CHAPTER XII

KATHARINE INGLIS (MRS. OLLPHANT)

KATHARINE, youngest daughter of John Inglis of Auchindinny and Katharine Nisbet, was baptized at Edinburgh on February 26, 1710, and on October 10, 1729 married Alexander Oliphant, Town Clerk of Kelso, and Commissary Depute. ¹ He was the only son of James Oliphant, advocate, of Lantoun, now Belfield, near Midcalder, and Elizabeth, elder daughter of Dr. Alexander Pennecuik of Romanno, the famous wit and versifier.² His grandfather, Charles Oliphant, was fourth in descent from Laurence, third Lord Oliphant.³ When James Oliphant married, his wife brought as her portion the estate of Newhall, near West Linton, but Mr. Oliphant, ‘who from high living was considerably involved in debt at the time of his marriage,’ ⁴ sold it in the following year (1703). He never recovered his position, and Lantoun was sold to Lord Morton in 1734.

Alexander Oliphant, Katharine Inglis’s husband, settled in Edinburgh as a ‘writer’ in 1739, and died on April 1, 1742, in his fortieth year. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was born on October 17, 1740, and died in 1745; they seem to have had another child, who was buried at Greyfriars in October 1741.

Mr. Ohiphant left only £120 and a house in Bull’s Land,

1 Kirk Session Records of Lasswade.

² Proceedings of the. Society of Antiquaries, 1908-9, p. 324 seq

³ Scots Peerage. vi. 561.

⁴ Works of Alexander Pennecuik of Newhall, M.D., with memoir, p. 21.

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opposite to the Tron Church.¹ The house was afterwards let, and Mrs. Oliphant, who survived for thirty-five years, lived in a lodging, dependent on her brother George, who was much attached to her. For some years she was in a very infirm state, and she died on January 25, 1778, in her sixty-eighth year.²

¹ She and her husband are buried in Greyfriars Churchyard.

²Edinburgh Testaments, May 7, 1742.

³ lb., March 19, 1778.