Henry Home, Lord Kames

Henry Home was a lawyer from Berwickshire who joined the Faculty of Advocates in 1723. When appointed a judge in 1752 he took the title Lord Kames. He was a leading agricultural improver of his day, most notably at Blair Drummond on the estates of his wife, where he partially reclaimed large areas of the huge Flanders Moss. 

He had a finger in many pies, helping to manage those estates forfeited by Jacobite landowners after the ’45 Rebellion; and he was also on the Board of Trustees for Encouraging the Fisheries, Arts and Manufactures of Scotland.

As Lord Kames, he became a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, a founder member of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society and a luminary of the Select Society; and as a man of ideas he was author of many books, covering everything from philosophy, history, literature and law to weighty tomes on agricultural improvement: ‘The Gentleman Farmer’ (1776) was over 400 pages long. His protégés included David Hume, James Boswell and Adam Smith.

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