General Thomas Graham, 1st Baron Lynedoch, (19 October 1748 – 18 December 1843) was a British Army officer and politician. After his education at Oxford, he inherited a substantial estate in Scotland, married and settled down to a quiet career as a landowning gentleman. However, with the death of his wife, when he was aged 42, he immersed himself in military (and later political) career, during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The historian James Taylor described Graham as "tall, square-shouldered, and erect, his limbs sinewy and remarkably strong. His complexion was dark, with full eyebrows, firm-set lips, and an open, benevolent air. His manners and address were frank, simple, and polished".
Thomas Graham was the third and only surviving son of Thomas Græme of Balgowan, in Perthshire and Lady Christian Hope, a daughter of the 1st Earl of Hopetoun and sister to the 2nd Earl of Hopetoun. He was born in 1748, and was educated at home by the Reverend Fraser, minister of Moneydie, and afterwards by James Macpherson, the collector and translator of Ossian's poems. He went up to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1766, and the following year he inherited the family estate following the death of his father.
On leaving college, he spent several years on the Continent, where he learnt French, German and Spanish. On his return to Scotland he applied himself to the management and improvement of his estate, enclosing his lands, erecting farmhouses and offices, granting leases to his tenants, encouraging them to implement improved methods of husbandry, and to cultivate potatoes and turnips on a large scale, which had hitherto been regarded as garden plants. He also set himself to cultivate improved breeds of horses, cattle, and sheep.
In 1785, he purchased the estate of Lynedoch or Lednock, situated in the valley of the Almond, where he planted trees and oak coppices, and improved the sloping banks bordering the stream. Fond of horses and dogs, and distinguished for his skill in country sports, he rode with the foxhounds, and accompanied the Duke of Atholl—who subsequently became his brother-in-law—in grouse-shooting and deer-stalking on the Atholl moors. He later said that he owed much of that education of the eye with reference to ground and distances, a useful talent for a military man, to his deer-hunting at this period of his life in the Forest of Atholl.
In a 1772 by-election, Graham stood as a Whig a candidate for Perth, in opposition to James Murray of Strowan, brother of the Duke of Atholl, but was defeated by a majority of only six votes out of 100. He remained active in the political field but withdrew shortly before the general election of 1774, having become engaged to the Honorable Mary Cathcart, second daughter of the 9th Lord Cathcart and Jane Hamilton, Mary's sister was betrothed to the 3rd Duke of Atholl's son and heir.
In 1774, Graham married Mary Cathcart and on the same day her elder sister Jane became Duchess of Atholl. "Jane," wrote 9th Lord Cathcart, "has married, to please herself, John, Duke of Atholl, a peer of the realm; Mary has married Thomas Graham of Balgowan, the man of her heart, and a peer among princes." A solicitous husband, when his wife discovered on the morning of an Edinburgh ball that she had left her jewel-box at Balgowan, Graham rode the 90 miles (140 km) to and from Balgowan using relays of horses to ensure that his wife would have her jewellery at the ball.
Her portrait by Thomas Gainsborough was highly acclaimed when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1777. The painting Portrait of Mrs Mary Graham was covered over by Graham after her death. The painting now hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Graham spent the next eighteen years as a quiet country gentleman, spending his time on riding and sports, studying the classics and making occasional visits to London and Edinburgh. When he was driving to a party with his wife and her sister Duchess of Atholl, his carriage was stopped in Park Lane, London by a highwayman demanding money, jewels, and watches at gunpoint, while two accomplices seized the horses' heads, Graham, who was on the opposite side of the carriage, leapt across the ladies to the carriage-door, and collaring the assailant, threw him to the ground. Then, drawing his sword, which at the time formed part of a dress suit, he threatened to run the man through if his associates, who were holding the horses' heads, attempted to come to his assistance. They immediately fled, and the prostrate highwayman was arrested.
Mary Graham's health began to decline, and in the spring of 1792, on the recommendation of her medical adviser, she went to the south of France with her husband and sister. However, during the voyage she died off the coast near Hyères, in the south of France, on 26 June 1792. Her grieving husband hired a barge to take the casket ashore. However, on his way to Bordeaux French Revolutionary militia desecrated the casket and the body of his wife looking for contraband and valuables. Eventually Graham returned to Scotland where he interred her remains in a mausoleum he had specially built in the churchyard at Methven, Perth and Kinross. Graham would be laid to rest in the same tomb fifty years later.
Mary Graham is commemorated in a four-part Scottish fiddle tune composed in her honor, entitled "The Honourable Mrs. Graham of Balgowan."
The loss of his wife preyed deeply upon Graham's mind, and first he set out for twelve months of foreign travel. However, still overwhelmed by great sorrow, and now in his forty-third year, he tried to drown the thought of his loss by adopting a military career. Before the incident with Mary's coffin near Toulouse, Graham had sympathised with the French and their revolutionary ideals but from that point on he detested them and saw his military career as a way to take revenge.
Sir Walter Scott, in his The Vision of Don Roderick, refers to the romantic motive which led the grieving husband of Mrs. Graham to devote himself to a military career:
'Nor be his praise o'erpast who strove to hide
Beneath the warrior's vest affection's wound;
Whose wish Heaven for his country's weal denied;
Danger and fate he sought, but glory found.
From clime to clime, where'er war's trumpets sound
The wanderer went; yet Caledonia! still