Machiavellian tactics, the playing-off of one side against the other while pretending to serve both, had become second nature to the Hays of Erroll. The conclusion drawn by one government spy about the 14th Countess, who inherited the title on the death of her brother, the unmarried 13th Earl, was that she was a ‘very intriguing and wily lady as is any in Britain’. Being an ardent supporter of the Jacobite cause in the lead-up to their last rebellion, in 1745, whenever circumstances called for secrecy she ‘had written for concealment in milk’. Obviously, the 14th Countess’s diplomatic skills were also considerable, for she managed to keep her titles and estates, whereas many of her Hay relatives’ reputations suffered for their involvement in the Forty-five. She was also greatly admired for her physical courage: ‘that magnificent old lady … only with considerable difficulty’ was dissuaded from leading the Clan in person to fight for Bonnie Prince Charlie, whose army set off for England under the command of her chamberlain.
In 1758, when he succeeded his childless aunt, James Boyd, the 15th Earl of Erroll, took the surname of Hay. Having officiated as Lord High Constable at the coronation of George III, and while under suspicion of being both Catholic and Jacobite, he was entrusted with conducting the King’s fiancée, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, to London – which inevitably involved him in huge expense, in addition to that incurred by attending the coronation. According to the Hay family, the escort mission was deliberately and needlessly drawn out in order to ruin James financially, so much was he mistrusted.6
Nor did the 16th Earl, George, manage to inspire confidence in those who held the reins of power. Apparently, while drunk, he had blabbed about an official secret entrusted to him by Mr Pitt, the Prime Minister. Having leaked this ‘confidence ill-advisedly to a so-called friend, who promptly published it together with the source … he determined to destroy himself’ and committed suicide soon after his faux pas.7 To the Errolls who came after, George Hay’s legendary remorse was a stark warning against intoxication. Indeed, George’s descendants seem to have learned from somewhere – perhaps their forebear’s indiscretion had been but a momentary lapse in an otherwise dutiful career, or maybe his suicide had galvanised the next generation into facing responsibilities at a young age – that it was high time to clean up the Erroll family record.
The 17th Earl’s son and heir died honourably – in the typical fashion of his ancestors, defending king and country – at the battle of Quatre-Bras in 1815 at the age of only seventeen. Also contributing to the reversal of the Erroll fortunes, Joss’s great-great-grandfather, the 18th Earl of Erroll, William George Hay, agreed to marry one of the future King William IV’s illegitimate daughters. In 1820, through this match at the age of nineteen, the Earl re-established favour with the English monarchy. Joss’s great-great-grandmother, Eliza Fitzclarence, was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Clarence and his mistress Mrs Jordan. Eliza was one of ten children, all given the surname Fitzclarence, but popularly known as the ‘Great Illegitimates’. Several beguiling aspects of Mrs Jordan’s character would turn up in Joss; besides his gift for the theatrical, he would possess her ability to charm for ever those who fell in love with him. Friends and lovers alike would remark that he was the most entertaining of companions, as much for his joie de vivre as for his bawdiness.8
The Duke of Clarence acceded to the throne in 1830 as William IV and thereupon improved the status of the ‘Great Illegitimates’. His eldest son was given the title Earl of Munster; the rest were awarded the style and precedence of children of a marquess. In the hand-out of honours, as Eliza’s husband, Joss’s great-great-grandfather was made a peer of the United Kingdom, styling himself Baron Kilmarnock, and was appointed Master of the Horse to Queen Adelaide. The Errolls stayed at court until the King’s death in 1837.9
Joss’s great-grandfather, the 19th Earl, married another Eliza, whom he met in Montreal. This Eliza, the daughter of General the Hon. Sir Charles Gore, was a person of enormous spirit. She accompanied her husband to the Crimea, and throughout the campaign they slept rough, forgoing even the simple comfort of a campbed. Battle-weary, they both returned to Slains to face the daunting task of keeping the estate from bankruptcy. Eventually, in 1872, Eliza became Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria. When her husband died at Slains in 1891, she buried him at Cruden, outliving him by twenty-five years. Joss got to know her on his intermittent visits to Scotland and also while he was at Eton. Towards the end of her life Eliza occupied a grace-and-favour dwelling at Kew, where she died in 1916.10
A portrait of the 19th Earl which hung over the chimney-piece at Slains inspired a character in a Bram Stoker novel. Bram Stoker visited Slains at least twice and, having hiked along the two-hundred-foot cliffs to visit Joss’s great-grandfather, found at Slains ‘the furious contentment he wanted’.11 Inspired by meeting the Hay family, Stoker chose the original castle Slains, then in ruins, as the setting for his Dracula book.12 With so vivid a past on which to draw, small wonder that the Hays bobbed up in literature. Joss, too, would appear en passant – posthumously – in works of fiction. In Justine, the first volume in the Alexandria Quartet set in Egypt just before the Second World War, Lawrence Durrell features ‘Erroll’ as a member of a dawn duck-shooting expedition, during which a political assassination occurs.
Over the centuries the Errolls played host to many distinguished visitors at Slains, just as Joss would do one day in Africa. The great English lexicographer Samuel Johnson visited Slains with Boswell during their tour of the Highlands. Johnson concluded that ‘the situation was the noblest he had ever seen’.13
By the time Joss was born, Slains, whose 4,249 acres produced in 1903 an annual income of £9,599, was still the principal residence of his grandfather the 20th Earl. The Erroll family also owned Walls, at Ravenglass in Cumbria, a home with a landholding of its own – which, in the long-held Erroll tradition of wealth-increasing marriages, had originally come into the Erroll family through Joss’s grandmother – and an estate in Northumberland known as Etal.14 Joss’s grandfather was Lord-in-Waiting to King Edward VII, and during his reign lived at Carlton Terrace in London.
The picture that emerges of Joss’s father shows a responsible and pensive young man. Married at twenty-four, he set out on his career as a diplomat. His first posting was to the British Legation in Brussels, as an attaché. He also harboured literary ambitions and had quietly taken up writing fiction in his last year at Eton. Inspiration seems to have followed Bram Stoker’s first visit to Slains. After the novelist left, Victor began ‘sloping off’ to work in his father’s library, writing away, drawing on images of his own ancestral pile for his fictional ‘Glamrie Castle’. During his time at Cambridge, when the Diplomatic Corps already beckoned, he never gave up his dream of becoming a writer. His first novel, Ferelith, was published in 1903 and was warmly received.15
Many family characteristics showed up in the 22nd Earl. His genetic inheritance, at least, was rich, even if in material terms he was heir to little. His creativity and the easy handling of power that had been bred into him would serve him well when he assumed political responsibilities in Kenya, even if his atavistic defiance of authority did not. Indeed his life was to be yet another colourful and dramatic chapter in the family history – but with important departures from family tradition. Like his ancestors he would enjoy political intrigue, but unlike them he had no taste