Defoe and the Clerks of Penicuik

Abstract

Common opinion is that Defoe was English working for the Union in Edinburgh in 1706. He was, but he was also an agent for Scots who helped him at least as much as Robert Harley did.' In Scotland, there were men who believed strongly that the Union was in the best interests of their country, and Defoe seems to have shared their vision of more prosperous future. Two of these men, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik and his son, left number of journals and letters which give us what may be the best surviving picture of the impression that Defoe made on Scots gentility and which help explain how Defoe was able to begin immediately to write persuasively on the affairs of country in which he had never been. Defoe met the younger John Clerk in London in the early summer of 1706 when Clerk was Commissioner to negotiate the Treaty of Union. Clerk was young man on his way up. He had been educated at Glasgow and Leyden, been student of Corelli's, and correspondent of Herman Boerhaave. He was Scots M.P. by 1702 and, in 1705, was part of commission to investigate proposals for currency reform and member of the Council of Trade. His exemplary work and membership in the Duke of Queensberry's circle earned him membership on the Commission for the Treaty with primary responsibility for helping negotiate the financial clauses.2 Clerk would rise to the position of Baron of the Scottish Court of Exchequer in 1707 and was recognized as a greatly learned man whose fine taste earned him comparisons with Richard Boyle, Lord Burlington.3 Defoe had been introduced to two of Clerk's friends, Hew and David Dalrymple, and perhaps to Clerk himself, in early May by merchant, George Scott,