John Craufurd

John Craufurd (c. 1742–1814) was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1768 and 1790.

Craufurd was the son of Patrick Craufurd of Auchenames, Renfrew, and Crosbie and Drumsoy, Ayr and his wife Elizabeth Middleton, daughter of George Middleton of Errol, Perth and Kinross. He was educated at Eton College from 1753 to 1757 where he was nicknamed ‘The Fish’ for his avid curiosity. There, he was a schoolfellow of Stephen Fox. He entered Glasgow University in 1757 and undertook a Grand Tour with Fox from 1760 to 1761. Through Fox he became an intimate of the Holland House circle. After his tour he made annual visits abroad and was as well known in French as in English society. He was a small man with a weak physique but exceptionally intelligent. His temperament was mercurial swinging between poles of gaiety, wit and restless activity on one hand and melancholy, hypochondria and indolence on the other. He was a notorious gambler and in 1764 was one of the early members of Almack's. He hoped to succeed his uncle Col. John Craufurd as MP for Berwick but was disappointed. He spent most of 1765 with Horace Walpole and David Hume in Paris, and formed an attachment to Madame du Deffand, whose devotion to her ‘petit Craufurd’ lasted many years. Early in 1766 he went home deep in debt. He managed to pacify his angry father by ‘prudence, management and submission’, and persuaded him to make over to him the revenues of the Errol estate. Considering Scotland as ‘a vile country’ where ‘neither love nor wit can flourish’, he became bored in the company of his father and returned to fashionable London life. He was cultivating Grafton’s favour on behalf of his father and himself at the next election.

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