Thomas Dundas

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

Thomas Dundas was elected as MP to represent the constituency of Orkney & Shetland on 6th May 1768, replacing James Douglas, he served until 1771 when he was replaced by his son Thomas Dundas.
Born c. 1710, Thomas Dundas was also Burgess of Edinburgh, Deputy Lyon King at Arms, and Commissioner of Police. He died on 10th April 1786.

"Order him to have his teeth put in and to dress as an Englishman" so wrote Laurence Dundas about his son "Thomie" to his wife in London ordering herself … not to leave London, before Thomas was presented at court. What looks like a footnote in history is in fact the key to understand the politics of the Dundas family. When Laurence Dundas, an enormously wealthy self-made capitalist, a merchant contractor useful to the Duke of Cumberlands army in the 1745 rebellion and with an established fortune thanks to profitable army contracts in the Seven Years War, bought the Earldom of Orkney in 1766 he was less interested in the estate or the adjoined fishing rights but in the advantage to gain control of the parliamentary seat.

Subsequently his brother, the said Thomas Dundas, was duly elected by the unanimous decision of eight assembled voters in 1768. Including the Orkney and Shetland seat Laurence Dundas controlled at least nine parliamentary seats with his "man-of-business", Colonel James Masterton acting as whip to this group of MPs. He was a new kind of superior and his primary interest was not to squeeze the last penny from rent and skat – in fact he had the reputation of being an "easy landlord". His interest was to achieve aristrocratic respectability and to secure his East India and Carribean businesses through the exercise of political power.

This brought both the Dundases – Laurence as owner of the earldom estates and his brother Thomas as MP – in opposition to the old and established landed gentry of the earldom and led to a split of the electorate into a Dundas faction including those under their patronage like the representatives of the Honyman and Balfour families and the rest which was for most of the time represented by members of the Baikie or Trail families. This was the beginning of a bigger conflict within the Orkney and Shetland constituancy which lasted well beyond the midth of the nineteenth century.