Constituency : Dunbartonshire 1892-5, Forfarshire 1897-1909
John scored one of the Liberals' most striking gains when he took Dunbartonshire which had been solidly Conservative since 1841. He won by 293 votes.
John was the son of a Scottish baronet and officer in the Bengal army. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Wellington College. He went on to Sandhurst and took part in the Sudan campaign. He became a captain in 1887. He served as aide de camp to Lord Aberdeen in Ireland and India. He was a Progressive councillor in London from 1889 to 1892.
John was defeated in 1895 by 33 votes but came back in for Forfarshire in 1897. He was parliamentary secretary to Campbell-Bannerman for a number of years.
In 1904 John married Aberdeen's daughter Marjorie.
The following year John became Secretary of State for Scotland, a post he held until 1912.
In 1909 John was elevated to the peerage as Baron Pentland . He oversaw the introduction of female suffrage in local authorities but his attempts at land reform through the taxation of land values were thwarted by the Lords.
John resigned in 1912 to become Governor of Madras. He oversaw the industrialisation of Madras to serve the British war effort leading to the shelling of the oil plant at Madras by the German cruiser SMS Emden. He also authorised the arrest of the suffragette Annie Besant who was agitating for Indian Home Rule in 1917. John thought the Indians were easy to appease and advised Montagu in 1917 "We ought to play with them, humour them in politics and discuss with them industrial development, education and social reform ; but there is no necessity for doing anything". He retired in 1919.
He died in 1925 aged 64.
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