John Drummond, 4th Duke of Perth

Who was John Drummond, 4th Duke of Perth?

John Drummond, titular seventh Earl and fourth Duke of Perth, was a Scottish nobleman and Jacobite.

John Drummond was the younger son of James Drummond, fifth earl and second titular Duke of Perth, and Lady Jane Gordon, daughter of George Gordon, 1st Duke of Gordon. He was the grandson of James Drummond, 4th Earl of Perth, who was stripped of his titles for taking part in the Jacobite Rising of 1715. However, the 4th Earl was created Duke of Perth by James Edward Stuart, the "Old Pretender", in the Jacobite Peerage. The Drummonds continued to claim both titles, though they were never recognised by the de facto British government.

John Drummond was brought up by his mother at Drummond Castle till his father's death in 1720, when his mother took him and his elder brother James to France. This step gave great offence to the boy's kinsmen and to the Scottish Jacobites, who feared that it might entail a confiscation of the estates, and would be held up to odium by the whigs. They accordingly urged the Pretender to interfere, but he replied that as she pleaded her husband's repeated injunctions, and her anxiety for a Catholic education for her children, he could do nothing.