Lauderdale, JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF, who earned the detestation of his countrymen, was born at Lethington (now Lennoxlove), near Haddington, 24th May 1616, son of the first Earl of Lauderdale. In his youth he simulated ardent zeal for the Covenanting cause, and was actually one of the Scottish commissioners at the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He succeeded as second earl in 1645, was taken prisoner at Worcester in 1651, and confined nine years in the Tower. Before the Restoration he had gained the king's ear, and he now became Secretary of State in Scotland. He found the nobles impoverished and corrupt beyond all precedent, and for the first seven years he was engaged in an incessant struggle to maintain his place with rivals like Middleton as unscrupulous as himself, as well as with more open and honourable opposition from Clarendon and others in England. He made himself indispensable to Charles, who liked his clever and caustic wit, and felt no repugnance at his sensuality, his ribaldry and his drunken buffoeries, his slobbering mouth and heavy face brutalised by vice, as we see it still in Lely's portrait. His main object was to bring about the absolute power of the crown in church and state, and for this end he laboured with the most unceasing persistence, using patriotism, honour, and religion alike as mere pawns in his unscrupulous game. He was ever bold, full of resource, and quick to recognise the use to be made of such creatures as the brutal Rothes and the 'Judas' Sharp. His harsh measures goaded the poor peasants of the west country into the rebellion of 1666, but the greater guilt of the Highland invasion during the winter of 1677 and the spring of 1678 lies on the shoulders of the bishops no less than of the ruthless Lauderdale. He formed a militia of 20,000 men ready to do the bidding of the king anywhere, and drilled the Episcopal Church into complete subservience. He was a member of the king's privy-council, had a seat in the famous Cabal ministry, and was created a duke in 1672. Fresh intrigues against him of the Scottish nobles, in concert with Shaftesbury in London, reached their height in 1674, but were foiled by his own ability in counter-plots and the king's personal regard for him. On the 7th May 1678 a vote was carried in the House of Commons for an address to the king praying for Lauderdale's removal from the royal presence for ever; but two days later, through lavish use of court intimidation and the Speaker's corrupt management of the forms of the House for procuring adjournments, the address when prepared was thrown out by a single vote. Another short struggle with Hamilton in the Convention of Estates left him again triumphant, and for two years more he held his power, until unable from infirmity to hold it longer. Lauderdale in his later life married the ambitious Lady Dysart, and it was alleged had cleared the way by hastening the death of his countess. He had but one daughter, and his dukedom died with him, while the earldom and family titles passed to his brother. He died, worn out by debaucheries and the anxieties of constant intrigue, at Tunbridge Wells, 20th August 1682, and eight months later was laid in the Abbey Church at Haddington, but not to rest, according to persistent popular tradition.
See two admirable articles together embracing his whole public career, by Osmund Airy, in the Quarterly Review (vol. clvii. 1884) and the English Historical Review (vol. i. 1886), based on the 36 volumes of Lauderdale MSS. in the British Museum, each containing from 100 to 150 documents. A selection from these was edited by Mr Airy for the Camden Society (3 vols. 1884-85).