Middleton, Charles, 2nd Earl of Middleton (1640 -1719)

Charles Middleton was the eldest son of John Middleton, 1st Earl of Middleton, and Grizel daughter of Sir James Durham of Pitkerrow. He escaped to France as a child and returned at the Restoration in 1660. He served as Lieutenant Colonel of the Holland Regiment in 1674, Envoy to Vienna 1680, Secretary of State for Scotland 1682 1684, and an extra Lord of Session 1684 1686. He was a Tory Member of Parliament for Winchester 1685 1687. One of the few noblemen who offered his services to James II after the Prince of Orange had embarked for England, he was committed to the Tower of London in 1692, but released on bail on the 17 August, and joined the exiled king in France in 1693. He was tried in his absence for High Treason by the Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh on the 23 July 1694, and attainted on the 2 July 1695. From his arrival in France in 1693 until 1702, and from 1703 until 1713, he had chief control of the affairs of the exiled Court of St Germains. Created Earl of Monmouth by the Old Pretender, he died at St. Germain en Laye on the 8 August 1719. His daughter Elizabeth, who survived all her brothers, seems to have inherited his books. She married Edward Drummond, 6th titular Duke of Perth, and died sine prole, at Paris, at a great age in or after 1773. The library of the 6th Duke of Perth was sold in Paris in December 1760, and with it the books of the Earl of Middleton. A great many of the Duke of Perth’s books were bought by the Marquis de Pompignan. At his death his library was bought for the Collège Royal de Toulouse in 1785, and became the property of the Bibliothèque municipale de Toulousein 1804. Of the books from the Duke of Perth’s library, some thirty-five or so had belonged to the Earl of Middleton. Perhaps a dozen of these had one or other of his armorial stamps. Some early books have his signature, and those he acquired while living in France have an engraved armorial bookplate. Guigard attributes the stamp of arms to Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale, giving a reference to a book in the Bibliothèque nationale. There is a superficial resemblance between the two coats, but in the Middleton arms the field is party per fess or and gules, and in the Maitland arms the lion is couped at every joint.

Stamp(s) Stamp Information
Middleton, Charles, 2nd Earl of Middleton  (1640 - 1719) (Stamp 1) Title: Middleton, Charles, 2nd Earl of Middleton (1640 - 1719) (Stamp 1)
Arms: Party per fess a lion rampant within a double tressure flory counterflory
Dimensions (height x width): 74mm x 60mm
Coronet: Earl
Heraldic Charges: lion rampant within, Heraldic Charges: tressure, double, flory counterflory
Middleton, Charles, 2nd Earl of Middleton  (1640 - 1719) (Stamp 2) Title: Middleton, Charles, 2nd Earl of Middleton (1640 - 1719) (Stamp 2)
Crest: On a tower a lion rampant
Dimensions (height x width): 51mm x 41mm
Coronet: Earl
Heraldic Charges: lion rampant, Heraldic Charges: tower