The direct line of Breadalbane died out in George III.’s reign with the third earl, whose son, Lord Glenorchy, had predeceased him, leaving a widow, known, like the Countess of Huntingdon, as a patroness of evangelical preachers, who came to end her life at Matlock. For an heir, the family had to cast back more than a century to one of the collateral branches. Campbell of Carwhin, who succeeded to the earldom in 1782, at the age of twenty, had a long and prosperous tenure, swelling the family wealth by his marriage with a great Scottish heiress. She was daughter of David Gavin, whose father, a poor Angus weaver, had lamented over the son as not taking to his own trade, consorting rather with smugglers, Dutchmen, and such-like; but the family ne’er-do-weel, drifting abroad, made a princely fortune at Hamburg, and came back to set up as a Berwickshire laird.
This accession of wealth the earl used in carrying out improvements on his large property, adding to it, and building the modern Taymouth Castle. At William IV.’s coronation he was raised to the marquisate. His son, the second marquis, could boast of being able to ride a hundred miles on his own land westward, for, after all, it was towards their native seas that the Campbells stretched out, getting no farther inland than Aberfeldy, beyond the St. Petersburg of their possessions. He it was who in 1842 sumptuously entertained Queen Victoria at Taymouth, when she seems to have caught that love of the Highlands that went so far to set a fashion, delighted with the display of kilts, reels, and pipers, in a blaze of torchlight and a din of loyal salvos. Lord Breadalbane then kept a prince of pipers, John Mackenzie, to whom he communicated the Queen’s wish to find for her own service such an one as himself. “Impossible, my lord!” was the proud musician’s answer.
The second marquis, who, while Lord Ormelie, had sat in the Reformed Parliament as a Whig, lived in esteem and prosperity till 1862, but would perhaps have given up half his possessions for a son. At his death, the new marquisate became extinct; and once more the clan had to look back some generations for an heir to the estate and the earldom, this time with appeal to law in a trial not yet forgotten. There were popularly said to be some fourscore competitors for the prize. One of them was a schoolfellow of mine, who invited me to Taymouth, when he should come into his kingdom, but that hospitality fell through. The real contest lay between Campbell of Glenfalloch and Campbell of Boreland, both descended from the nearest collateral, a Glenfalloch who died 1791. The question arose in the liberal view of Scots law as to proof of marriage. The elder son, while a subaltern in an English regiment, had eloped with the wife of one Christopher Ludlow, grocer and apothecary at Chipping Sodbury. This husband died three years later, both before and after which date the lady had marched with Campbell’s regiment as his wife. Her son, through whom the claim descended, was born after she became legally free to marry again; and the dispute mainly turned upon this delicate point: whether a union begun in adultery could be confirmed by the usual evidence of habit and repute marriage. It was shown that the lady had been received at Glenfalloch as the heir’s wife, that she had drawn a pension as his widow when he died Quartermaster of the Breadalbane Fencibles, and, what seemed much to the purpose, that the younger branch had not contested her son’s legitimacy as heir of Glenfalloch, nor till the tempting prize of the Breadalbane succession came in view. On these grounds, the Courts presumed that eloping couple to have taken themselves as husband and wife, so taken by the world in their lifetime: then their descendant must be recognised head of the family.