Archibald Douglas 5th earl of Douglas

Archibald Douglas, 5th earl of Douglas 1391?-1439, Scottish nobleman; son of Archibald Douglas, 4th earl of Douglas. He fought in France for the French against the English in 1421 and persuaded his father in 1423 to go to France. Although Douglas was one of the Scottish nobles who accompanied James I home when that king returned (1424) from his long English captivity, James so distrusted the Douglas power and loyalty that the earl was twice imprisoned for short times by royal order. After James's death in 1437, Douglas was lieutenant general of the kingdom in the minority of James II and the most powerful man in Scotland.

Douglas, Archibald Douglas, 5th earl of [S] (c.1390–1439). Elder son of Archibald, 4th earl of Douglas, and Margaret Stewart, daughter of Robert III. The future 5th earl took a leading part in Scottish military assistance to France from 1419. As earl of Wigtown, he joined John Stewart, earl of Buchan [S], in leading Scottish expeditionary forces of 1419 and 1421; in March 1421 Buchan and Wigtown won the spectacular victory of Baugé in Anjou, killing Henry V's brother Thomas, duke of Clarence.

Succeeding his father as earl of Douglas following Verneuil (1424), Archibald had to walk the political tightrope of defending Douglas family interests while maintaining reasonable relations with James I. Despite a brief imprisonment in Lochleven castle (1431), he was broadly successful. Following the king's assassination in February 1437, Douglas was appointed lieutenant-general to lend respectability to the shaky new government. However, he died of plague at Restalrig near Edinburgh.

Norman Macdougall

Queensberry, William Douglas, 5th duke of [S] (1725–1810). Son of William Douglas, earl of March [S], whom he succeeded at the age of 6, Douglas became duke in 1778 when his cousin's sons died young. From 1760 until 1789 he was a lord of the bedchamber to George III and received the Thistle in 1763. From 1761 to 1786 he was a Scottish representative peer and was then created a British peer as Baron Douglas. After wobbling in the Regency crisis of 1789, he was deprived of his position in the bedchamber. A small, irritable, and foul-mouthed man of stupendous wealth, he was well known in gambling and racing circles and as a man about town. In his declining years, as Old Q, toothless and deaf, he was constantly to be seen on the balcony of his house in Piccadilly, watching life go by, an antiquated beau.

J. A. Cannon