[A1706/10/47]¹

[Petition for Margaret Bowden]

To his grace her majesty's high commissioner and the right honourable estates of parliament,

The petition of Margaret Bowden, widow of Captain John Baillie, son to the laird of Littlegill,

Humbly shows,

That my said deceased husband served as a lieutenant in Colonel Buchan's regiment both at home and abroad until the said regiment was broke in Flanders in 1697, and in the year 1699 went with the Rising Sun as a captain and overseer to the Darien settlement, and died in the place in February 1700; and being but lately married to me before he went from this place, he was provided by me and my friends with money and other effects, which I never got any return of, nor ever had anything by him. And likewise I had the misfortune to lose my brother James Bowden, and all his effects, which were considerable, in the said expedition.

May it therefore please your grace and the right honourable estates to consider my circumstantiate case and to grant me such allowance as your lordships shall think fit, for repairing in some measure the great loss I sustained through the aforesaid expedition. And your petitioner shall ever pray.

Edinburgh, 19 March 1707

Her majesty's high commissioner and the estates of parliament, having considered this bill, they grant to the petitioner what surplus and excrescence there shall be of the dead stock of the African and Indian Company over and above the £1,577 11s sterling already disposed of and distributed by former orders of parliament and committee, and the sum of £250 sterling ordered to be paid to [John Lindsay], earl of Crawford not exceeding £100 sterling.

[James Ogilvy, earl of] Seafield, chancellor, in the presence of the lords of parliament