appointments
succeeded,--obligations which were repaid with a fidelity which
impoverished the family of Erskine; and which produced, towards the
close of the seventeenth century, a marked decline in their fortunes,
and decay of their local influence.

John, ninth Earl of Mar, the grandfather of the Jacobite Earl, suffered
severely for his loyalty in joining the association at Cumbernauld, in
favour of Charles the First. He afterwards raised forces at Brae-Mar for
the King's service, for which he was heavily fined by the Parliament,
and his estates were sequestrated. During all this season of adversity
he lived in a cottage at the gate of his house at Alloa, until the
Restoration relieved him from the sequestration.

His son Charles, who raised the first regiment of Scottish Fusileers,
and was constituted their Colonel, began life as a determined Royalist;
but disapproving of the measures of James the Second, he had prepared
to go abroad when the Prince of Orange landed in England. He appears
afterwards to have pursued somewhat of the same wavering course as that
of which his son has been accused, and, joining the disaffected party
against William, he was arrested, but afterwards released. The heavy
incumbrances upon his estates, contracted during the civil wars, were
such as to oblige him to sell a great portion of his lands, and to part
with the ancient Barony of Erskine, the first possession of the family.
This necessity may almost be considered as an ill omen for the future
welfare of a family; which never seems to be so utterly brought low by
fortune, as when compelled to consign to strangers that from which the
first sense of importance and stability has been derived.

Under these circumstances, certainly not favourable to independence of
character, John, eleventh Earl of Mar of the name of Erskine, and
afterwards Lieutenant-general to the Chevalier St. George, was born at
Alloa, in Clackmannan, where his father resided. He was a younger son of
a numerous family, five brothers, older than himself, having died in
infancy. His mother, the Lady Mary Maule, eldest daughter of George Earl
of Panmure, gave birth to eight sons, and a daughter. Of the sons, the
Earl of Mar and his brothers, James Erskine of the Grange, afterwards
the husband of the famous and unfortunate Lady Grange; and Henry, killed
at the battle of Almanza in 1707, alone attained the age of manhood.
The only sister of Lord Mar, Lady Jean, was married