SIGNED BY WALPOLE AND QUEEN ANNE
ANNE, Queen.
Warrant, signed, authorising John Grubham Howe as Paymaster General, to pay Major General James Mailand for the regiment at Fort William.
27 January 1708/9.
Manuscript on paper, folio, 1 page, in a secretarial hand, signed (‘AnneR’) at the head (offset at foot when the paper was folded), countersigned at the foot by Robert Walpole as Secretary at War; docketed on the verso that payment was received 18 May 1709; creased where folded, paper stubs where once mounted, else in good condition
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Warrant, signed, authorising John Grubham Howe as Paymaster General, to pay Major General James Mailand for the regiment at Fort William.
An attractive document, bringing together the signatures of both Queen Anne and the future Prime Minister Robert Walpole.
Anne authorises payment to Major General James Maitland of £130 14s 1¼d being the sum ‘Due to Our Garrison at Fort Willm under his Command for their Pay from 25th of June to 24th of August 1708 … being 61 Days according to the Establishm[en]t and Muster Roll’. Tensions were high in Scotland at the time. The 1707 Act of Union, of which Anne was a firm supporter, had been pushed through against popular opposition, and had inspired the failed invasion of James Stuart, the Old Pretender, at the head of a French fleet in March 1708 – the Highland clans were to have risen and joined him, but the fleet was driven back by the Royal Navy, and refused to let make landfall.
James Maitland (d. 1716) was the son of Robert Maitland of the Bass. Page to the Duke of Lauderdale, he gained military experience in the French army, then was commissioned in the Foot Guards in 1677. He fought on the government side at Bothwell Bridge in 1679 and had a share of Forfeitures, but opposed the worst of the excesses in the treatment of the Covenanters in the 1680s. He was promoted through the ranks several times, joined the forces of William of Orange on the 1689 Revolution and served in Flanders. In 1694, he succeeded the Earl of Leven as Colonel of the regiment later known as the Kings Own Scottish Borderers. He was promoted to Major-General on 1 February, 1705, and Lt-General on 1 January, 1709, and was briefly governor of Fort William before he retired in 1711 (Dalton, Scots Army, 25n, 148, 150n.).
