FlemingClans.com

23rd chief - Charles Fleming, 7th Earl of Wigtown and 12th Lord Fleming
(before 1669 - 1747)
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Charles, 7th Earl of Wigtown, was the last of the Fleming chiefs. A Catholic and Jacobite who spent many years in France, he held the earldom for only three years. When he died unmarried in 1747 the earldom became dormant, and Scotland’s Fleming clan was left without a chief.

Catholic and Jacobite

Charles was born in the late 1660s, the younger son of William Fleming, 5th Earl of Wigtown, and Henrietta Seton. Like his brother John, he was raised a Catholic under the influence of their tutor, the Earl of Perth. In May 1689 he entered the Scots College at Douai, which described him as always very faithful to the Catholic religion and to his king. In 1690 his mother complained to the Scottish Parliament that her sons had been “perverted to popery” and sent to foreign seminaries.

Charles appears to have remained in France for many years. In 1704 the Presbytery of Glasgow included him on a list of Catholics submitted to the Privy Council, and between 1710 and 1714 he wrote several letters seeking permission to return to Scotland.

The Fifteen

During the Jacobite rising of 1715 Charles attended a meeting at the Earl Marischal’s house in February 1716 and then “went along with the army”. The rising collapsed soon afterwards, and the Old Pretender returned to France.

Seventh earl

Charles succeeded his brother as 7th Earl of Wigtown and 12th Lord Fleming on 10 February 1744. Within eighteen months Prince Charles Edward Stuart landed in Scotland, and in 1745 part of the Jacobite army passed through Kirkintilloch, where the Wigtown estate suffered badly. Charles also faced lawsuits from the Royal Bank of Scotland and from William Stirling of Herbertshire over teinds owed for forty years.

The last chief

Charles died unmarried on 16 May 1747 and was buried at Airth on 22 May. With him the male line of the Lords Fleming came to an end. The earldom of Wigtown became dormant, and the clan, which had been led by twenty-three chiefs since Bertolf came to Scotland, became an armigerous clan without a recognised chief. His nickname is simply “the Last”.

The family estates of Biggar and Cumbernauld passed to his niece, Lady Clementina Fleming, and through her to the Elphinstone family.