Note 103 — Chapter XI

James Nimmo, Esq., Receiver-General of Excise, was a man of piety, and connected with some of the first families in the Scottish peerage. His mother, the Hon. Mary Erskine, was a daughter of Henry, Lord Cardross, and a near relation to Dr. John Erskine, minister of the old Greyfriars’ Church of Edinburgh; and one of his sisters married his cousin, David Erskine, Esq., son of the Hon. Captain William Erskine, Deputy-Governor of Blackness Castle. Mr. Nimmo married, in 1743, Lady Jane Hume, third daughter of the Earl of Marchmont, by a daughter and heiress of Sir George Campbell, of Gressnock, in Ayrshire. She was chiefly brought up by her able, prudent, warm-hearted, and affectionate aunt, Lady Grizel Baillie, of Jerviswood, whose conduct and character, as portrayed in Rose’s “Observations on Fox,” it is impossible to contemplate without admiration. Soon after her marriage she became a correspondent of Lady Huntingdon’s, and maintained an intimate friendship with her till her death, in 1770, in the 62nd year of her age. Her Ladyship was sister to the Hon. Hume Campbell, an eminent counsellor in London, Solicitor to the Prince of Wales, and Lord Clerk Register of Scotland. Her eldest brother, Hugh, fourth Earl of Marchmont, became eminent for learning and brilliancy of genius. The estimation in which his Lordship was held by his contemporaries may be judged of by his close and intimate friendship with Lord Cobham (who gave his bust a place in the Temple of Worthies, at Stow) and Sir William Wyndham, and by the mention of him in Pope’s well-known inscription in his grotto at Twickenham—

He was one of the executors of Pope, also of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who left him a legacy of 2,500l., as such. With Lady Huntingdon, Lord Marchmont and Mr. Hume Campbell lived on very intimate terms, and the latter often aided her by his excellent advice. Lady Jane was distinguished by a sound and cultivated understanding; by genuine and unostentatious piety, guided by great good sense and discernment; by uniform mildness and equality of temper; and by those habitually cheerful and affectionate manners which commanded the esteem and respect of the society in which she lived, and were the perpetual delight of her own family. Her eldest sister, Lady Anne, married Sir William Purvis, Bart., whose grandson assumed, on inheriting the estate of his maternal ancestors, the additional surname of “Hume Campbell,” and is the present representative of that family; the Hon. Alexander Hume Campbell and Lord Marchmont having died without surviving male issue.