William Kerr ca.1605-1675

William KERR, 3rd Earl of Lothian ca.1605-1675

Biographical note

William Kerr was the elder son of Sir Robert Kerr, created in 1633 the first Earl of Ancram. (Through a special remainder, that title passed to the younger half-brother of William, but the title rejoined the elder line in 1690.) His mother was Margaret Murray. Kerr grew up at the English court and matriculated at the University of Cambridge in 1621 but did not appear to graduate, and went to Paris in 1624, and thence on a Grand Tour. After returning, he became a soldier. In 1630 he married a relation, Lady Anne Kerr, elder daughter of the second Earl of Lothian (d.1624) of the 1606 creation. This makes most authorities regard William as the third Earl, but Burke’s Peerage demurs and makes William the first Earl, in an earldom created for him in 1631.

Lothian in subsequent years espoused the cause of the Scottish Covenanters, and signed the National Covenant in 1638. Although sent on an embassy to Paris in 1643, where he used the opportunity to buy a substantial number of books, he was imprisoned by the King in Bristol Castle on his return for a few months. He carried on supporting the Covenanters, but opposed the regicide of 1649 and thereafter worked for Charles II, becoming nominal Secretary of State for Scotland from 1649 until 1660. After the Battle of Worcester in 1651, Lothian kept a low profile at his estate of Newbattle, near Edinburgh. By the mid-1660s, he was said to be impoverished, through government fines as a result of his refusal to abjure the National Covenant and Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and handed his estates over to his son in 1665. However he continued to be involved with his library, by this time a very fine one. Lord Lothian died in 1675.

Books

William Kerr was an avid collector of books and art works. In his correspondence and papers there is ample evidence of his book acquisitions from agents on the continent, and towards the end of his life, in 1666, a catalogue of his library was drawn up, signed at the end by him. There are 1,361 numbered entries (representing a larger number of items and volumes), with a number of later additions, some recorded by Lothian in his own hand. This catalogue (National Library of Scotland MS 5818) lists many fine items: some superb mediaeval illuminated manuscripts; atlases and large format plate books; Imprimerie Royale printings; architectural books and works on military fortifications; historical and geographical works; and literature. ‘47 little volumes of the Republics’ in ‘red Spanish leather guilded’ are recorded: these (46 volumes) were purchased in Paris in 1643.

Many books acquired by him are still extant in the Newbattle Collection now in the possession of the National Library of Scotland, such as a very fine coloured copy of Petrus Apianus’s Astronomicum Caesareum of 1540. Others have been sold, notably in a celebrated auction sale held in New York in 1932 when his early fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript of Boccaccio’s ‘Des Cas des nobles homes et femmes’ (now in the Getty Museum), his illuminated Livy in French of the same century, his illuminated Psalter of around 1310 (the ‘Tickhill Psalter’, now in New York Public Library), and other works owned by him, went under the hammer.

Sources

Newbattle Collection, National Library of Scotland, MS 5818 (Catalogue of Lord Lothian’s books, 1666, with later additions) and MS 5828 (book lists from 1643)
Coffey, John ‘Kerr, William, third earl of Lothian (c.1605-1675), politician’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Illuminated Manuscripts Incunabula and Americana from the Famous Libraries of the … Marquess of Lothian … Sold by His Order. Removed from Blickling Hall, Norfolk and Newbattle Abbey, Midlothian. Unrestricted Public Sale January 27 and 28, 1932 … (New York: American Art Association, 1932)
Laing, David, ed., Correspondence of Sir Robert Kerr, first Earl of Ancram, and his son William, third Earl of Lothian, 2 vols (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1875), especially Appendices 4 and 5 relating to Lothian’s library