sent reinforcements to Antwerp and the British became bogged down at Walcheren.  The 40,000 British troops suffered appalling casualties, mostly arising from disease, especially malaria.  Lord Chatham, the leader in command of the British forces was replaced in consequence.  With Antwerp now beyond reach, the expedition objectives were abandoned, and bulk of the British forces were withdrawn early in 1810.  Robert Barclay had returned to Britain before the end of September 1809, possibly to attend the wedding of his sister Margaret to Hudson Gurney, a scion of the well-known banking family from Norwich, at Marylebone.

Exit from the Army and the return to Ury

The end of the Walcheren campaign effectively ended Robert Barclay’s military career, except for his appointment, at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, in the Kincardineshire Regiment of Local Militia on his arrival in the North East.  He travelled most of the way to Ury, not as a passenger on the mail coach but as its driver on every stage between London and Dundee.  This was a journey of 400 miles and far exceeded the stint undertaken by regular coach drivers.  Robert had clearly not lost his taste for trials of endurance.  He may have had a family reason for his rush to reach home.  His older sister Une Cameron, wife of John Innes was ill.  She died on 26 September 1809 at Cowie, near Stonehaven.

Compared with his movements since reaching his majority, Robert Barclay (1809)’s sojourn at Ury was protracted, lasting about nine months.  While there he showed signs of becoming integrated into the commercial and social life of the North East as well as concerning himself with the Ury estate.  The following July (1810) he would be elected to the Scotland’s premier agricultural society, the Highland Society (later renamed the Highland and Agricultural Society).  Robert Barclay Allardice was elected Vice-President of the Society in 1847.  Although the annual income of the estate was reported to have risen to about £8,000pa, there were indications that additional money was being raised.  In November 1809, the Aberdeen Journal carried an advertisement for the sale of a share held in the name of Robert Barclay’s father, Robert (1732) in the banking company in Aberdeen, at an upset price of £800.  Robert Barclay (1779) also became a director of the North British Fire Insurance Company.  His stay at Ury also gave Robert the opportunity to indulge his interest in fox hunting.

The passion for boxing increases

But the link to “the Fancy” was not broken.  In June 1810 Robert Barclay returned to London to contest an exhibition boxing match with Tom Molineux, a freed American slave.  Barclay got a pasting and was floored by his black opponent, sustaining broken ribs.  Robert did not hang around in London after this set-back and returned to Ury.  In the meantime, Tom Molineux had a boxing match with Tom Cribb, some of whose earlier fights had been promoted by Captain Barclay.  The match was awarded to Cribb, but this announcement was followed by crowd invasions of the ring because attendees thought that Cribb had been beaten.  Molyneux challenged Cribb to a rematch but Cribb did everything he could to avoid another contest.  The pressure mounted on Cribb following a further victory by Molyneux.  Cribb even tried to retire from boxing.  At this point Robert Barclay intervened.  Terms were agreed for a rematch and Cribb was taken to Ury to begin training, as he was out of condition and badly over-weight, tipping the scales at 16 stone.  Robert Barclay and his charge started out from London for Scotland by coach in June 1811.  The match was billed as being for the Championship of Great Britain and was due to take place at Doncaster in the south of Yorkshire at the end of September 1811.

Training for the fight involved sweating and purging, in addition to running, walking long distances and hard physical work around the Ury estate.  Part of the training period was spent on the Blackhall estate on the south bank of the River Dee at Banchory, 18 miles from Ury.  To get there Robert Barclay, Tom Cribb and William Cross walked over the Slug road.  The Laird of Blackhall was Archibald Farquharson, another young man with too much money, spare time and an obsession with sport and betting.  Part of the training involved climbing Scolty, a low, but steep and demanding hill, lying just south of Banchory.  Other training activities included a 60 mile walk to Mar Lodge near Braemar and some sparring in Stonehaven.  By the time of the fight Tom Cribb’s weight had been reduced to 13 stone 5lbs.

Robert Barclay (1779) and Tom Crib set out for Yorkshire on foot.  A dispute then arose with Molyneux’s camp over the venue and the fight was switched from Doncaster to a site in Lincolnshire close to Melton Mowbrey, which lies just inside the adjacent county of Leicester.  Robert must have been confident that his training had been effective because he was alleged to have laid a bet of £3,000 on Tom Cribb winning.  It was a brutal, no-holds-barred contest and it ended with Molyneux being knocked out and sustaining a broken jaw and several broken ribs.  Robert was beginning to enjoy success as a trainer of boxers and a fight promoter.  But there were warning signs that Robert needed to exercise caution with his involvement in the fight game.  He trained Alexander Mackay from Badenoch for a fight with Simon Byrne, but the match had a disastrous outcome when Byrne died following a heavy blow from Mackay.

The signs were also present that it would soon be time for Robert Barclay (1779), who was by then 32, to terminate his own participation in fights.  In November 1811 he took on Life Guardsman Shaw in a boxing contest and lost to the younger man.  The following year he boxed a match against Edward Budd in London but became angry and used tactics which were against the rules, after he had been knocked down by Budd. 

Robert Barclay’s pedestrian superiority also could no longer be taken for granted.  In July 1812, he undertook a wager with a fellow officer in the Kincardineshire Militia.  Robert was to run a one-mile course on the Stonehaven to Aberdeen road for an hour at 9mph while his opponent was to drive the same course at 16mph in a gig carrying a load of 476lbs.  Robert failed to reach his performance target, but his opponent also had to terminate his involvement when his gig broke down.  Robert Barclay undertook another pedestrian challenge in 1813.  It was a two-mile race against Lieutenant Needham of the 7^th Dragoons.  The race took place in Hyde Park and Robert used a cottage at Hyde Park Gate as his base but to no avail, as Needham won comfortably.

Thom’s biography of Captain Barclay

 

In 1813 a book was published in Aberdeen by Walter Thom with the title, “Pedestrianism; or an account of the performances of celebrated pedestrians during the last and present century with a full narrative of Captain Barclay’s public and private matches and an essay on training”.  Robert Barclay (1779) was heavily involved in the book’s production.  He seemed to recognise that his pedestrian activities would soon be over, and he wanted to see his record fully recorded.  Robert claimed that he was primarily a gentleman and a farmer, which had hardly been true to that year, but perhaps Robert foresaw that that this would be his focus in the future.

A brush with politics

The father of Robert Barclay (1779), Robert Barclay (1732) had been the MP for Kincardineshire between 1788 and 1797 but his senior son only once showed a fleeting inclination to follow his father into Parliament.  At the General Election of 1812, Robert Barclay (1779) announced that he would stand for his father’s old constituency of Kincardineshire.  His opponent was George Harley Drummond (1783), the eldest son of George Drummond, a banker.  George Drummond junior had also been a captain in the Kincardine Volunteer Infantry from 1806 and Lieutenant Colonel from 1808.  He lived at Drumtochty castle, Forfarshire, which was built in a Neo-Gothic style between 1810 and 1812.  George Drummond (1783) was another reckless spendthrift and gambler.  Robert Barclay withdrew his candidature before the election, realising that he could not win, and George Drummond was returned unopposed.

Mary Dalgarno

Since the death of his father in 1797, Robert Barclay (1779)’s behaviour had been increasingly dissolute and devoted to repeated bouts of boozing, carousing and undertaking athletic challenges.  He appeared to have no interest in forming lasting relationships with the opposite sex and it is presumed that he indulged in casual sexual dalliances with any woman who took his fancy.  There may have been many of these, ranging from the well-to-do ladies who found a fascination in the athletic challenges, including the brutal pugilistic ones, to girls serving in drinking dens and even girls who walked the streets.  In August 1814 Robert Barclay returned to Ury from London.  By this date, the only family member resident at Ury House was his spinster sister, Rodney.  Of his other siblings, Anne, Une, Mary and James were dead. Margaret had married and moved away, and David Stuart was serving in the army.  Rodney had engaged a 17-year-old girl, Mary Dalgarno as a maid and Robert instantly took a personal interest in her and seduced her.  Rodney must at some stage have discovered what was happening between her brother and her maid.  She is likely to have been disapproving. 

Mary Dalgarno was the daughter of an Aberdeen merchant, Alexander Dalgarno.  She was baptised at St Nicholas Church, Aberdeen by Bishop Skinner on 6 March 1797.  Interestingly, the family surname of Alexander Dalgarno’s wife was also “Skinner”.  It was a possibility that Bishop Skinner was a relative of Mary Dalgarno senior.  These circumstances suggest that Mary junior hailed from the middle classes, rather than from the lower orders as has been suggested elsewhere.

Robert Barclay (1779) must have realised that it would be impossible to carry on a sexual liaison with his unmarried sister’s maid on an extended timescale at Ury.  His solution was to take her with him to his hunting accommodation at the Old Manor House, Fritwell in Oxfordshire, which he had hired in 1813.  The move to Oxfordshire took place about September 1815.  Robert and Mary then perpetrated a deceit on the village and society of Fritwell, which must have been at Robert’s instigation.  He presented Mary to the vicar as his wife.  It can be imagined that there would have been great local interest in such a celebrity fetching up in this small community.  The impact of Robert’s relocation to the village can be judged from the fact that the church bells were rung in welcome.  This subterfuge was not likely to go undetected for long and Robert sought a resolution by applying for a marriage licence in a distant parish, but this was refused as Mary Dalgarno was still well under the age of consent.

 

Another problem arose for Robert Barclay (1779) when Mary Dalgarno conceived about the beginning of November 1815.  A daughter, who was later christened “Margaret Barclay Allardice” was born on 4 July 1816.  There is a claim that the christening took place at Fritwell on 12 October 1816, but no parish record of the event has been uncovered.  The Napoleonic Wars ended in June 1815 with the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo.  A year later Fritwell marked the anniversary of this signal event with village celebrations.  Robert Barclay (1779) continued the deception of the village community by claiming that this was also the anniversary of his marriage to Mary Dalgarno, the alleged date of marriage conveniently preceding the date of conception.

But his “married” state was not to Robert’s liking, as it interfered with his pursuit of the true passions in his life.  He was increasingly absent from Fritwell, pursuing his sporting interests, such as boxing in London and hunting across the Midlands.  From time to time he also returned to Ury to deal with estate matters, but he did not take his “wife”, Mary, and his new child north with him.  Perhaps the disapproval of sister Rodney would have been too much to bear?  Matters came to a head in September 1817.  Robert Barclay (1779) attended a fight, again at Molesey Hurst, but afterwards he deserted Mary and went to live at Ury, leaving her and daughter Margaret, alone in rural Oxfordshire.  This was the last straw for Mary and she bolted to her father’s home in Aberdeen.  Robert could fairly be described as a cad.

Back in Ury, Robert must have quickly discovered that Mary had returned to the North East.  He had to do something to resolve his relationship with Mary Dalgarno.  Robert went to see Mary at her father’s house and was probably confronted with a tearful “wife” and an angry father.  The simple solution would have been to marry her and legitimise their daughter Mary.  But Robert, as usual, did not take the simple route out of a difficulty, perhaps because he could not commit to marriage and the marital home with its constraints and responsibilities?  Instead, he sought the advice of William Paul, who had been his personal tutor back in the days before he attained his majority.  Paul had become an academic and had been appointed to the chair of Philosophy at Kings College in Aberdeen.  Robert must have told Paul that marriage was out of the question and asked him to devise an alternative solution which would keep Mary and her father happy. 

William Paul arranged for Robert to see two Aberdeen advocates who drew up a deed with the following terms.  Firstly, once they had established their intimate relationship, Robert and Mary accepted each other as spouses.  They fully expected to regularise the relationship through marriage.  Robert Barclay would pay £300pa for life and Mary would inherit a share of his estate.  Robert then presented this deed to Mary and her father, Alexander, as a contract of marriage.  This was clearly another subterfuge.  Mary signed the document and her father witnessed it, either naively accepting the story that Robert told them, or realising that this was all that was on offer and accepting that the deed was as near to a commitment as Robert was going to approach.  At least Mary would have funds.  Her annual income would be the equivalent of about £28,000 in 2018 money.  And the Ury estate would be likely to have unimaginable value.  But perhaps they were unaware that much of Robert’s landholding at Ury was entailed and he was simply not free to pass these assets on at will?  Mary Dalgarno went back to live at Fritwell at the end of 1817 and Robert returned later, perhaps relieved that, at least for the moment he had achieved his objectives.  He could continue to have a sexual relationship with Mary, she would put up with his semi-detached behaviour and the village would continue in ignorance of the true relationship between its celebrity resident and his “wife”.

The brief marriage to Mary Dalgarno

However, at the end of October 1818, Mary Dalgarno became pregnant for a second time.  This event appeared to tip Robert Barclay into deciding that he and Mary should be married.  In early 1819, he, Mary and daughter Margaret went to live in his rooms in London, in order for them to satisfy a six-month residential requirement and for Mary to attain her majority and be free of the need for her father’s consent to marriage.  The couple was married on 9 July 1819 at St George’s Church, Hannover Square, a very upmarket place for a wedding.  Mary Dalgarno was at the time about 8 ½ months pregnant!  The second child was also a girl and was christened “Mary Barclay Allardice”, this time with an unquestionably legitimate claim to the Barclay Allardice family name.

After the marriage, Robert and Mary did not return to Fritwell but moved to the village of Old, Northamptonshire, about 50 miles north east of the Oxfordshire village.  This new location was still within reach of hunting country but far enough from Fritwell to avoid embarrassing encounters with village residents, who might well have heard of the recent marriage of “Mr and Mrs Barclay”, given the prominent location of the nuptials.

Robert’s wife Mary became pregnant for a third time about the end of November 1819.  A male child was born on 27 August the following year but sadly died the same day.  This tragedy was quickly followed by another one.  Mary herself died three days later.  She and her infant son were buried together in the churchyard at Old.  Following the death of his wife, Mary, Robert Barclay (1779) sought the counsel of two prominent Edinburgh lawyers on the status of his daughter Margaret.  Was she legitimate given the family’s unusual circumstances and could she inherit the estate, given that the deed of entail of 1722 specified that the estate would pass down through the male line and the only male child of the marriage had died at birth?  The fascinating conclusion of both experts was that a contract of marriage would have been created and the children legitimised, if the couple had sex in Scotland after the deed had been signed.  However, that was unlikely as they were living apart at the time, in Aberdeen and Ury, respectively, and recommenced living together in Fritwell, which was in England.  Mary subsequently never returned to Scotland before her death. As will be seen, the issue would later become of academic interest only.

An increasing involvement with Kincardineshire

As has been noted earlier, Robert Barclay (1779) became progressively more involved in the affairs of his estate from about 1810.  He also became more integrated in the social life of the landed classes in the North East of Scotland.  In 1817 the press reported that “Colonel” Barclay (Robert’s appointment to the local militia in Kincardineshire after he left the regular army in 1809 was at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel) had been appointed as a steward for the following year in an Aberdeen organisation supporting public charities in the city.  “Charities favoured included the Infirmary, Poor’s Hospital, the Lunatic Hospital, the Lancastrian Institution, Mrs Duguid’s School, the Sick Man’s Friend Society, the Society for providing Clothes for the Destitute Poor and the School of Industry.  This was a remarkable departure for Robert Barclay (1797) who, up to that point in his life, had shown no concern for the plight of his fellow men.  In 1817 he also made a Christmas donation of 50 bolls of coal to the poor of Stonehaven.  A boll (derived from “bowl”) was a measure of dry or wet volume, 50 bolls being about 7,250 litres, or about 30 household wheely bins.  This kind gesture was repeated in subsequent years.  However, the scale of Robert’s philanthropy did not come near that exhibited by the London branches of the Barclay family who acted with great generosity over many years and several generations.

The Glenury Distillery

After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, an agricultural depression followed in Britain.  (Not surprisingly, Robert was a supporter of the Corn Laws.)  In an attempt to generate a new market for the barley produced on the Ury estate, Robert Barclay (1779) created the Glenury Distillery in 1822. It was situated within the estate on the banks of the Cowie, which was used as a source of both water and power.  Remarkably, it continued to operate on hydropower until 1965.   In 1835, Robert used his influence with William IV to get the accolade “Royal” added to its name.

The Royal Glenury Distillery

Margaret Barclay Allardice – a free spirit

Margaret Barclay Allardice initially went to live at Ury, following the death of her mother in 1820.  She proved to be a free spirit and spent most of her waking hours out of doors exploring the estate.  She always went barefoot.  Robert Barclay (1779) was a hopeless father and completely failed to establish boundaries in her life.  Margaret was subsequently sent to a school in Edinburgh but again refused to wear shoes.  The wider family then intervened and arranged for Margaret to spend part of the year with Charles Barclay at Bury Hill in Surrey, where there were two daughters of a similar age to Margaret.  The rest of the year would be spent with Hudson Gurney and his wife at Keswick Hall near Norwich.  The Gurneys had no children.  Perhaps surprisingly, Margaret preferred living with the Gurneys and spent most of her time there, still sans chaussures.  Margaret was clearly as bloody-minded as her father.  Eventually she gave up this act of determined independence and defiance of convention spontaneously.  She was intellectually very bright and had brilliant conversation and great descriptive powers.  Margaret was vivacious and very popular with the opposite sex.  It was expected that she would marry in London and a suitor was even lined up, but Margaret was not going to take the conventional route in life, which would have been typical of her wealthy London-based relatives.  She left England and returned to Ury in 1837.

The end of the fight game

Robert Barclay (1779) was not yet finished with sporting challenges and the fight game.  During 1818 he was involved in the training of several athletes, including Daniel Crisp, a pedestrian and two boxers, Bill Neal and George Cooper.  In 1821 Robert Barclay attended a fight between Tom Hickman and Bill Neat at Hungerford Down and another fight in 1823.  In the following year, 1824, he refereed a boxing match between Tom Spring and Jack Langham in Chichester and later the same year he refereed two pedestrian challenges.  In 1826 he refereed two pedestrian matches but his trips to the South of England were becoming less frequent.  Probably his last journey south for sporting purposes was in 1840 when he attended some boxing matches between aged champions.

However, the event which diverted Robert Barclay (1779) from the prize ring was a notorious fight held in 1830 between Sandy Mackay and Simon Byrne.  Sandy Mackay’s training took place at Ury under the guidance of Robert Barclay.  The contest was held near Hanslope a village close to the boundary between Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire.  Such remote locations close to county boundaries were used to minimise the chances of attracting the attention of the county police.  It was for a relatively low stake of £200 a side.  Byrne dominated the contest and subjected Mackay to a severe and progressive beating.  After 53 minutes he was felled by a punch to the throat.  A local doctor attended Mackay and bled him, which must have made his condition worse.  About a day later the unfortunate Scot expired.  The involvement of the police was now inevitable, and the upper-class attendees distanced themselves from the scene of Mackay’s death as fast as possible, not wishing to have their involvement in such base activities to be known.  Robert Barclay was one of them.  Simon Byrne was arrested, charged and found guilty of manslaughter.  Others involved in the contest were later tried but found not guilty, which must have caused a collective sigh of relief for those fight aficionados, including Robert Barclay, trying to dodge the fall-out from this brutal excess.  Robert was indeed lucky, given his direct involvement in the fight, to avoid formal action.  But the wider Barclay family was scandalised by these events, which were so offensive to the family’s good name and to Quaker precepts.  Robert Barclay (1779) was prevailed upon to quit the fight game for good.

Robert Barclay’s aggressive behaviour

During the ‘teen years of the 19^th century, hints started to show in Robert Barclay (1779)’s behaviour that he was becoming more irascible, quick to lose control and likely to act vindictively, or resort to violence.  There had been the incident during the fight with Edward Budd in 1812, when he lost his temper.  In September 1813 another, but more serious dispute arrived, almost out of thin air.  Robert was drinking and playing whist in Stonehaven with Archibald Farquharson and a Dutch refugee called Sturt.  Robert accused Sturt of cheating, which he denied, and Robert then struck him.  The dispute subsequently led to an exchange of letters and a duel was arranged.  Farquharson intervened on the side of Robert Barclay and the challenge to duel was then extended to him.  However, the intervention of the sheriff prevented pistols being fired.  

In 1823 Robert Barclay pursued a case against one of his own ploughmen for ill-treating a horse.  The ploughman was fined and lost his wages, which were returned to Robert Barclay.  This was a remarkable piece of hypocricy from a man who had delighted in seeing dogs tear pieces out of each other and who had derived pleasure from many bare-knuckle fights, where serious damage was done.

But more serious instances were to follow.  In 1828, John Robertson, a shoemaker from Baldcraigs near Stonehaven was convicted of an offence under the Game Laws.  The case was dealt with by the local Justices of the Peace, one of whom was Robert Barclay (1779).  Robertson suffered a fine of £20 (over £2,000 in 2018 money) a substantial sum which was clearly a serious burden on the man.  He threw himself on the mercy of the court and asked for leniency as he had aged parents to support.  However, Robert Barclay told John Robertson that he was not a fit person to receive leniency.  Barclay said had been told by another local magistrate, Mr Boswell, that not only was Robertson a poacher, he was also a thief and had stolen three beehives and some leather.  Boswell only partly corroborated Robert Barclay’s version, but in a wholly unsatisfactory, hearsay manner.  He could not speak of beehives, but he had been told by a respectable farmer, now dead, that Robertson had stolen some leather.  That Robert Barclay and his fellow justice could act on such flimsy, anecdotal evidence was scandalous but, sadly, not surprising for Robert Barclay’s deteriorating behaviour.

That was not the end of the matter.  The shoemaker was so incensed by this injustice that, despite his lowly status, he brought an action, to be tried by jury in Edinburgh, against Robert Barclay, JP, and John Boswell, JP, for calumny (the making of false and defamatory statements against someone).  The Lord Chief Commissioner, who heard the case in April 1828, gave strong guidance to the jury in favour of the defendants since magistrates, acting in a judicial capacity, could not be guilty of calumny unless malice was shown, and in this case, in his opinion, there was none.  But the jury ignored Lord Adam’s guidance, found the defendants guilty and awarded the pursuer £200 in damages!  A fundamental pillar of the legal system was now under threat.  In June 1829, the defendants appealed the verdict and lost again.  Damages were assessed at £200 jointly and £125 each.  But the powers that be did not rest.  Robert Barclay and John Boswell appealed to the House of Lords.  Their ruling was that malice had to be proved for the verdict to stand and sent the case back for trial before a new jury, which this time found for the defendants.  Robert Barclay and John Boswell then pursued shoemaker John Robertson for their costs.  Robertson mounted a counter-action for all his legal expenses, except those of the last trial.  Barclay and Boswell prevailed and the little man, who had dared to challenge these superior beings in Stonehaven society, was finally crushed.

There was a general election at the end of 1833, following the Great Reform Act of the previous year, which enfranchised many owners or occupiers of land.  Thus, this election generated a great level of interest and excitement amongst the general population.  Robert Barclay and some friends were drinking together in a room at the Mill Inn, Stonehaven, when a crowd of radicals gathered outside and started agitating.  One of Barclay’s party went out to disperse them but was repelled.  This action by the crowd incensed Robert Barclay who went out with his lead-filled walking stick and laid into the trouble-makers, who were forced to withdraw. 

In 1837, Robert Barclay Allardice (1779) was charged with having assaulted Thomas Ryder, a music hall comedian, with a whip or switch at the Royal Hotel, Aberdeen in January.  Ryder, who had been performing at the theatre in Aberdeen the same evening, admitted mild verbal provocation but felt it did not justify Barclay’s assault.  Robert Barclay was fined 20gns, which Ryder distributed to the poor of Aberdeen.  It is to be wondered if the years of drinking had been taking their toll on Robert’s behaviour.

A revolution in cattle farming

    

The breeding, feeding and selling of cattle in Scotland underwent a considerable revolution during the period from the late 18^th century to about 1850.  Before this time, Scottish cattle were of a variety of types, only loosely recognisable as breeds, which were driven, often for hundreds of miles, to market in a lean condition.  The drove took place in late summer or early autumn.  Cattle were then fattened either in the central lowlands or further south before finally being sold in fat condition in the markets of the large cities, mostly in England.  The first big change was the introduction of turnip cultivation which could be used for winter feeding of cattle in the upper parts of Scotland.  Thus, some fat cattle were available for slaughter during the winter in these regions where previously beef had been effectively unobtainable at such times.  But most cattle still needed to be driven to market in a lean condition.  Extensive winter feeding of cattle and the sale such fat cattle in the ultimate markets of the big cities could not happen until firstly, the advent of steam ships in the 1820s and secondly and more importantly, the development of the railway network by about 1850.  The need for droving then progressively withered away.

Robert Barclay (1732), the great improver of the Ury estate, was the first farmer north of the Forth to grow turnips in bulk in a field, sometime between 1760 and 1797.  Such field planting had been made possible by the invention of the seed drill by Jethro Tull about 1711, but this implement was not widely used until much later.

Local breeds of cattle which were roughly recognisable in the North East of Scotland in the early 19^th century were Fife, Angus, Aberdeen and Galloway (all naturally polled), Horned Aberdeen and West Highland.  These cattle were not well defined as separate breeds and systematic selection by breeders for particular characteristics had not yet taken place.  Hugh Watson of Keillor in Angus, who became a friend of Robert Barclay (1779), was the first great developer of the Aberdeen Angus breed – see “Hugh Watson (1787 – 1865), the first great improver of polled Angus cattle” on this blogsite.  Hugh Watson started his selective breeding work about 1810. 

The first breed of cattle specifically developed as a beef animal in Britain was the Shorthorn, though initially they were often called “Durham” cattle.  Much of the development work on these cattle took place in County Durham in the North-East of England in the late 18^th century, especially on the farm of Charles and Robert Colling.  One of the earliest references to Shorthorns in Scotland was of a Mr Udny of Udny, Aberdeenshire, who had “an English bull, shorthorned” in 1779.  General Simpson of Pitcorthie, Fife was one of the earliest, possibly the first, Scottish Shorthorn breeders.  He hired bulls from Charles Colling in 1789 and 1791 and purchased a cow in 1806.  William Robertson of Berwick on Tweed imported Shorthorns from Durham about 1790 but it was not until the ‘teens that Shorthorns were widely kept in the Scottish Borders.  By the mid-1820s they were also well established in Aberdeenshire.

Robert Barclay and Shorthorn cattle 

After 1810, Robert Barclay (1779) started to take a closer interest in the management of the Ury estate and this interest intensified following the death of his wife, Mary Dalgarno, in 1820.  The first record of Robert entering cattle at an agricultural show was at Smithymoor, Stonehaven in 1816, when he won a prize for the third best cow and for the best two-year-old quey (heifer).  The reports did not indicate what breed of cattle was involved, perhaps indicating the general insignificance of “breed” in Kincardineshire at that time.  Two years later Robert won a 5gn prize at the same show for the second-best bull, again of no named breed.  About this time Robert was known to have travelled to the Highlands to buy store cattle (beef animals which required fattening), often accompanied by his tenant, the athletic George Mollison.  These cattle were most likely to have been either one of the polled types, or West Highlands.

Robert Barclay (1779) started a herd of Shorthorn cattle in 1822.  It is not clear what decided him to take on this relatively new breed, though it is quite likely to have been influenced by a number of friends he had made in the local agricultural community.  Of these four were particularly important.  Deacon Williamson (“Deacon” probably indicating his status within the Aberdeen Incorporated Trades) was a prominent Aberdeen butcher, William Weatherall was an English auctioneer, Jonas Webb was another English cattle man and Hugh Watson, who was a successful cattle and sheep breeder in Forfarshire.  The cattle with which Robert Barclay started his herd were obtained from Earl Spencer and Mr Mason.  Later, in 1827, he obtained other animals from John Rennie, of Phantassie, Prestonkirk, East Lothian and in 1829 he bought two cows, one the famous Lady Sarah, from Mr Mason.

Shorthorn Bull

The Ury Shorthorn herd soon became productive and a sale of animals was held in 1827.  It took place, by public roup, on 24 April.  Twenty-one yearling bulls were on offer, but they appeared not to be pure Shorthorns but a variety of crosses.  Their parentage, as far as could be ascertained, was as follows.  

Nos. 1-9 were crosses between the Shorthorn bull “Commander”, who had been bought from Mr Champion of Blyth, Nottinghamshire and Aberdeenshire polled cows. 

No. 10 was described as a Herefordshire bull.

No. 11 appeared to be a Shorthorn bull. 

Nos. 12 – 15, the parentage was unclear, apart from having a Shorthorn sire, but likely had Aberdeenshire dams.

This was not the last time that the parentage of Robert Barclay (1779)’s animals would be unclear.  Record-keeping was not his strong point.  He probably held annual sales of cattle after 1827 but details of every sale have not been uncovered.  Certainly, another sale of “Shorthorns” was held in 1829 and his friend Hugh Watson was present.

The Ury Shorthorns progressively gained status as indicated by prices realised at auction and prizes awarded in the show ring.  At the 1834 Highland and Agricultural show held in Aberdeen, Robert Barclay was awarded prizes for the second-best Shorthorn bull, the best Shorthorn cow, the best Shorthorn heifer and the best young Shorthorn heifer.  At the 1835 sale of Ury Shorthorns high prices were realised, including the “extraordinary” sum of £360 (over £44,000 in 2018 money) for eleven bull calves from four to seven months old at their dam’s foot.   The produce of one cow having twins was £53 (about £6,500 in 2018 money).

Robert Barclay (1779), like many other cattle farmers at the time, was involved in extensive hybridisation between breeds.  The reason was that the first-generation hybrids showed what would later be called hybrid vigour, that is, the animals were bigger and grew faster than either parent.  Many farmers made the mistake of continuing hybridisation beyond the first generation, creating herds of very mixed appearance.  It is suspected that a degree of hybridisation occurred in the generation of some of the pedigree breeds, such as the Aberdeen Angus, but an initial hybridisation was then followed by back-crossing to one of the parental breeds.  In the case of the Aberdeen Angus, Hugh Watson appears to have incorporated genetic material from the naturally-polled Galloway breed. 

Robert Barclay “was not considered by experts to be more than an ordinary good judge of beasts”.  At the end of Robert Barclay’s book on his travels in America in 1842 (see below) he summarised his approach to cattle breeding for the benefit of American farmers. He emphasised the importance of breed selection, breed purity and avoiding admixture with other breeds.  “He (the American farmer) should shun breeding from crosses.”  Robert also pointed out the disadvantage of “breeding long” in families (ie inbreeding) which could be obviated by occasional exchanges of animals with neighbours.  It seems unlikely that Robert could have reached these, for the time, insightful conclusions from his own breeding experience.  It is much more likely that he had picked up such views from the real masters of the profession, Hugh Watson of Keillor or William McCombie of Tillyfour, more likely the former.  Robert Barclay leaned heavily on his knowledgeable agricultural friends for advice.  In contrast with Watson and McCombie, who were cattle breeders and feeders of true stature, Robert Barclay never came to terms with the hard economics of cattle production and despite his prizes and headline prices, he did not appear to have become rich through cattle farming.  For example, in 1826, he imported hay and cattle cake from Holland by sea at a cost of one shilling a stone, a price far too high for economic production. In 1838 Robert Barclay (1779)’s Shorthorn herd was sold off.  The estate’s precarious finances had probably caught up with the Laird again and the disposal of his cattle was perhaps the quickest way for him to raise cash.  The total realised was about £3,000 (about £320,000 in 2018 money).

   

The dispersal might have been expected to be a sad event for Robert Barclay but, if so, it did not prevent him enjoying the occasion.  After the sale a grand dinner was held in his honour in a large granary attached to the Glenury Distillery on the Ury estate.  “By crossing the shorthorn or Durham breed with the breed of the country he had greatly improved upon both and by his annual sales at Ury he had widely disseminated a most splendid herd of cattle.”  So said John Carnegie of Redhall, the chairman.  Margaret Barclay Allardice, Robert Barclay’s vivacious 22-year-old daughter was also present for part of the evening and she caught the eye of local big-wig, Lord Arbuthnot.  As was usual at these events, there were many toasts and the 250 guests must have been thoroughly inebriated by the time that their coaches were called.

Robert Barclay (1779) also spoke at the dinner.  “Whatever breed you make up your mind to have you should without any regard to expense get the very best blood that can be found and in the long run you will be remunerated.  I once placed an order in Mr Mason’s hands and there was no man such a real judge as he was to purchase the very best and he bought a heifer for 150gns.  My friends thought I was fitter to be put in a lunatic asylum than to be a breeder of Shorthorns, but the result showed that I was right.”  This philosophy of always buying the best had probably been picked up from one of his landed neighbours for whom cattle keeping was as much for prestige as for making money.  Success for them was measured by awards in the showring rather than money in the bank.  It was breeders and feeders, such as Hugh Watson, who brought hard economics into their calculations. 

The heifer to which Robert Barclay was referring became the famous cow “Lady Sarah”.  She was withdrawn from the 1838 sale at a price of 40gns, probably because she had been bought privately by Hugh Watson, who was an excellent judge of cattle.  Even though Lady Sarah was then 13 years old, Watson knew she still had some good reproductive years ahead of her.  Lady Sarah was the dam of Robert Barclay’s two famous bulls, “Mahomed” and “Monarch”.  “Mahomed” was sold for £70 to Sir Francis McKenzie in 1836. 

Soon after the dispersal of his Shorthorn herd in 1838, Robert Barclay (1779) constructed a new herd of this breed.  Ten cows and heifers were bought from the Hon. JB Simpson’s herd at Babworth in Nottinghamshire and more heifers were obtained by Robert’s friend, the auctioneer, Mr Weatherall at Mr Burrow’s sale at Carleton Hall near Carlisle.  “Mahomed” was now brought back to Ury to make his proven contribution to the new herd.  Annual sales of cattle had been reinstated at Ury by 1840, when eleven pure bred Shorthorn calves, 18 yearling cross-heifers and 21 cross-steers (Shorthorn bull – “Argyllshire cows”, probably his name for West Highlands), five fat Shorthorn heifers and two half-bred Shorthorn steers were offered for sale.  But the plans for reconstructing the Ury Shorthorn herd were disrupted in a most unexpected way.

Margaret Barclay Allardice marries beneath her station

Robert Barclay’s daughter, Margaret, was extremely personable and vivacious.  After her return to Ury, Robert must have expected her to find a life partner from amongst the gentry in the North East of Scotland and in 1840 at the age of 24 she was clearly eligible.  It must have come as an awful shock to Robert when, one day, he chanced upon Margaret in Stonehaven talking enthusiastically to Samuel Ritchie, the 27-year-old recruiting sergeant from his old regiment.  This was not a relationship he wanted for his daughter and heir.  He spoke brusquely to Samuel, who responded in a jubilant and even an arrogant way by putting his arm around the precious Margaret and announcing that they were to be married.  This was not a joke as Margaret confirmed.  The relationship must have been progressing for some time under Robert’s nose, but out of his sight.  Robert Barclay (1779) responded with hostility and the couple must have quickly realised that he would not be won round to accepting the relationship.  They promptly eloped to London and were married at St Mary’s church, Kensington on 2 April 1840.

Soon after their marriage, Samuel Ritchie and his new wife Margaret left for Canada and their first child, Robert, was born in Hamilton, Ontario in May 1841.  It appeared that they had plans to become farmers.  The froideur between Margaret and her father must have dissipated to some extent within a few months because she wrote to him in November 1840 to seek his opinion on where the couple should buy land, Canada or the United States?  According to Peter Radford, this caused Robert Barclay (1779) to suspend his plans for rebuilding his Shorthorn herd, install managers to oversee the estate and put the Glenury Distillery on the market (it did not sell) and plan to sail for Canada to see his daughter and give her the requested advice.  However, the rebuilding of the herd was clearly already underway because in September 1840 there was a substantial sale of “pure bred Shorthorn bulls, half-bred heifers and steers and pure-bred Leicester sheep” at Ury.  About this time Robert Barclay is known to have had “a herd of 40 West Highland heifers at Ury and crossed them with Shorthorn bulls”.

An agricultural tour in the United States and Canada

  

Robert Barclay (1779) sailed on the steamer Britannia from Liverpool in April 1841, bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia, which was reached in early May.  After a brief stay to disembark passengers the ship steamed on to Boston.  Robert then travelled to New York, visiting several Barclay relatives along the way.  Just as his own father had toured Great Britain to observe agricultural practises, Robert Barclay (1779)’s American peregrinations seem to have been a kind of agricultural tourism, built around his stated purpose of advising his daughter “and her husband” on where she should buy agricultural land.  He visited Margaret in Hamilton just after the birth of her first child, her father staying for the period 28 May – 6 June.  The baby was baptised “Robert” during Captain Barclay’s visit but the baby’s father, Samuel Ritchie was apparently absent from the ceremony. Robert Barclay found Canada to be a poor prospect for agriculture, due to a lack of cleared land of good quality, a lack of commercial infrastructure, a lack of population and a lack of markets, all in marked contrast with the United States.  Robert had no hesitation in pronouncing for the latter.  He returned to Liverpool from Boston on 17 July 1841, again on the Britannia.  Following his visit, he wrote a book, “An Agricultural Tour of the United States and Canada”, essentially a diary of his travels.  In this book Samuel Ritchie is referred to only once and then not by name.  Probably, he had not been forgiven for eloping with Margaret. 

Robert Barclay (1779)’s behaviour was somewhat enigmatic concerning religion.  He was brought up in a Quaker household but seems not to have been attached to the Quaker religious philosophy during his life.  While he was in America in 1841 he visited many Quakers, both relatives and non-relatives but attended Episcopal churches (American churches belonging to the Anglican Communion) for Sunday worship during his journey.  Yet, when he died he was buried in the Ury burial ground, where his Quaker ancestors were interred.

While in America in 1841, Robert Barclay purposely visited Virginia to inquire into the condition of slaves.  Some of his relatives had been slave owners but had an honourable record in freeing slaves and educating them for independent employment.  Robert’s own observations led him to conclude that the conditions of life under which many slaves existed in Virginia were superior to the conditions endured by industrial workers in Britain.  However, he did not view this observation as justifying slavery.  “It (slavery) is a debasement of human nature, admitting of no redeeming quality…”.  Robert Barclay supported the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Margaret and her husband Samuel Ritchie went on to have a family of four children, Robert, born 1841 in Hamilton, Ontario, Mary Hay, born 1842, Old Machar, Aberdeen and Samuel Frederick born 1843, also Old Machar.  Samuel Ritchie died suddenly in 1845 at Cambusnethan, North Lanarkshire and his final child, David Stuart Barclay, was born at Bellfield Villa, Duddingston, near Edinburgh after his death.  Clearly, Margaret and Samuel had not taken the advice of Margaret’s father to buy land in the United States but had returned to Great Britain.  Samuel Ritchie was buried in his home town of Aberdeen.

More foreign travel

The visit to North America seemed to give Robert Barclay (1799) a taste for foreign travel and about 1842 he made a journey to Paris and Rome, where he met the Scottish sculptor, Lawrence Macdonald.  He had trained as a stonemason but had such aptitude that he graduated to portraiture in stone.  He went to Rome in 1822 to study and was a founder member of the British Academy of Arts in Rome.  Lawrence was commissioned to produce a life size representation of Barclay as Hercules, a figure from Greek and Roman mythology famed for his strength.  The figure was naked, except for a lion’s skin across the shoulders, and carried a club.  It was shipped back to Ury and stood in the entrance hall of the house to greet visitors with Robert’s narcissistic view of himself as a supreme and virile athlete.  Another expression of Robert’s self-regard was an engraved portrait of himself with various Barclay symbols included.  A walking stick which had probably belonged to the Apologist, Ury House, the Quaker meeting house and some cattle were visible.  Strange, perhaps, that there was no symbol relating to pedestrianism, his enduring claim to fame.  Copies of this work were endorsed by Robert and given to contacts.

Engraving of Robert Barclay-Allardice with cane

Rebuilding of the Shorthorn herd

After the return of Robert Barclay to Ury in 1841, following his trip to America, he began to rebuild his herd of Shorthorns again.  He hired in a bull called the “Duke of Northumberland” from Mr Bates.  This animal apparently had two unfortunate characteristics, bad hair and a bad temper! By 1844 Robert Barclay (1779) was again active in the show ring.  The first show of the Aberdeen, Banff and Kincardine Agricultural Society was initiated by Robert Barclay and Mr Boswell of Kingussie, “both universally known as holding rank with the most intelligent and spirited agriculturalists of the day”, according to the Aberdeen Journal.  It was held in August and Robert Barclay was successful with his Shorthorns, coming first in the “bulls of any age” and one-year old heifers” categories and 3= in “cows of any age”.  A celebratory dinner, of course, followed at which the band of the 92^nd Regiment played, and the whisky punch was judged to be “excellent”.

September 1844 also saw the annual Ury sale of cattle and sheep reintroduced.  On offer were eleven pure-bred Shorthorn bull calves, two pure-bred Alderney yearling bulls (an innovation for Robert Barclay), 21 polled Angus cows, 19 of them rising four years and “bulled by “Pacha” and “Turk”” (breed not known but possibly Shorthorns), four yearling half-bred steers and various Leicester sheep.  In the following two years (1845 and 1846) similar Ury sales were held.

According to some sources, Robert Barclay (1779) held his final sale of Shorthorns and other cattle in 1847, which raised £2825 (about £314,000 in 2018 money).  It was clear by this time that Robert’s herd was not attracting the nationwide interest that had been evident in former years, the majority of buyers being from the North East of Scotland.  However, this sale certainly did not mark the end of Shorthorn, or other cattle breeds, at Ury.  In September 1848, the Aberdeen Journal reported the annual sale of cattle and sheep at Ury.  The stock consisted of eight 2-year-old Angus heifers, “bulled by a pure Hereford”.  Thirty-six 3-year-old West Highland heifers, “bulled partly by a pure Hereford and partly by a pure Shorthorn”, “fit for butcher or to be kept on for breeding”, one pure-bred Shorthorn bull calf, six half-bred six-quarter-old steers and nine half-bred six-quarter-old heifers.  A variety of pure bred Southdowns and Leicesters was also on offer.  This hotch-potch of cattle seems to indicate that by this year there was no longer much of a plan in place for cattle production at Ury.  This jumbled pattern was repeated at further sales at Ury in the month of September from 1849 to 1853 inclusive.

The true disposal of the Robert Barclay (1779)’s herd of Shorthorns did not occur until the Ury displenish sale, which occurred in September 1854, after his death.  The Stonehaven Journal detailed the stock on offer.  Thirty-nine superior breeding Durham (ie Shorthorn) cows from 2- to 6-year-old.  Thirty-six calves got by a pure Shorthorn bull.  Fourteen well-bred 1-year-old heifers.  Twenty-one well-bred steers.  Seven 2-year-old heifers in fine condition.  Two pure-bred Shorthorn bulls, one 2-year-old, one 5-year-old.  Various Leicester sheep and Leicester-Southdown and Leicester-Cheviot crosses.  It appears that the auctioneer was unsure of the breed origins of many of the animals, which is not surprising as record-keeping was not Robert Barclay’s forte.

Sheep-breeding at Ury

Robert Barclay (1779) was not just a breeder and feeder of cattle.  He also kept sheep, which was not surprising since some of the Ury acreage was hill land.  The first sale of Ury-bred ovines during Robert’s time as Laird occurred as early as 1803.  On sale were “400 to 500 fat wedders (castrated male sheep) being fed on hay and turnips” and “300 ewes with their lambs”.  There was no mention of the breed to which these animals belonged.  Robert Barclay later said that he introduced the Leicester breed to Ury about 1822 concurrently with Durham (ie Shorthorn) cattle.  He crossed his Leicester sheep with local animals (possibly Black-faced sheep).  His friend and advisor, Hugh Watson had been keeping Southdowns since 1813 and he subsequently experimented with crossing them with Blackface, Cheviot and Leicester sheep.  For the conditions on his farm with land between 500ft and 1200ft above sea level “with moderate green sword and the rest whin and heather” he found that the Leicester tup – Southdown cross was superior to any other in producing the best combination of meat and fleece in the lambs.  The exact year in which he started to keep Leicester tups was unclear.  The pattern was certainly established by 1834 but may have been introduced much earlier.  On the other hand, it was not until 1848 that Robert Barclay was definitely known to have been crossing Leicester and Southdown sheep and it is highly likely that he introduced this combination following the experimentation of Hugh Watson.  Interestingly, the Aberdeen Free Press commented that Robert Barclay “tried the different breeds of sheep too but never attained conspicuous success as a flockmaster”.  At least Robert’s celebrity brought recognition of another kind, when his endorsement was included in advertisements for Thomas Bigg, Chemist’s sheep dipping composition in 1844.

The “Defiance” coach

Robert Barclay (1779) had been a skilled horse rider all his adult life, through his obsession with fox hunting.  Frequent travel by coach on the road between London and Stonehaven was a regular feature of his existence.  Robert was also a skilled coach driver and demonstrated this ability on several occasions by taking the reins of the coach on which he was travelling.  In 1809 he drove the mail coach on every stage of the journey from London to Dundee, over 400 miles, demonstrating both his coachmanship and his athletic stamina.  It was more usual for a single driver to undertake only 40 or so miles in a stint.  A few years later Robert Barclay got to know Charles Appersley, a Welsh sportswriter who used the pseudonym “Nimrod” and who was an expert on coaching.  Robert also talked with other coaching experts over the years.  One of them was Joe Walton, who drove the Cambridge to London coach.  Occasionally, Robert Barclay would take over the reins from Joe and received advice on technique from him.

Mail coaches were not constructed with comfort in mind, though they usually had accommodation for a few passengers.  Progressively, in the early 19^th century, more passenger coach services were introduced on the main routes between the larger towns and cities, offering faster speeds and a more tolerable ride than the vehicles conveying the mail.  It was not until 1826 that it was possible to travel from Aberdeen to Edinburgh by coach in a single day by the “Union” coach, which crossed the Tay by ferry at Dundee and the Forth at Queensferry.  But at the end of 1826 or early in 1827 Robert Barclay (1779) and his friend Hugh Watson discussed the possibility of introducing a faster and more comfortable coach service between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, taking the route from Montrose to Queensferry through Forfar, Coupar Angus and Perth, so cutting out one ferry crossing.

The “Defiance” coach service first ran on 1 July 1829 with two coaches, one travelling from Edinburgh northwards to Aberdeen and the other taking the reverse journey.  The distance was 134 miles and the service ran every day, except Sunday.  A syndicate of backers, including James Scott of Edinburgh, Mr Ramsay of Barnton, Lord Glenlyon, Hugh Watson and Robert Barclay, financed the introduction of the service, with Captain Barclay being the “chief promoter”, according to the Aberdeen Free Press.  Robert Barclay (1779) drove the “Defiance” on its first journey south, his public profile adding to the publicity that the occasion attracted.    In the afternoon of the day of inauguration, several of the “Defiance’s” proprietors dined together at Rose’s inn.  William Maule, by now MP for Forfarshire presided and Hugh Watson fulfilled the role of croupier and the health of Captain Barclay, the principal mover in the project, was toasted. The coach could carry 15 passengers, two drivers (coachmen) and a guard.  Great attention was paid to punctuality and the journey was regularly completed in 14 hours 22 minutes at an average speed of 14.3mph.  The coaches were specially commissioned and painted in gaudy colours, with a blue body and red and yellow wheels.  Inside the coaches were fitted out luxuriously.  They weighed 15cwt, 5cwt less than the mail coach and could consequently travel faster.  The horses were carefully matched, well turned out and changed approximately every ten miles.  Each proprietor in the syndicate horsed the coach for one or more stages.  It was not surprising that crowds came out to watch the passing of this grand new conveyance, which gained a notable reputation throughout the North East of Scotland.  Notices of farms for sale would advert to the nearness of the property to the route of the “Defiance”, “frequently driven by Mr Barclay of Ury”. 

The coaching staff wore red jackets with yellow collars, grey breeches and top hats.  They were noted characters, full of conversation and some were talented players of the cornet or bugle, used to announce the coach’s passing or arrival.  One such coachman was David Troup, who drove the “Defiance” between Aberdeen and Coupar Angus.  He was less than happy when he had to give way to Captain Barclay joining him on the box and taking the reins.  Because of the Captain’s constant chatter, which Troup felt distracted the horses, he was reputed to have upbraided Barclay with “Gie’s mair o’ yer fup (whip) an’ less o’ yer claver (gossip), Captain”.  Another noted coachman was Charles Cook, who was familiar with George Gordon, 9^th Marquis of Huntly, a regular user of the “Defiance”.  Huntly was so impressed by Cook that, in 1848, he recruited Cook as the landlord of his Huntly Arms Inn at Aboyne.

In 1835, on the sixth anniversary of the introduction of the “Defiance” some of the grateful users of the service, “some of the nobility and gentry of Perth, Forfar, Kincardine and Aberdeen shires” organised by Lord Kintore, presented Robert Barclay and Hugh Watson each with a silver bowl.  The presentation took place at Forfar.  Robert Barclay’s bowl was inscribed, “Presented by a few well-wishers this first day of July 1835 to Robert Barclay-Allardice Esq of Ury as a mark of public approbation for his splendid exertions in having along with his Partner established between Edinburgh and Aberdeen the Best, Safest and Fastest Public Conveyance of the day, The Defiance Coach”.  The guards were presented with handsome Kent bugles and the coachmen received whips.

Many anecdotes survive from the days of the “Defiance” coach.  Robert Barclay (1779) enjoyed the experience of driving the coach but entertained some concerns about the propriety of the claimant to the Earldom of Monteith and Airth undertaking such a role.  The Duke of Gordon put his mind at ease with some light-hearted banter.  “Why, there is not much difference between an earl and a marquess and as the Marquess of - - drives the Brighton Defiance, I see no reason why you may not drive the Edinburgh Defiance.  At all events, if you should think it infra dig (abbreviation for infra dignitatum – demeaning) to be the coachman you may undoubtedly be the guard.”

 

On another occasion when Robert Barclay held the reins, in the company of David Troup, the Captain was having some difficulty with the off-wheel horse which was refusing to answer to the whip and narrowly missed a post at a tollbar.  “Close shaving that!”, said Barclay.  “Close shavin’, and what the deil’s the use o’ close shavin’ when the gateway’s gude twanty feet wide!” replied his critical companion.

Reputedly, Captain Barclay had only overturned the coach on one occasion, apparently a right of passage for a professional coachman.  Robert made light of the event.  “She fell as easy as though she had fallen on a feather bed; and looking out for a soft place I alighted comfortably on my feet.”

On one occasion a passenger mistook Robert Barclay, who was driving, for a common coachman and, taking offence at one of his remarks, told him that if he was on the ground he would hit him on the head, “even if he were the great Captain Barclay”.  Barclay remained patient until the next change of horses when he confronted the superior passenger.  “Now sir I am the great Captain Barclay himself ready to receive your thump on the head.”  No blow was delivered.

Despite its fame, the “Defiance” service was never going to make serious money for its backers.  It was a service for the upper classes, prepared to pay a premium for a faster and more comfortable journey along the road from Edinburgh to Aberdeen and thus its customer base was restricted.  Further, there were significant additional operating costs associated with high speeds in lightweight coaches over rough roads, and costs associated with retaining enough quality horses to furnish a change every ten miles.  Another surviving anecdote, again involving coachman David Troup, touches upon this point.  “Does your coach pay you, Barclay?”, Robert was asked by a friend while travelling on the coach.  “I believe it does indeed”, was Barclay’s rather tentative reply, as he patted his thigh.  “I have been today at the settling and see what a heap of banknotes is in my pocket!”  David Troup then interjected, “Ye’ll no believe him, it’s a horse-boot the Captain has gotten in his pocket.”

As early as 1838 there were rumours that the “Defiance” service from Aberdeen to Edinburgh would be terminated but that was denied by Barclay and Watson, at least until a Royal Mail coach was available to take over the route.  It appears that Hugh Watson had independently introduced a passenger service between Perth and Dundee.  In 1837 the Perthshire Advertiser noted, “Many of us remember when the whole intercourse between Perth and Dundee was carried out by Hugh Watson’s caravan, which went some days empty and some days with a couple of passengers.”  Clearly, this service too was struggling to attract sufficient passengers.

 

But there was another threat on the horizon in the form a disruptive new technology, the steam train running on iron rails, which could carry numerous passengers, as well as farm animals and bulk freight.  Both Hugh Watson and Robert Barclay exited the syndicate running the “Defiance” before its demise.  Robert Barclay had left on his departure for America in 1841 and Hugh Watson stood down sometime before 1845.  Hugh Watson, being a very astute businessman, then made a substantial new career for himself as a director of railway companies in the period 1845 – 1862 (see “Hugh Watson (1787 – 1865), the first great improver of polled Angus cattle” on this blogsite). Robert Barclay, perhaps under the guidance of his friend Hugh Watson, joined the Committee of Management of the East Coast of Scotland Junction Railway but he did not progress further in railway development and management. Ironically, in 1818, two banking relatives of Robert Barclay, Robert Barclay (1785) and Samuel Gurney, had been founding investors in the Stockton to Darlington railway, the first steam railway in the world, which had initiated this transport revolution.

The railway was steadily advancing towards Aberdeen and reached the city in 1850.  From the first day of November 1849, passengers could join a train going south at Stonehaven station, just 18 miles from Aberdeen.  The “Defiance” coach finally ceased operating in the last week of October 1849.  Immediately before its demise it was only operating over the shortened route between Aberdeen and Montrose.  Robert Barclay (1779) at the age of 70 drove the last journey from Montrose to Aberdeen, just as he had driven the first “Defiance” coach to leave Aberdeen, a little over 20 years previously.  It was the end of the famous “Defiance” coach service and almost the end of Robert Barclay (1779)’s active life.

The Earldoms of Airth and Monteith 

  

On 8 October 1662, the Laird of Allardice married Lady Marie Graham, the granddaughter and heir of the Earldoms of Strathearn, Airth and Monteith.  Robert Barclay (1732), the father of Captain Barclay, married Sarah Anne Allardice in 1776 and thus inherited the Allardice name and estate.  This established a link by succession between Robert Barclay (1779), back for 17 generations through Lady Marie Graham, to Robert II, King of Scotland, who reigned between 1371 and his death in 1390.  Proving this link and establishing entitlement to the Earldoms of Strathearn, Airth and Monteith, although not an issue for his Quaker forebears who eschewed public recognition, became an obsession (and an expensive one at that) for Robert Barclay (1779), for his legitimised daughter, Margaret Barclay Allardice (1816) and for her son, Robert Barclay Allardice (1841).

The Morning Chronicle reported in 1809 that Robert Barclay (1779) had established his right to the peerage by service through a jury in Scotland, though he still had to lay his claim before the House of Lords.  The issue lay dormant until 1833 when his mother died, and this opened the possibility of Robert petitioning King George IV, whom he had known well in his days as a member of the Fancy, to take the title of Earl of Airth and Monteith.  The King referred the matter to the House of Lords.  This was a costly process, requiring expensive legal advice and representation.  It was a time when the Ury estate was heavily indebted, but Robert (1779) pressed on regardless in his obsessive pursuit of the title.  The matter was laid upon the table of the House of Lords in 1837 and in 1839 the Committee for Privileges met to consider Robert’s claim.  Its conclusion was that further evidence was needed.  A claim from a third party to the same title had also been entered.  Robert’s legal representative applied for a postponement of the case to the next session.  Robert Barclay (1779) then gave up his quest.

In 1870, Margaret Barclay-Allardice revived the claim to the Earldom of Airth and Monteith, by presenting a petition to the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords.  She sought to establish that the contract between her mother and father signed in 1817 was a marriage contract.  The matter again ran into the sand and there was no further action until 1895 when Margaret’s son, Robert Barclay Allardice (1841) wrote to the Dundee Advertiser concerning his mother’s claim.  Margaret died in 1903 and the following year her son, Robert (1841) again revived the Earldom claim.  However, his case was challenged by another claimant, Robert Bontine Cunningham Grahame.  The matter was never resolved, and this line of the Barclays remained unennobled.

Robert Barclay (1779)’s exotic reproductive life

Robert Barclay (1779) only married once, and then reluctantly, to Mary Dalgarno.  The couple’s first child, Margaret, was born out of wedlock in 1816 but she was legitimised by the subsequent marriage of her parents.  This took place in 1819, shortly before the birth of their second child, Mary.  A third child, a boy, was born in 1820 but both mother and baby died shortly after birth.  In the 19^th century legitimacy was an important legal concept for a child, since it conferred the right to take the father’s name and to share in his estate.  Illegitimacy, conception and birth outside marriage, conferred no such rights.  For this reason, all the children born to Robert Barclay and Mary Dalgarno received the surname “Barclay Allardice” and potentially would have shared in his estate.  Sadly, both the daughter Mary and the unnamed son predeceased Robert, as did their mother.

At least two and probably three other illegitimate children were fathered by Robert Barclay Allardice (1779).  Two were certainly accepted by him as his children but only granted the surname “Barclay”.  There may have been other such children, which have not so far come to light, especially from the period between 1800 and 1814 when Robert Barclay (1779) consorted with some of the sleazy denizens of London, as a leading member of the Fancy.

Sometime about 1834, Robert Barclay (1879) began a relationship with a local woman, called Helen Shepherd.  Little is known about her but in December of that year she bore a child at Dunnottar, just south of Stonehaven, who was given the name “Robert Barclay”.  He was indentured as an apprentice in the Merchant Navy in 1851, rising to the rank of Master by 1859. This Robert Barclay appeared to operate in the coastal trade, because he was never away from home for long.  Helen Shepherd married Archibald Scott, a local farmer at Boggartyhead, Stonehaven, in 1838 after her presumed affair with Robert Barclay had ended.  Helen’s son Robert often used to stay at Boggartyhead when he was ashore.  Before 1891 Robert Barclay (1834) was appointed Harbourmaster at Stonehaven. At his death registration in 1896 Robert’s father was recorded as “Robert Barclay landed proprietor (Reputed father)”.  Robert Barclay (1834) married in 1861 and had a family of three, all of whom married in turn.  It is possible that some direct descendants of Robert Barclay (1779)’s presumed relationship with Helen Shepherd are still extant.

Another extra-marital relationship, this time between Robert Barclay (1779) and a woman called Ann Angus was pursued throughout much of the 1840s.  Ann was a Catholic and an alcoholic.  The couple was known to have had two male children, yet another Robert Barclay, born in 1843 and David Stuart Barclay who appeared in 1849.  This Robert was a farm labourer who did not marry.  David Stuart Barclay had a career as a police officer, married and had at least one son.

The fate of the Ury estate and the end of an era

In 1834, Robert Barclay (1779) raised a loan of £70,000 on the security of the Ury estate and the following year he took on a further £10,000 of debt.  By the year 1844, the Ury estate was still heavily indebted and Robert Barclay (1779) signed a trust disposition and conveyance giving power to his trustees (William Stewart Esquire of Canaveron, Banker in Stonehaven, John Blaikie Esquire in Aberdeen and one other, thought to be his main creditors) to sell his heritable estate. In 1849 part of the lands of Findlaystone were sold under this legal instrument to Robert William Rickard Hepburn. In 1848 Lydia Ann Barclay, the daughter of Robert Barclay (1758) of the banking branch of the family, visited Ury and reported that the Laird was thinking of selling the estate, presumably to settle debts. 

The estate was offered for sale by private contract in the same year.  It was described in newspaper advertisements as follows, an extract of which showed that the modern property profession’s use of florid language is not a newly discovered art!   “This fine estate the seat of the ancient family of Ury situated in the county of Kincardine comprehending in its boundary two-thirds of Stonehaven the county town and distant 14 miles south of Aberdeen is now for sale.  The property is so well known as to require but a cursory description.  About 90 years ago the improvement of the estate was commenced by the last proprietor one of the earliest and most distinguished agriculturalists in Scotland who devoted to its melioration a great portion of his lifetime advanced it to a state of cultivation and beauty which only the most liberal expenditure and eminent skill applied to natural capability of soil and an agreeable deversitivation of surface could have accomplished.  Since his death his system has for many years been followed out by his son the present proprietor with an unlimited appliance of occurrent modern discoveries in improvement so that the estate of Ury exhibiting a rare union of the utile dulci is universally admitted as being in productive cultivation and apt embellishment equalled by very few estates and certainly surpassed by none in the North of Scotland.”  But Ury had to be withdrawn from sale when Robert could not find the deeds, just one of many illustrations of his disorganisation.

   

In January 1849, during a pilgrimage to Ury by a prominent American Quaker missionary, Lindley Murray Hoag, there was a most bizarre occurrence, which led to the discovery of the missing deeds to the Ury estate.  After staying the night at Ury, Hoag claimed to Robert and Rodney over breakfast that he had been visited by a ghostly old man during the night.  He had opened a cupboard in the wall of the bedroom and took out some papers.  This was puzzling to both Robert Barclay (1779) and his sister as there was no one in the house of that description and no known cupboard in the position that Hoag had claimed.  The three of them then examined the wall in the bedroom and Robert broke though the structure to uncover a safe.  A blacksmith was then called to break open the safe’s door.  Inside were the missing deeds to the estate!  It should be noted that Hoag “had previous”.  Famously, also in 1849, he had had a vision, which he interpreted as a divine visitation, of a lakeside location in Norway.  There a villager called Knud Botnen had a revelatory experience, diagnosed by the local Lutheran pastor as a Quaker visitation from God.  Hoag travelled to Norway, held Quaker meetings and encouraged a group of believers to move with him to the United States.

Estate matters were a constant preoccupation of Robert Barclay (1779) at this late stage of his life.  In 1849 he made a further appear to the courts to release land from entail and in 1850 he made application to the Inclosure Commissioners to enclose 5,000 acres of the Ury and Allardice estates.

Robert Barclay and dogs

Like most country gentlemen, Robert Barclay (1799) was fond of dogs.  In addition to greyhounds which he kept for coursing as a young man, he also took ownership of “Trusty”, Jem Belcher’s dog in 1806 when Belcher was serving time for debt.  “Trusty” was a fighting dog and reputed never to have been beaten in 50 battles.  Perhaps the dog reflected Robert’s image of himself?  In 1830 he acquired another dog, “Dan”, as a companion.  The friendship lasted until 1848 when “Dan” died.  Robert had a plaque made and placed in the Ury burial ground as a memorial to “Dan”.

Robert Barclay plays the role of Laird (at last)

In 1848 Robert was active with other local landowners, Commissioners of Supply and JPs in calling for a return to sound banking practices, the suspension of which, it was claimed, had led to loss of income and value for landowners.  Robert was also active in the move to reform the turnpike trusts many of which were heavily indebted and threatened by the ascendance of the railways.

In the last 10 years of his life, Robert Barclay (1799) took on the mantle of the patrician laird, dispensing largess and influence around the Stonehaven district, even though his estate was deeply indebted, and, in truth, he no longer possessed the wealth his behaviour implied.  Robert carried around sixpences to give to the needy who responded by gathering daily at the gates of Ury.  In 1848 Robert was elected the patron of the newly-established Stonehaven Horticultural Society.  He was a prize winner in several floral, fruit and vegetable classes at the first and also at subsequent exhibitions of the Society, though it is hardly likely that he was directly involved in the Ury kitchen garden.  In 1850 he was patron of a “Songs of Scotland” concert and in 1853 he fulfilled a similar role at a Theatre Royal performance.  In the same year he agreed to support the formation of a Kincardineshire Museum of Natural History and Antiquities, of which he was elected patron.  In agricultural circles he continued occasionally to show cattle and to act as judge, for example at the Royal Northern Agricultural Society show held in Aberdeen in 1851.

Robert Barclay and entertaining

Robert Barclay (1779) was famous for the dinners he threw at Ury, for example those thrown at New Year for his tenants and friends.  According to the Aberdeen Free Press, they were, “remembered for their sumptuousness and hilarity, himself full of stories almost hidden behind a steaming mountain of beef and his agent Mr Kinnear presiding at the other end of the table”.   Harvest Home celebrations occurred regularly at Ury.  The 1850 event was typical, with Mr Stewart the Ury overseer in the chair.  About 100 attended including his own servants and various parties from Stonehaven.  Many of the aged men present had worked at Ury all their lives.  After the eating and extensive toast-making there was dancing followed by supper and then more dancing until 3am.  Another story, of unknown date, related to a dinner which followed a cattle sale, an account of which appeared in the book by Sinclair.  “A gentleman who was present on one of these occasions along with a neighbour described his after-dinner experience of the proceedings.  The Captain sat at one end of the table behind a huge round of beef and after the company had done justice to the more solid viands whisky punch was introduced.  My friend mindful of the long Scots miles that lay between him and his home said to his companion, “We’ll just take one tumbler of toddy and then we’ll start.”  But on making for the door they found to their dismay that it was securely locked and had to resume their seats.  They remarked however that a fresh supply of hot water would soon be wanted, and they resolved that as soon as the servant opened the door they would take the opportunity to bolt immediately.  But behold when the call was made for more water, instead of the door being opened a little boy emerged through a hole in the wall with the necessary supplies and no mode of exit was to be found!  After the night was well spent and some of the guests had well-nigh succumbed to the influence of their potations the doors were flung open and the Captain said, “Well gentlemen look about and see if you can find beds for yourselves.  I don’t know that we have got rooms for you all but those who are unable to find accommodation can just sit here with me and I will keep you company till morning.”

Robert Barclay writes his will

 

By 1851 Robert Barclay (1779) must have been feeling his age, since he wrote his will.  This trust deposition and deed of settlement, dated 8 February, conveyed the whole of his estate to trustees to hold for various purposes, including paying his daughter Mrs Ritchie (later Margaret Barclay Allardice (1816)) an annuity of £200.  Further payments of £1000 were to be made to the three sons of his daughter Margaret, namely Robert (1841), Samuel (1843) and David (1845), on attaining their majorities.  However, if their mother predeceased them before they reached this point, the interest from the bequests was to be used in alimenting and educating them until they reached adulthood.  This document was interesting because it also admitted the relationship with Ann Angus and Robert Barclay (1779)’s parentage of the two illegitimate children, Robert (1843) and David Stuart (1849), from this coupling.  No such admission was made concerning the presumed relationship with Helen Shepherd or her child Robert Barclay (1834).

At the 1851 Census, held on the night of 30^th March, both of his illegitimate sons by Ann Angus were found living at Ury House.  Also present was a servant by the name of Margaret Angus.  It is not known if this was the mother (elsewhere called “Ann”) of the children or, possibly, a relative of the mother.  However, in his Trust Deposition and Deed of Settlement, dated February 1851, Robert (1779) wrote, “Ann Angus at present residing at Ury”.  It seems likely that “Margaret Angus” was indeed “Ann Angus”.  Robert’s sister Rodney was not recorded at Ury at the 1851 Census and has not so far been found elsewhere.  Rodney died in 1853.

The death of Robert Barclay Allardice

In early 1854, Robert Barclay (1779) suffered two strokes and was partially paralysed, though he subsequently recovered enough to go out and about on the Ury estate.  However, about 29 April 1854, Robert was kicked by a young horse, which may have been under training, as he was crossing a field.  Although hurt, he appeared not to have broken any bones, but he declined rapidly and died at 9.15am on Monday 1 May 1854.  Although not a practising Quaker, he was buried in the Ury burial ground.

Dispersal of Robert Barclay’s estate

The trustees nominated by Robert Barclay (1779) were Margaret Barclay or Gurney (his sister), Hudson Gurney (husband of his sister Margaret), John Henry Gurney (a banker), The Honourable John Arbuthnot (a local laird), George Taylor, Hugh Watson (friend and advisor on agricultural matters), William Stewart (banker and creditor) and Walter Duthie (an advocate).  Only the Hon John Arbuthnot and Hugh Watson accepted to act as trustees.  These two moved quickly to take control of the assets of Robert Barclay (1779).  At the beginning of June 1854, they inserted a standard notice to debtors and creditors of Captain Barclay in the Stonehaven Journal.  This was followed in July by another notice revoking all permissions to shoot over the Ury estate and threatening the prosecution of transgressors.  In addition to Robert Barclay (1779)’s trustees, his relatives Hudson Gurney and Arthur Kett Barclay travelled to Ury to help with resolving Robert Barclay’s tangled affairs.  (It is interesting to note that in 1848 Viscount Arbuthnot was charged at Stonehaven Justiciary Court with having issued two forged bills of exchange or promissory notes.  This was a very sensitive case, given the status of the accused.  A grand jury was sworn in containing many county JPs, among whom was Robert Barclay (1779).  The jury decided that there was no case to answer.)

The Ury estate was quickly put on the market following Robert Barclay (1779)’s death.  Hugh Watson acted as an agent for the estate (one of three) in early August 1854.  The estate was described as consisting of 3700 acres, of which 1817 were arable.  Public burdens were about £300 annually and the hill ground had a limited amount of grouse and blackgame.  It was offered for sale by auction at Melvin’s hotel, Stonehaven, which was located at the railway station, at an upset price of £120,000 (about £14.5 million in 2018 money).  The estate was bought by a wealthy industrial family, the Bairds who had made their fortune in the West of Scotland from coal mines and iron works.

Alexander Baird of Gartsherrie, the head of the family, immediately set about transforming the estate.  The old house, which had so much significance for the Barclay family and for the Quaker religion, was demolished and quickly replaced by a larger, grander mansion in the Elizabethan style.  Baird also built a new bridge over the river Cowie as well as implementing numerous ornamental improvements to the grounds.  In 1860 he increased the landholding of the estate by buying about 1000 acres from Mr Patrick Keith Murray of Dunnottar.  (Travellers on the Stonehaven bypass will currently see the shell of the Baird-sponsored Ury House on rising ground to the west side of the road.  The house and surrounding land are (2018) being converted into a hotel and golf course.)

Alexander Baird's Ury House

The sale of the Ury estate was quickly followed by other assets.  Cattle and sheep were sold at a displenishing sale in September and there was a roup of farming implements and furnishings in October.  Other assets were not sold until later.  The Royal Ury Distillery was sold to William Ritchie in 1857, the Allardice estate was sold to Lord Arbuthnot in 1872 and the Stonehaven market buildings and square were disposed of in the same year to an unnamed buyer for £1455 (£163,000 in 2018 money).  Hudson Gurney, Robert Barclay’s brother in law and a nominated trustee of his estate who declined to act, probably visited Ury after Robert’s death and bought silver plate, books, pictures and manuscripts for a total sum of almost £370 (about £45,000 in 2018 money).  It is likely that Hudson was salvaging items of major historical importance to the wider Barclay family.  It had been known for a long time in the wider Barclay family that Robert Barclay (1779) did not treat family heirlooms with any degree of care.  In 1827 John Barclay (1797), the son of banker Robert Barclay (1758) had travelled to Ury to examine early Quaker records.  He later described manuscripts “to all appearance much neglected” lying in a corner of the Apologist’s study from among which he retrieved a portion of Alexander Jaffray’s diary (associate of Robert Barclay 1672) “much injured by time and in parts wholly unintelligible”.  Other parts of the diary were found in the loft of a nearby farmhouse “in a very tattered condition…. among heaps of waste paper”.  Some historical documentation “most valuable for many Kincardineshire families” passed to Margaret Barclay Allardice and was still in her possession in 1887.  Other Barclay memorabilia (swords, books, a walking stick which had belonged to Col David Barclay in 1640 and a sword he fought with in 1636) were sold by Margaret’s son Robert (1845) to the Barclay family in the early 1900s, when this Robert was hard up.  When Mrs Opie, a Norwich Quaker, visited Ury in 1834 she “sat in the Apologist’s seat and leaned on his cane”.  Clearly, the house at Ury had been stuffed with Barclay memorabilia, many of them carelessly neglected.

It is not clear how much money was left over from the sale of the estate and other assets, after legitimate expenses, legacies and estate debts had been settled.  Any surplus that was left over was to go “to my eldest son Robert by the said Ann Angus on his arriving at the age of thirty years or earlier if deemed expedient”.  It seems to have been little or nothing.  Robert Barclay (1843) lived a modest life as a farm labourer.  He did not marry and died in the Craigleith Poorhouse, Edinburgh in 1897.

Margaret Barclay Allardice (1816) and her son Robert Barclay Allardice (1841)

After the death of her first husband, Samuel Ritchie, in 1845 Margaret went to live in the United States of America where she was engaged in literary work.  She married James Tanner of New York in 1854 and they had one child together, Augusta, in 1859.  James Tanner died in 1866 whereupon Margaret resumed the surname of Barclay Allardice.  In 1883 she was licensed in the books of the Lord Lyon to retain her maiden name for herself and her children.  Margaret’s eldest son, Robert Barclay Allardice (1841) became a member of the New York Stock Exchange and was reputed to have been very successful.  He returned to Britain with his mother after the death of James Tanner in 1866.

Margaret and her son Robert then behaved as though they were wealthy, moving around the country between a succession of rented properties.  In 1870 they were residents of Quarter House, Stirling but had previously been living in Great Malvern, Worcester.  By May 1871 they had moved on to Loyal House, Alyth, which was owned by the Earl of Airlie.  There appeared to have been shootings attached to this residence.  By 1873 they had moved on to Jordanstone, near Meigle.  The rapid succession of residences continued when the following year, 1874, they moved to Oakwood, near Ryde, on the Isle of Wight.  While there Margaret’s daughter, Augusta, died at the tragically early age of 15.  Robert Barclay Allardice (1841) was a member of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, Ryde and on several occasions chartered the yacht “Gossamer” to make trips in the English Channel.  Also during the stay on the Isle of Wight, Margaret and her eldest son were visited by David Stuart Barclay Allardice (1845), another son of Samuel Ritchie.  In 1877 Margaret and Robert moved to Rodney Lodge, Perth and while there David Stuart Barclay Allardice’s wife was delivered of a son.

But the Barclay Allardice’s appearance of wealth seems to have been a sham. In December 1877 Robert Barclay Allardice (1845) was declared bankrupt.  He was imprisoned though he appears to have been released from confinement by early the following year and went to live in Edinburgh.  In 1882, Margaret and Robert were residing at Lorne House, Bognor Regis, the seaside town in Sussex made fashionable by the upper classes, especially after it was linked by the railway in 1864.  There was a subsequent return to Scotland because in 1890, when Margaret travelled to New York on the steamer Anchoria, she was said to have been living in Portobello for “some time”.  While in Scotland Robert Barclay Allardice was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

In 1895 Robert Barclay Allardice (1845) was living in St Andrews but the same year, he and his mother moved to Lostwithiel in Cornwall.  In this most south-westerly English country, mother and son managed to find some degree of stability in their living arrangements.  Very quickly, the pair became integrated in local affairs and Robert was elected a Conservative Councillor in 1898.  The following year he ascended to the pinnacle of the local government hierarchy when he was elected mayor, a meteoric rise for an incomer.  At this stage Robert was unmarried and his mother, Margaret, acted as mayoress.  Robert filled the post of mayor for five years in total and was made an alderman.  Margaret Barclay Allardice died at the age of 87 in August 1903 at Lostwithiel, but was buried in St Peter’s Cemetery, Aberdeen.

Robert Barclay Allardice’s involvement with local affairs in Lostwithiel did not rest with local government.  He was Chairman of the Conservative Association, Vice-President of Lostwithiel Working Men’s Institution, President of the local football club, a Justice of the Peace and a sidesman at St Bartholemew’s Church.  But even in 1903 there were indications that he was suffering some financial stress.  In that year he sold a significant family heirloom, a jewel pendant which was given by Queen Ann to Sir George Allardice, MP for Kintore and Master of the Mint for political services, at Christie’s.  It fetched £6500 (about £754,000 in 2018 money).  This disposal did not save him financially and in 1910 he was again declared bankrupt.  At his examination in bankruptcy he claimed that he was living frugally on £100 a year (about £11,300 pa in 2018 money) but derived from capital.  He appeared to have no regular income.  When asked about the proceeds from the sale of the pendant he said that he had lost the money by speculation and bad investments, claiming, “I had no experience or knowledge of Stock Exchange except in an amateur way.  I took advice which I thought was good, but it did not turn out to be so.”  This is quite remarkable for someone who had also claimed to have had a successful career as a broker on the New York Stock Exchange!  One is led to the conclusion that Robert Barclay Allardice (1845) had more than a passing resemblance to Walter Mitty.

Alderman Robert Barclay-Allardice 1841 - 1920

   

In 1908 Robert Barclay Allardice (1845)’s housekeeper Beatrice Jeffrey became pregnant.  Robert married her the following year before she delivered a daughter, Mary.  Robert was 44 years older than Beatrice!  Perhaps a resemblance to his maternal grandfather should be noted?  Robert died in 1920.

Overview of the life of Robert Barclay (1799)  

The Barclay genealogy flowing down from Colonel David Barclay (1610) was characterised by several significant features which, while not being universal, were sufficiently prevalent to be remarkable.  Adherence to the Quaker religion, with profound contributions to the philosophy of this creed, moral rectitude, financial success in business and banking, charitable works, family cohesion and a willingness to help family members in need, physically imposing, possessing good-looks and often displaying high intellect.  Because of the eminence of so many family members, the Barclays, in each generation, have been well connected, able to exert influence in the seats of power and, on occasion, able to call in favours.  To gain an understanding of the life of Robert Barclay (1779) it is instructive to view his activities in the context of Barclay family history.

In 1869, some 15 years after the death of Robert Barclay (1779), his relative by marriage, the polymath Francis Galton, published a highly influential book “Hereditary Genius” in which he propounded the idea that human achievement, be it, for example, in the military, in law or in science, is largely determined by parentage.  Those genetically close to a person of great merit are more likely also to show similar prominence than more distant relatives, or than members of the population in general.  The more distant the relationship the lower the probability that merit will be displayed.  This well-established phenomenon is nowadays termed “regression to the mean”.  Thus, while the wider Barclay family tree contained many successful individuals, it should not be expected that all Barclays would be equally or similarly meritorious.  On the other hand, it should be expected that the probability of an individual exhibiting the same trait as an antecedent would decline with the increase in the distance of the relationship.  Robert Barclay (1779) was thus not an amalgam of generalised Barclay characteristics.  In some aspects of his physical and mental attributes, like other Barclays, he was remarkably prominent but in other aspects of his makeup he was an under-achiever. 

Both Robert senior (1732) and his oldest son gained prominence for their muscular exploits, which required not just physical strength but also endurance and determination.  But the two men differed in the context of their physical exploits.  Robert senior’s achievements were the clearance and improvement of the Ury estate over many years, through persistent hard work, the development of the town of Stonehaven and his long-distance walking tours to gain knowledge of agricultural practice throughout the British Isles.  All these activities had over-riding economic objectives, beneficial not just to himself but also to his descendants.  On the other hand, his son’s athletic exploits usually took place in the context of wagers, often for large and unwise amounts of money, often conceived while drinking to excess, often to the detriment of dependants and relatives and for no other reasons than self-gratification and a display of bravado in the company of other dissolute young men.

Robert Barclay (1732) was not particularly noted for his intellect, in comparison with some of his more academic forebears, but he did fulfil the role of MP for Kincardineshire for nine years.  Robert (1779) in marked contrast was not in any way an intellectual.  He repeatedly dodged learning to indulge his baser instincts and was later described as “uncouth”.  But the lack of academic achievement was not accompanied by any hint of modesty.  He had great, if unjustified, self-belief even when confronted by the experience and intellect of the prominent guardians assembled by his father to guide him prior to his majority.  Perhaps seeing himself as the latest in a long line of Barclay achievers, he had no hesitation in side-stepping their advice until he was free of their direct influence.  Compared to some of his august forebears, Robert Barclay (1799) left very little written work which might otherwise have revealed his inner thoughts.

There was another, but negative, characteristic which Robert Barclay (1799) shared with his father.  Neither man showed any real economic competence.  Robert (1732), despite being labelled “the great improver” and despite his devotion to the physical improvement of the Ury estate, failed to pass on this asset in a sound financial condition.  His borrowing had been devoted to estate development but had been excessive and left a debt burden so large that an immediate sale of land was necessary after his death.  His son, sadly, also showed a fundamental inability to manage the debt of the estate. Further, he lacked his father’s devotion to improving the estate’s physical infrastructure, preferring to leave Ury in the managerial hands of others while he pursued a hedonistic lifestyle elsewhere.

Even after Robert (1779) turned away from the “Fancy”, with its associated excesses and showed some signs of playing the role of a traditional laird, his business ventures were not successful enough to turn around the fortunes of the estate.  The Defiance coach, though achieving prominence as the most comfortable, flamboyant and punctual means to travel between Edinburgh and Aberdeen in the 20 years preceding the arrival of the railway, had enormous overheads associated with its operation and a market limited to the wealthy.  It was never very profitable.  The same was true of his cattle and sheep businesses.  Robert (1779) though sometimes portrayed as an agricultural improver, like his father, was actually an agricultural copier rather than an innovator, dependent on the advice of knowledgeable friends, such as Hugh Watson, for the kinds of animals and production systems that he employed.  This might not have mattered if he had possessed a sound grasp of economic principles but, unlike Watson and other advisers, he never seemed to understand the need for economic prudence in his farming operations.  While on occasion he achieved prominence in the show ring and in the sale ring, animal production, too, did not make him wealthy.  At the end of his life the assets of the Ury estate had essentially all been dissipated, and few assets passed on to his descendants.

It might have been expected that Robert Barclay (1779), given the legacy of moral rectitude of his Quaker forebears, would have inherited a set of moral principles which would have guided him through life, especially in the first two decades after his father’s death, when both estate and family responsibilities should have weighed heavily upon him.  Sadly, this did not happen.  Not only did he abandon the Quaker religion, which he must have quickly realised was incompatible with his lifestyle of sport, drinking, gambling, but he also consistently avoided shouldering responsibility for the younger members of the family and the estate which was his and their ultimate source of sustenance.

But it was perhaps his attitudes towards women where he showed most starkly a tendency to put self-indulgence before all other considerations.  He was not known to have had a prolonged relationship with a member of the opposite sex until he seduced Mary Dalgarno, his sister’s 17-year-old maid in 1814.  At the time Robert was 35.  His other established conquests, known because they resulted in live births, were initiated with Helen Shepherd about 1833, when he was 54 and she was 18 and with Ann Angus about 1842, at which date Robert was 63 and Ann was probably 19.  Ann was a maid at Ury and Helen, a girl from Stonehaven, may also have had that status.  It seems possible that Robert Barclay (1779) was exercising something akin to a droit du seigneur, where the Ury female servants were concerned.  The age and status asymmetries involved do smack of exploitation, but perhaps Robert was not behaving much differently than other 19^th century Scottish lairds?  It seems improbable that Robert did not have other, perhaps many other, earlier, casual relationships with women, given the company he kept as a young man after his father’s death in 1797.

Robert Barclay (1779)’s behaviour following these accidental conceptions was unsurprising.  With Mary Dalgarno, instead of taking the obvious solution to the problem that he had created, he took her away to a distant village in England and perpetrated a deception on the residents that he and Mary were married.  This was followed by his desertion of Mary, which precipitated her return to the family home.  Then, instead of marrying the girl, he passed off a legal agreement as creating a state of marriage between them, which it did not, though he did eventually commit to matrimony.  In the case of Helen Shepherd, Robert appears not to have acknowledged parenthood of her child, though she clearly alleged that he was the father.  Neither Helen nor her son was recognised in Robert Barclay (1779)’s will.  In the case of Ann Angus, though Robert did not marry her, he did shelter both her and her two sons at Ury and recognised all three in his will.  By this time Robert was getting on in years, his behaviour in other ways had ameliorated and he did at least recognise some degree of responsibility for this latest family that he had created.  Robert Barclay (1779) had a curious antipathy to marriage.  This may have simply been down to his inherent narcissistic, self-interested makeup, but it is also possible that his views of the institution were coloured by the experience of his own father, whose marriage to Robert’s mother ended in divorce, a rare and possibly shameful occurrence at the time.

Lest the above views be put down solely to the outpourings of a jaundiced biographer, it is worth considering the following summary of Robert Barclay’s life from the editor of the Aberdeen Free Press.  “It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that presented by the spiritually-minded ex-soldier of the Thirty Years War and the Scottish turmoils, or his son the scholarly and contemplative Apologist on the one hand and the late Robert Barclay Allardice, better known as Captain Barclay, on the other.  There was little of the Quaker about the Captain.  His dominant ideas were not ethereal.  His tastes lay to a large extent in the direction of an unconventional and somewhat boisterous life.  Sport, even in its ruder forms had great attraction for him.  His own feats of muscularity and endurance gave him a contemporary fame wider than that of poets or statesmen and are still a living tradition at least in his own district of Scotland.  Yet there were traits in him of a finer manhood and manifestations of the great qualities of his Quaker ancestry.  The contrast was indeed more than superficial but the nobler traits of the best of his race gleamed through his uncouth exterior and modified the purport of his life.”

But, like other icons before and since, Robert Barclay (1779) is remembered only for his perceived successes and not his failures.  To a small extent for his Shorthorn cattle, to a greater extent for his role in the creation of the Defiance coach and his driving on this greatly admired service but, to an extent which overwhelms all other aspects of his legacy, his achievements as a long-distance pedestrian.   Even in his own lifetime, the contrast between Robert (1779) and his Barclay forebears was a subject for subtle jest.  In 1816 a Quaker visitor to Ury, a place almost of pilgrimage for the Society of Friends, on taking leave of Robert was reported to have said, “Friend Barclay, the excellence of thy family descended from the head even unto the feet.”  Though his athletic achievements were many, one stands out above all others, the 1000 miles in 1000 successive hours for 1000gns challenge in 1809.  At the time this seemed like an unattainable target, requiring athletic ability, physical resilience and resistance to sleep deprivation for a period of almost six weeks for its achievement.  Although this performance was bettered within a few years by others, notably, by Josiah Eaton in 1816, Robert Barclay (1779) could not accept that his performance had been eclipsed.  But it is Eaton and other extreme pedestrians who have largely been forgotten and the charismatic Barclay whose athletic achievements have endured.  Perhaps every generation wants its heroes to be of noble temperament, even when they sometimes stand on feet of clay?

Acknowledgement

Another biography of Robert Barclay (1779) was published in 2001, “The Celebrated Captain Barclay” by Peter Radford, the former Olympic sprinter.  It differs from the present offering principally in concentrating on the sporting activities of Robert Barclay.  The present author would like to acknowledge the great benefit he has derived from Peter Radford’s superb book.

Don Fox

20181008 

donaldpfox@gmail.com