[image error] Any marriage might be considered something of a risk but there have been few as risky as Janet Dalrymple's in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Janet was the daughter of James Dalrymple, 1st Lord Stair, a whiggish lawyer and politician with an eye to securing the further rise of his ambitious family. His daughter, meanwhile, had her eye on the penniless Archibald, 3rd Lord Rutherford, a man of exactly opposite political opinions (being a firm Jacobite) and declining fortunes.

Janet a...