English Men of Action
MONTROSE
[Illustration]
_First Edition 1892_
_Reprinted 1901, 1909_
[Illustration: THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE, K.G.
From a picture by Gerard Honthorst, painted at the Hague in 1649,
and presented by Montrose to the Queen of Bohemia; it is now in the
possession of the Earl of Dalhousie.]
MONTROSE
BY
MOWBRAY MORRIS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1909
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 1
CHAPTER II
FOR KING OR COVENANT 17
CHAPTER III
THE COVENANT 38
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST BISHOPS' WAR 58
CHAPTER V
THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR 79
CHAPTER VI
THE PLOT AND THE INCIDENT 100
CHAPTER VII
THE KING'S COMMISSION 124
CHAPTER VIII
THE CAMPAIGN IN THE HIGHLANDS
(TIPPERMUIR--ABERDEEN--INVERLOCHY) 139
CHAPTER IX
THE CAMPAIGN IN THE HIGHLANDS
(AULDEARN--ALFORD--KILSYTH) 157
CHAPTER X
PHILIPHAUGH 175
CHAPTER XI
THE LAST CAMPAIGN 191
CHAPTER XII
THE END 214
CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS
Tradition still points to a building in the town of Montrose as the
birthplace of James Graham, fifth Earl and first Marquis of the
line,--a building also fondly cherished by the antiquary as the last
to shelter the Old Chevalier on Scottish soil. Both traditions are of
course disputed, and both are easy to dispute. The title of Montrose
was taken, not from the town of that name but, from the estate of
Old Montrose on the opposite side of the bay, which a Graham had
acquired from Robert Bruce in exchange for the lands of Cardross in
Dumbartonshire. The name is said to be of Gaelic origin, _Alt_ or
_Ald Moineros_, the Burn of the Mossy Point; but the prefix must
have been understood in its Saxon significance at least as early
as the twelfth century, for in a charter of that time the place is
styled _Vetus Monros_. The old castle has long since disappeared. The
Covenanters naturally let slip no chance of despoiling the man they
most feared and hated in Scotland; and of the three stately homes
owned by the chief of the Grahams at the beginning of the seventeenth
century--Kincardine in Perthshire, Mugdock in Stirlingshire, and Old
Montrose in Forfarshire--all went down in the storm of civil war.
Montrose's parents seem to have resided at all three impartially, and
at the last their son may have been born. If this were so, it is easy
to understand how tradition, anxious for some visible memorial of a
famous man in the town bearing his name, should have transferred the
honour of his birth there across the few miles of water that separated
it from the old home of his family. But in fact nothing is certainly
known of the place or time of Montrose's birth, except that he was
fourteen years old when his father died in 1626, and must consequently
have been born some time in the year 1612.
The Grahams had long been conspicuous figures in Scottish history.
In 1298 Sir John Graham, the chosen comrade of Wallace, had fallen,
more fortunate than his friend, at the battle of Falkirk, in the
churchyard of which town his tomb may still be seen. In 1304, at the
capitulation which seemed for the moment to have closed the Scots'
struggle for independence, Sir David, the first proprietor of Old
Montrose, had been specially marked by the English king as a dangerous
man. Through the wars of Bruce and his immediate successors the
Grahams had stood stoutly by the national cause. In the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries they had three times intermarried with the royal
blood of Scotland. A son of Sir William Graham and the Princess Mary,
daughter of Robert the Third, was the first Primate of Scotland; and
as a Graham of a later generation had held the see of Dunblane, the
indifference expressed for bishops by their illustrious descendant
should at least not have been hereditary. One of Sir William's
grandsons, Patrick, was raised to the peerage as Lord Graham in 1451,
and in 1505 his grandson William was made Earl of Montrose by James
the Fourth, only to fall a few years later by his sovereign's side
at Flodden, where he commanded a division of the Scottish van. His
grandson fell with equal glory at Pinkie, a field only less disastrous
to his country than the field of Flodden. But the most conspicuous of
the ancestors of the Great Marquis was his grandfather John, who held
in succession the offices of Treasurer, Chancellor, and Viceroy of
Scotland. He seems to have possessed his full share of the turbulent
spirit which marked the Scottish aristocracy then and for long after
an era of milder manners had dawned upon the South. When nearly fifty
years old he was engaged in a memorable brawl on the High Street of
Edinburgh between a party of his own men and the followers of Sir John
Sandilands, by whom one of his clan had been murdered three years
previously. In this affair Lord Graham fought by his father's side,
and according to one account had been the first to begin the fray. But
the general tenor of his life seems to have been unusually peaceful.
He bore the part expected of a young Scottish nobleman in the State
ceremonies and pageants of the time, and after his succession to the
title performed such duties as his position imposed on him with credit
if with no particular ability. But his tastes evidently led him rather
to the life of a country gentleman than of a man of affairs, and after
his wife's death he seems to have devoted himself almost entirely to
the care of his children and his estates. His letters show him to
have been an affectionate and indulgent father, and the precision
of his accounts proves him an exact but not illiberal manager. His
stables were well stocked and well used, and, next to riding, archery
and golf were his favourite pastimes. In these his son followed him.
His skill at the targets and on the links is one of the few memorials
of Montrose's youth that time has spared for us; the grace and
dexterity of his horsemanship were famous even in an age and a country
where all men and most women rode, and were first learned, as such
accomplishments can only be learned, in boyhood, as he cantered on his
white pony at his father's side over the fair heritage of his sires.
But another of his father's tastes he did not share. The smell of
tobacco is said to have been peculiarly disagreeable to him, and sums
for tobacco and pipes are frequent in the old Earl's accounts.[1]
Montrose was the only son of six children. Their mother was Lady
Margaret Ruthven, daughter of the first Earl of Gowrie. It was
whispered that, like her brother, she dabbled in magic, and had
learned from a witch that her son was destined to be a firebrand to
his country. If the report be true--and the Black Art found credence
in Scotland long after Lady Margaret's day--she may well have sighed
to think that the wild fate which had befallen so many of her family
was to be the portion of her son. For the Ruthvens had both done
and suffered much evil in their time. Her grandfather, who had died
in exile, a fugitive from justice, was that grim lord who had risen
from a sick-bed to lead the murderers of Rizzio into their queen's
presence. Her father, who had perished on the scaffold, one of the
many victims of Arran's intrigues, had been concerned in the violent
attempt on the young king's liberty popularly known as the Raid of
Ruthven. Her two brothers had perished by the sword before their
sovereign's face, a fate which there is too good reason to believe
that they had destined for him. Of her own life nothing more is known
than that she bore her husband six children and died in 1618 when the
youngest was but three years old. Her two eldest daughters, Lilias
and Margaret, were married soon after her death: Lilias to Sir John
Colquhoun of Luss, a union destined to an abrupt and shameful end by
his flight with her sister Katherine, who had been received into
the family after her father's death and was then little more than a
child; but Margaret, though she did not live long to enjoy it, was
more fortunate in her marriage with Archibald, first Lord Napier of
Merchiston, a wise and good man who had been particularly recommended
by King James to his son as the most judicious and disinterested of
all Scottish statesmen. Of the others, Dorothea became the wife of Sir
James, afterwards Lord Rollo, and Beatrix, the youngest and apparently
her brother's favourite, the wife of the Master of Maderty, one of the
first to join Montrose under the standard of their king. Both Margaret
and Dorothea died young, the first probably about 1630, the latter in
1638; the deaths of Lilias and Beatrix are unrecorded; of Katherine
all traces seem to have been lost after her disappearance from her
sister's house in 1631.
In his twelfth year Lord Graham was sent to study at Glasgow under the
charge of a tutor, William Forrett. Master Forrett was most scrupulous
in keeping account of his pupil's expenses, and to these we owe all
our knowledge of this time. It is not much, and, as may be supposed,
is rather sumptuary than intellectual. There is mention of certain
books bought for the young student, and there is evidence that the
tutor borrowed them for his own reading. A Latin version of Xenophon's
_Hellenics_, the works of Seneca with Lipsius' commentary, and
Fairfax's translation of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ are among them;
but the lad's favourite book at this time would seem to have been
Raleigh's _History of the World_. Our information as to the domestic
establishment is more precise. It was abundant and costly, as was
then considered becoming the heir of an ancient and wealthy house.
He had a valet and two pages, plate, furniture, and linen of the best
quality, nor was the favourite white pony forgotten. His wardrobe was
handsomely stocked with suits of English cloth and embroidered cloaks,
and his pages wore scarlet liveries. He was lodged in a large house
belonging to Sir George Elphinstone of Blythswood, who had succeeded
Napier as Lord Justice-Clerk, and for part of the time little Lady
Katherine seems to have lived here with her brother. One pleasant fact
at least stands out clear from these dim memories; there was a warm
affection and regard between tutor and pupil. Years afterwards, when
Montrose had burned his boats by the victory of Tippermuir, one of
his first acts was to send for Master Forrett, to resume his part of
purse-bearer to his old pupil and to be tutor to his sons.
The sudden death of the father in November, 1626, broke up the
establishment at Glasgow, and in the following January Montrose,
then only in his fifteenth year, was entered at the University of
St. Andrews, as was then the general custom of the young Scottish
aristocracy. The funeral ceremonies of the dead Earl give a curious
picture of the age. They lasted for one month and nineteen days,
during which time all the kinsmen and friends of the family were
entertained in the castle of Kincardine. There were Sir William Graham
of Braco, the only brother, and the Earl of Wigton, the nephew of the
deceased, with the sons-in-law Lord Napier and Sir John Colquhoun.
All the branches of the clan were represented; Grahams of Claverhouse
and Fintrie, of Inchbrakie, Morphie, Orchill, and Balgowan, with many
neighbouring nobles and lairds, some of them destined in no long time
to be the bitter foes of the House they were now assembled to honour.
Many of the guests brought with them contributions to the funeral
feast as though to a solemn picnic; and other provisions of all kinds
were purchased in quantities sufficient to have stocked the Black
Douglas's terrible larder many times over, while the wine and ale were
reckoned by puncheons and buckets.
Montrose's life at college seems to have been much the same as that
of any young man of rank and fortune to-day at Christ Church or
Trinity. He mixed freely in all the diversions of the place and time,
hunted, hawked, and shot, played golf on the links of St. Andrews and
tennis in the court at Leith. At archery he was especially skilful.
In the second year of his residence he won the prize annually shot
for by the students, a silver arrow with a medal bearing the name
of the winner, and this he held against all competitors while he
remained at the University. His walls were hung with his bows,
just as to-day the successful cricketers and oarsmen of Oxford and
Cambridge arrange round their rooms the instruments of their triumphs.
Eminent in those accomplishments which always secure the admiration
of the young, profuse in hospitality to his friends, liberal to the
poor, and especially to those needy professors of the fine arts who
were never slow in those days to scent out a generous patron, he
evidently began even in these early years to engage the attention of
his contemporaries. His own estates and tenants were not neglected;
but his vacations were mostly passed in visits to the houses of his
brothers-in-law and of the heads of the various branches of his clan,
each of whom, according to the custom of the time, was considered as
in some sort the guardian of his young chief, though Lord Napier,
Sir William Graham of Claverhouse, and Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie
seem to have had the largest share in an office which with a young
gentleman of such cheerful tastes and dispositions can have been no
sinecure.
This merry life was not, however, without a check. In April, 1628, his
sister Dorothea was married from Napier's house in Edinburgh to young
James Rollo, and both then and afterwards at Carnock in Fife, where
the honeymoon was spent, there had been high festival. The result of
all this gaiety, alternated with days of hard exercise in the saddle
and on the links, was that the lad fell sick on his return to college.
For some days he was seriously ill. Two doctors were called in, and
to judge by their fees must have been assiduous in their visits. They
ordered their patient's long curls to be ruthlessly shorn, and they
ordered also a diet which strikes our modern notions as curiously
generous for a young fellow who, to speak plainly, had probably been
only over-eating himself. However, nature and the doctors together
triumphed--or, it may be, nature in spite of the doctors; and after
a few weeks' confinement, cheered by chess and cards and the gift of
a valuable hawk from his kinsman of Fintrie, Montrose was once more
about at his old occupations--one of the first recorded acts of his
convalescence being a breakfast-party given to some of his young
friends who had been most attentive to him in his sickness.
Of his studies we know much less than of his amusements. Sums for
the purchase and binding of books appear in his accounts, which were
kept as scrupulously by his new tutor, Master John Lambye, as by
Master Forrett at Glasgow, and from the same source we learn that he
had begun the study of Greek. Plutarch's Lives, Cæsar's Commentaries,
Lucan, and Quintus Curtius were now added to his library, though the
verses found written in some of them must belong to a later date.
Undergraduates, more happy than their descendants, were not in those
days pestered with examinations; but that Montrose at least attended
lectures after a fashion is clear from an entry in his tutor's
accounts of the sum of twenty-nine shillings paid to "a scholar who
writes my lord's notes in the school." But we may suppose that his
studies were directed more by his own tastes and dispositions than
by the curriculum of the place, which, as was the case not so long
ago in our English Universities, was not likely to be very sternly
enforced on the young aristocrats who then frequented St. Andrews. It
is, however, certain that he cannot have passed his time only in play.
More fortunate in some respects than another famous member of his
House, Montrose has never been called a block-head because he spelled
no better than the rest of his world. Among his contemporaries his
reputation stood high. "He was of very good parts," says Clarendon,
"which were improved by a good education;" and posterity has accepted
the verdict. His intellect was indeed quick and eager rather than
solid. His classical knowledge was that rather of a poet than a
scholar, and his poetical fame must be content to rest upon a few
stanzas which have taken their place among English lyrics; but it
will be seen that he had read and thought much on those problems of
government which the inhabitants of this kingdom were then seriously
addressing themselves to solve. A book published after his death by
Thomas Saintserf (son of the Bishop of Galloway), who had been his
secretary during the stormiest years of his life, bears witness,
in a dedication to his son, to the polished and scholarly tone of
the conversation he loved to encourage among his associates. We are
told, and may believe, that the few and enforced pauses in his short
tumultuous career were relieved by study; but no man turns to that
solace in his hours of disappointment who has not felt at least some
touch of its enchantment in his youth. We may therefore conclude that
he found some time amid the gaieties of St. Andrews to read the books
that had been bought for him.
Among the houses that Montrose visited was Kinnaird Castle, the seat
of Lord Carnegie, his nearest neighbour in Forfarshire. The families
were already connected by the marriage of Eupheme, Lord Carnegie's
youngest sister, to Robert Graham of Morphie. The tie was now to
be drawn closer.[2] There were six daughters at Kinnaird Castle,
and to the youngest of these, Magdalene, Montrose began to pay his
court. The wooing was not long. His guardians were well pleased to
see their young chief in a fair way to carry on the line; and that
chief, in youth as in manhood, was not wont to linger over anything
he undertook. He was married in the private chapel of the castle
on November 10th, 1629. The bride's age is not known, but as the
bridegroom can only just have completed his seventeenth year, they may
be fairly allowed the conventional title of the young couple. There
is a tradition that she had been previously courted by the Master of
Ogilvy, which, if true, might suggest that she had some advantage
of Montrose in years. But nothing is certainly known of her--of her
appearance, tastes, or temper, of the course of her married life or
her relations with her husband. She bore him four sons, the second
coming into the world just as his father attained his majority, and
died in 1645.
According to the terms of the marriage-contract the next three years
were passed at Kinnaird Castle, but no record of them exists. All
the bridegroom's books, papers, and furniture were removed from St.
Andrews to the castle. We catch a glimpse of him very soon after the
marriage on the links at Montrose, and we know that he was made a
burgess of Aberdeen shortly before the ceremony. We are also told that
after the novelty of his new life had worn off, he applied himself so
assiduously to his studies as to become, in the pious old chronicler's
words, "not merely a great master, but a critic in the Greek and
Latin," of which we may believe so much as we choose. But the only
visible memorial of this time is his portrait painted by Jameson, who
was then practising his art in his native town of Aberdeen. This was
Graham of Morphie's marriage-gift to the bride, and is still to be
seen at Kinnaird Castle, where it is said to have remained since it
was first hung there more than two centuries and a half ago. Those who
have seen it pronounce it to be still in an unusually good state of
preservation. Time has dealt tenderly with the long auburn hair, the
fresh complexion, and gay clothes of the young bridegroom. The smooth
upper lip and arch expression show a mind very different of course
from that which had set its seal on the grave and resolute face seen
later by Dobson and by Honthorst. But this smiling lad in his slashed
doublet, lace collar, and gold chain is clearly father to the stately
armoured man who had risked all for his king, and was to lose all.[3]
In the spring of 1633 Montrose left Scotland for the customary period
of foreign travel. He was absent three years, but the barest outline
of the time alone remains. We know that for some part of it his
companion was Basil Fielding, son of the newly-made Earl of Denbigh,
that he visited France and Italy, and that in the spring of 1635
he was in Rome with the young Lord Angus and four other Scottish
gentlemen. He is said to have continued his studies diligently during
this period, and to have particularly affected the society of learned
men. "He studied," writes Saintserf, "as much of the mathematics as is
required for a soldier; but his great study was to read men and the
actions of great men."
Montrose returned to Scotland some time in 1636. He was then in his
twenty-fourth year, of the middle height, well and strongly made,
of graceful carriage and singularly expert in all bodily exercises,
especially in riding. His hair was of the light reddish tinge which
darkens with time, and his complexion of that clear fresh colour which
is often found with red hair; his nose was aquiline, his eyes gray,
bright, and keen. Though not strictly a handsome man, his appearance
in later life at least must have been striking, dignified, and noble.
Those who knew him only in manhood describe him as being somewhat
haughty to strangers, especially if they were his equals or superiors
in rank; but to his friends, and always to his inferiors, his manners
were singularly courteous and engaging. In his later years of exile he
is said to have been somewhat too stately and formal, and inclined,
as the saying goes, to take too much upon himself. Burnet, whose
friendship for the Hamiltons would not dispose him to think favourably
of Montrose--though he does him more justice in the biography of those
brothers than in the history of his own time--says contemptuously
that he had too much of the hero about him, and that his manner was
stately to affectation, insinuating also that his courage was not so
certain as his friends pretended. To call Montrose a coward should
be enough to put any witness out of court at once; but indeed, as
Burnet was only seven years old when the man against whom he vented
this silly piece of spite died, and as the society he knew best was
unlikely to foster any fervent admiration for the great champion
of the Throne, his evidence cannot go for much. From the accounts,
however, of men better able to judge than the Bishop of Salisbury,
it is clear that there was something in Montrose's manner that did
not please all tastes, and perhaps seemed fantastic to some. "He was
of most resolute and undaunted spirit," writes one of his friends,
"which began to appear in him to the wonder and expectation of all
men, even in his childhood." And again: "He was exceeding constant
and loving to those who did adhere to him, and very affable to such
as he knew; though his carriage, which indeed was not ordinary, made
him seem proud." These expressions fall in well with Clarendon's
famous character of him, and also with the impression made by him on
Cardinal De Retz, when they met in Paris in 1647, as the very ideal
of one of Plutarch's heroes. These are witnesses of Montrose's prime;
but the carriage that is admitted to be not ordinary in a grown man
would probably be still more marked in a young one. The Covenanters,
through their great mouthpiece Robert Baillie, declared him to be
too proud, headstrong, and wilful for their tastes. Certainly he had
little of the tone or temper of the Puritan about him, and of all
the young aristocrats who joined them was the least likely to submit
himself blindly to their dictation, or become the mere instrument of
their factions; and as he also had evidently a strong partiality for
his own opinion, which he was neither slow to form nor to declare, it
is plain that there can never have been much personal sympathy between
him and his early associates. We may think of Montrose, then, at
this time as a young man full of high resolves and romantic fancies,
ardent, aspiring, impulsive, impatient of delay, and always more eager
to lead than willing to follow. But his own verses are after all the
clearest reflection of his character, and though probably written in
the last year of his life, they describe the Covenanter as truly as
the Cavalier.
As Alexander I will reign,
And I will reign alone;
My thoughts did evermore disdain
A rival on my throne:
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all.