James Hope of Hopetoun

Sir James Hope of Hopetoun (1614–1661) was a Scottish lawyer, industrialist and politician.

Life

The sixth son of Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall, Fife, Scotland, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Binning or Bennet of Wallyford, Haddingtonshire, he was born on 12 July 1614. From February 1636 to October 1637 he studied law in France. After his first marriage in 1638 he devoted himself to the working of the lead mines on his lands at Leadhills.

In 1642 Hope was appointed general of the cunzie-house, an office with both a civil and a criminal jurisdiction. On the death of his brother, Sir Thomas Hope of Kerse, a lord of session, on 23 August 1643, his friends made a vain attempt to get him named as successor, the enactment of the Act of Classes, disqualifying from office anyone directly or indirectly accessory to the "Engagement" with England.

On 1 June 1649 he was chosen an ordinary lord of session. In this year and also in 1650 he sat in parliament as commissioner for the county of Stirling. He was also one of the committee of estates, and a commissioner both of public accounts and for the revision of the laws. James was asked to mediate between the Edinburgh guilds of Goldsmiths and lacemakers over the use of silver. In August 1647 he became involved in a plan to set up a glassworks at Prestonpans proposed by the Italian portrait painter Isaac Visitella and his brothers Cornelius and Christopher. This project was not successful. Hope argued that the projected production would exceed demand. Hope presented the exiled Charles II with a nugget of Scottish gold and met him at Falkland Palace in July 1651. Hope was interested in gypsum plaster which was found in Maxwellhaugh near Kelso.

Hope was succeeded by his oldest surviving son, John, who lost his life by the wreck of HMS Gloucester in 1682.