Sir John Clerk, 2nd Baronet

Sir John Clerk, 2nd Baronet (c. 1676 – 4 October 1755) was a Scottish politician, lawyer, judge and composer. He was vice-president of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, the pre-eminent learned society of the Scottish Enlightenment. Clerk was also the father of George Clerk-Maxwell and John Clerk of Eldin, and the great-great-grandfather of the famous physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Early life John Clerk was son of Sir John Clerk, 1st Baronet by his first wife Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Henderson of Elvington. He had a legal education first at University of Glasgow and then at Leiden University. During 1697 and 1698 he went on a Grand Tour. In 1699 he composed a cantata entitled Leo Scotiae Irratus (The Scottish Lion Angered), with Latin lyrics by his Dutch friend Herman Boerhaave, to celebrate the establishment of the Scottish trading colony at Darien by the Company of Scotland. In 1700 was admitted to the Scottish Bar. Between 1700 and 1730 he planted 300,000 trees on the grounds of the family estate at Penicuik House. Parliament He was a member of the Parliament of Scotland for Whithorn from 1702 to 1707, and a commissioner for the Union of Parliaments for the Whig Party: