London, 8vo. 5. ‘Speech of the Right Honourable Sylvester Douglas in the House of Commons, Tuesday, April the 23d (sic), 1799, on seconding the Motion of the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the House to agree with the Lords in an Address to his Majesty relative to a Union with Ireland,’ Dublin, 1799, 8vo. 6. ‘Lyric Poems. By the late James Mercer, Esq. With an account of the Life of the Author, by Sylvester (Douglas), Lord Glenbervie,’ 3rd edit. London, 1806, 8vo. Major Mercer, who was Glenbervie's brother-in-law, died on 27 Nov. 1804. His life is not contained in the previous editions of the poems, though they were also edited by Glenbervie. 7. ‘The first Canto of Ricciardetto, translated from the Italian of Forteguerri, with an Introduction concerning the principal Romantic, Burlesque, and Mock Heroic Poets, and Notes, Critical and Philological,’ London, 1822, 8vo. A smaller volume containing this translation was privately printed in 1821 without the name of the translator. A lithograph portrait of ‘Sylvester (Douglas), Lord Glenbervie, nat. 13 May 1744,’ forms the frontispiece to the edition of 1822.
[Index to Leyden Students (Index Soc. Publ. 1883, xiii.), p. 29; Burke's Extinct Peerage (1883), p. 179; Rose's Biog. Dict. (1848), vii. 126; The Georgian Era (1833), ii. 540; Gent. Mag. 1823, xciii. pt. i. 467–8, 1819, lxxxix. pt. ii. 87, 468–9; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. ii. 188, 202, 208, 224, 262, 276, 684; Cat. of Oxford Graduates (1851), p. 193; Honours Register of Oxford Univ. (1883), p. 195; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. v. 176–7; London Gazettes; Haydn's Book of Dignities; Lincoln's Inn Registers; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
DOUGLAS, THOMAS (fl. 1661), divine, whose parentage is not known, was rector of St. Olave's, Silver Street, London. He was one of the ministers ejected at the Restoration, after which event he gave rise to some scandal and left the country. He travelled abroad for some time, and then settled at Padua, where he took the degree of M.D. He returned to London and practised medicine, but running into debt he went to Ireland, where he died in obscurity. In 1661, while still minister at St. Olave's, Douglas published ‘Θεάνθροπος, or the great Mysterie of Godlinesse, opened by way of Antidote against the great Mysterie of Iniquity now awork in the Romish Church.’ It is possible that he is identical with the Thomas Douglas who published in 1668 a translation from the French entitled ‘Vitis Degeneris, or the Degenerate Plant, being a treatise of Ancient Ceremonies,’ a work which was reissued in the following years under the name of ‘A History of Ancient Ceremonies.’
[Calamy and Palmer's Nonconform. Mem. i. 171; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
DOUGLAS, THOMAS, fifth Earl of Selkirk, Baron Daer and Shortcleuch, in the Scotch peerage (1771–1820), was the seventh and youngest son of Dunbar (Hamilton) Douglas, the fourth earl. He was born at the family seat, St. Mary's Isle, Kirkcudbrightshire, on 20 June 1771, and was educated at Edinburgh University, his name frequently appearing upon the class-books of the professors between 1786 and 1790. Here he formed one of the original nineteen members of ‘The Club,’ a society for the discussion of social and political questions. Another original member was (Sir) Walter Scott, one of Douglas's closest friends.
At this time the highlands of Scotland were in a critical state. The country was fast becoming pastoral, and the peasantry were often evicted wholesale and compulsorily emigrated. Douglas, although unconnected with the highlands by birth or property, undertook an extensive tour through that wild region in 1792, prompted ‘by a warm interest in the fate of the natives.’ It convinced him that emigration from the highlands was unavoidable, and he saw the need of some controlling hand to direct it as far as possible towards the British colonies. The Napoleonic wars, however, for a time prevented him from proposing any definite plan. On 24 May 1799 his father died, and he succeeded to the earldom of Selkirk. His six elder brothers had all died before that date, the last in 1797, when he assumed the title of Lord Daer and Shortcleuch.
During this delay he was evidently devising plans. Before 1802 his attention had been drawn to the advantages offered to colonists by the fertile valley of the Red River (now Manitoba) in the Hudson's Bay Company's territories. On 4 April in that year he memorialised Lord Pelham, then home secretary, upon the subject. The government of the time declined to take the matter up, but offered the earl ‘every reasonable encouragement’ if he would himself carry out his proposals. Official advice led him to relinquish his intended inland situation for a maritime one, and the island of St. John (now Prince Edward's Island) was selected. A considerable grant of crown lands having been secured, eight hundred selected emigrants were got together. These arrived during August 1803, and the earl himself soon after. Many difficulties were at first encountered, but in the following month Selkirk was able to leave
