THE END
And now for Montrose the end had come, the end to all the high
ambitions, the wild dreams, the long struggle. The time of delusion
was for ever past; nothing was left but the bare and terrible reality.
Still Leslie was a brave soldier, and his fallen enemy might at least
have hoped to be spared in his hands from insult. He was spared from
no insult that the savage exultation of his foes could desire. For
six years they had fled before his face and trembled at his name;
that long debt of terror and humiliation was now to be amply repaid.
Leslie was the soldier of the Covenant, and the orders of the Covenant
were strict to leave nothing undone that might add a sting to the
bitterness of death. In a fever from his still undressed wounds,
clad in the mean peasant's garb in which he had been taken, with a
pad of straw for saddle and a bridle of rope, Montrose was set on
the back of a ragged Highland pony, with his feet tied beneath its
belly, and led as in a triumphal procession through all the chief
towns of the North. Wherever he passed the people were incited by
the ministers of the Kirk to rail and hoot at their once terrible
enemy. At Inverness, where the gloomy pageant was increased by the
prisoners from Invercarron, the women came out to curse him for the
ruin he had wrought. At Keith he was compelled to listen to a long
and violent sermon on the text, "And Samuel said, As thy sword hath
made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women."
Yet there were some, even among the clergymen, whom this spectacle of
fallen greatness moved to gentler feelings; and it should at least
be remembered to Leslie's credit that those who were not ashamed or
afraid to own their friendship for his prisoner were allowed free
access to him. It is remarkable that at Dundee, which had suffered
so much from his soldiers, he was received with general expressions
of pity; and here Leslie was persuaded to allow him to exchange the
filthy rags in which he had hitherto been paraded for clothes more
becoming his quality.[25] But the compassion of friends and the
triumph of foes, pain and pity and scorn, were endured with the same
equanimity. "All the way," wrote an eye-witness of the sorry march,
"the Marquis never altered his countenance; but, with a majesty and
state becoming him, kept a countenance high." Even the sight of his
two youngest children, who were brought to take leave of him at
Kinnaird Castle, could not shake his composure.
Meanwhile great preparations were being made in Edinburgh. The
glorious news had thrown the Parliament and the Kirk into transports
of delight. One thousand pounds and a chain of gold with a diamond
clasp were at once voted to Strachan; the city bells were rung,
bonfires lit, and a public thanksgiving decreed throughout the
country. Macleod was rewarded partly in money and partly, it is said,
by four hundred bolls of meal; he was also appointed by Sutherland
captain of the garrison of Strathnaver. Of the prisoner's sentence
there could be no question. The attainder passed on him in 1644 had
never been repealed, and without the formality of a trial Parliament,
with one voice, pronounced for death. But the manner of his death must
be signal; and a committee was appointed to prepare plans for the
ceremony as if for some national rejoicing.
At four on the afternoon of May 10th Montrose was brought from Leith
to the Water Gate at Holyrood, and handed over by the soldiers to the
civil power. The orders of Parliament were read to him by the provost,
in his robes of state, at the head of the chief magistrates of the
city. He answered that he was ready to submit to them, regretting
only to think that his master, whose commission he bore, should be
dishonoured through him. The cruel pageant then began. Hurry, with
the rest of the prisoners from Invercarron, came first, walking two
and two in chains. A cart followed, driven by the common hangman of
the city in the hideous livery of his office. In the cart was a high
chair, and on the chair sat Montrose, bareheaded and tightly bound.
The long ascent of the Canongate was crowded with people, mostly
of the lowest class, whose minds had been artfully inflamed by the
fierce eloquence of the pulpits to greet the enemy of their country
and religion in a manner worthy of his crimes and the occasion. It
was even secretly hoped that their greetings might not be confined to
empty execration, and the prisoner's hands had been drawn behind his
back that he might not defend his face. But the sad and shameful sight
turned these rough hearts to pity. Many were even moved to tears to
see with what serene and lofty composure this man, who had once known
the height of glory, could now endure the extremity of disgrace. From
the Water Gate to the Nether Bow only one voice was raised in scorn;
the voice of a woman, of Jean, Countess of Haddington, the daughter
of Huntly, the sister of Gordon. The wretched creature is even said
to have spat upon her dead brother's friend as the cart passed below
the balcony in which she sat. In the same balcony was Argyll, with a
party of guests met to celebrate the marriage of his son Lorne to a
daughter of the Earl of Moray. Either by accident or design the cart
was halted at this point, and Montrose looked up. As his eyes met
those of Argyll, the latter was seen to turn pale and shrink back from
the window. An angry murmur rose from the crowd, and an English voice
was heard to cry that Argyll might well shrink from the man he had not
dared to face for seven years.[26]
So dense was the crowd and so slow the pace of the procession that it
was seven o'clock before the Tolbooth was reached. As the prisoner
passed through the Nether Bow Port and entered within the city walls,
the last hope that he might at least be spared the ignominious death
reserved for the lowest criminals must have vanished. Before his eyes
a monstrous gibbet rose to the height of thirty feet from a scaffold
covered with black cloth. It rose close by the old city cross, the
spot, as his memory must have recalled with peculiar bitterness, where
his young and ardent enthusiasm had first displayed itself before the
admiring eyes of so many who were now clamouring for his blood.
Scarcely had Montrose entered the prison when a deputation from the
Parliament arrived to interrogate him. At first he refused to speak
with them until he was assured that they had made their peace with the
King and had warrant to examine him. Being satisfied on this point, he
asked that he might be left to rest for the present. He was tired, he
said, with a long journey; and "the compliment they had put upon him
that day was something tedious."
But there was to be little rest for him. All through Sunday and the
early hours of Monday, the ministers persecuted him, by order of
the General Assembly, with a relation of his manifold misdemeanours
and assurances of his certain damnation unless he would confess and
receive the absolution of the Kirk. His capital offence in their eyes
was his breach of the Covenant. That he stoutly denied. "The Covenant
which I took," he said, "I own it and adhere to it. Bishops, I care
not for them. I never intended to advance their interest. But when
the King had granted you all your desires, and you were every one
sitting under his vine and under his fig-tree,--that then you should
have taken a party in England by the hand, and entered into a League
and Covenant with them against the King, was the thing I judged my
duty to oppose to the yondmost." They told him then that, as he
still persisted in his stubbornness, they had no power to remit his
sentence of excommunication, and must leave him to the judgment of
the Almighty, "with the fearful apprehension that what is bound on
earth God will bind in Heaven." "I am very sorry," he answered, "that
any actions of mine have been offensive to the Church of Scotland,
and I would, with all my heart, be reconciled to the same. But since
I cannot obtain it on any other terms--unless I call that my sin
which I account to have been my duty--I cannot for all the reason and
conscience in the world."
Shortly before noon on Monday he was summoned to hear his sentence at
the bar of Parliament. He had asked for a barber to shave him, and
had been refused; "I would not think but they would have allowed that
to a dog," was his comment. His friends had, however, been permitted
to supply him with a dress suited, as one of the spectators thought,
rather to a festival than a tragedy. He entered the House in a suit of
black cloth, trimmed with silver, and covered with a scarlet cloak,
lined with crimson and trimmed also with silver. His stockings were of
carnation silk, his garters and the rosettes of his shoes of the same
colour. On his head was a beaver hat with a broad band of silver lace.
When the Chancellor, Loudon, had repeated the full tale of his crimes,
he asked leave to speak. Leave was granted. Montrose stood up "in the
place of delinquents," uncovered, and spoke.
"Since you have declared to me that you have agreed with the King,
I look upon you as if his Majesty were sitting amongst you; and in
that relation I appear with this reverence,--bareheaded. My care has
been always to walk as became a good Christian and loyal subject:
I did engage in the first Covenant, and was faithful to it. When I
perceived some private persons, under colour of religion, intend to
wring the authority from the King, and to seize on it for themselves,
it was thought fit, for the clearing of honest men, that a bond should
be subscribed, wherein the security of religion was sufficiently
provided for. For the League, I thank God I was never in it; and so
could not break it. How far religion has been advanced by it, and what
sad consequences followed on it, these poor distressed kingdoms can
witness. When his late Majesty had, by the blessing of God, almost
subdued those rebels that rose against him in England, and that a
faction of this kingdom went in to the assistance of the rebels, his
Majesty gave commission to me to come into this kingdom, to make a
diversion of those forces which were going from this against him.
I acknowledged the command was most just, and I conceived myself
bound in conscience and duty to obey it. What my carriage was in
this country many of you may bear witness. Disorders in arms cannot
be prevented; but they were no sooner known than punished. Never was
any man's blood spilt but in battle; and even then, many thousand
lives have I preserved. And I dare here avow, in the presence of God,
that never a hair of Scotsman's head, that I could save, fell to
the ground. And as I came in upon his Majesty's warrant, so upon his
letters did I lay aside all interests and retire. And as for my coming
at this time, it was by his Majesty's just commands, in order to the
accelerating the treaty betwixt him and you; his Majesty knowing that,
whenever he had ended with you, I was ready to retire upon his call.
I may say, that never subject acted upon more honourable grounds,
nor by so lawful a power, as I did in these services. And therefore
I desire you to lay aside prejudice, and consider me as a Christian,
in relation to the justice of the quarrel; as a subject, in relation
to my royal master's command; and as your neighbour, in relation to
the many of your lives I have preserved in battle: and be not too
rash; but let me be judged by the laws of God, the laws of nature and
nations, and the laws of this land. If otherwise, I do here appeal
from you to the righteous Judge of the world, who one day must be your
judge and mine, and who always gives out righteous judgments."
The Chancellor's reply was less dignified. Among the epithets hurled
at the prisoner were _infamous_, _perjured_, _treacherous_; he was
the most cruel and inhuman butcher that the world had ever seen; he
had destroyed the father by his boundless pride and ambition, and
would, had he been suffered, have destroyed the son. Montrose was then
commanded to kneel, while his sentence was read by Warriston. He was
to be hanged on a gibbet at the cross of Edinburgh, with a copy of his
Memoirs by Wishart and a copy of his last declaration tied by a rope
about his neck; after hanging for the space of three hours, his head,
hands, and legs were to be cut off, and distributed as follows: his
head was to be fixed on an iron spike on a pinnacle of the Tolbooth;
one hand was to be set over the gate of Stirling, the other over the
gate of Perth; one leg over the gate of Aberdeen, the other over
the gate of Glasgow. If, at his death, he was penitent and released
from excommunication, then the trunk of his body was to be decently
buried in the churchyard of the Grey Friars; if otherwise, it was to
be laid by the hangman's men under the common gallows on the Borough
Moor. While this brutal sentence was read Montrose showed no sign of
discomposure. Only at the end he sighed twice, and raising his head
looked round the ring of relentless faces; but he spoke no word. The
Doomster then, according to law, repeated the sentence, and Montrose
was removed to the Tolbooth.
Scarcely had he re-entered his prison, when the ministers again
attacked him. But he would argue with them no more. "I pray you,
gentlemen," he said, "let me die in peace." One of his gaolers, moved
to some momentary pity, asked these impertinent busybodies if nothing
would satisfy them but tormenting the last hours of an unfortunate
man. It was the only way, they answered, to humble his proud spirit
and bring him to God.
Early the next morning, Tuesday, May 21st, he was waked by a loud
noise of drums and trumpets. He asked his guards what these unusual
sounds might mean, and was told that the soldiers were being mustered
to arms, lest the malignants should attempt a rescue. "What!" he said,
"is it possible that I, who was such a terror to these good men when
alive and prosperous, continue still so formidable to them now that I
am bound for slaughter? Then I should be still more terrible to them
when dead!" Even now his persecutors would not leave him in peace. As
he was preparing for the last scene, Johnston of Warriston, the chief
instigator, it is said, of all this barbarity, came into his cell.
Montrose was dressing his hair, which he wore long, after the fashion
of the Cavaliers. "Why," sneered this brutal fellow, "is James Graham
so careful of his locks?" "My head is yet my own," was the answer; "I
will arrange it to my taste. To-night, when it will be yours, treat it
as you please."
At three in the afternoon Montrose was led out to die. The largest
crowd ever assembled on the streets of Edinburgh was gathered round
the place of execution; every house-top, window, and balcony was
thronged with spectators. At one end of the scaffold stood the chief
magistrates of the city, at the other a group of the inevitable
ministers. Beside the hangman was a bench on which were arranged in
ghastly order the implements of butchery. A space was kept clear
round the scaffold by a strong force of soldiers. As Montrose walked
down the High Street from the Tolbooth, surrounded by his guards, in
the same rich dress that he had worn before the Parliament, all were
struck with his calm and noble bearing. "He stepped along the street,"
wrote an eye-witness, "with so great state, and there appeared in
his countenance so much beauty, majesty, and gravity, as amazed all
the beholders. And many of his enemies did acknowledge him to be the
bravest subject in the world; and in him a gallantry that graced all
the crowd, more beseeming a monarch than a peer."
He mounted the steps and stood upon the scaffold. The grace granted
to even the meanest criminals was denied to him; he was not allowed
to address the people. But to the magistrates and others round him he
thus for the last time justified himself.
"I am sorry if this manner of my end be scandalous to any good
Christian here. Doth it not often happen to the righteous according
to the way of the unrighteous? Doth not sometimes a just man perish
in his righteousness, and a wicked man prosper in his wickedness
and malice? They who know me should not disesteem me for this.
Many greater than I have been dealt with in this kind. But I must
not say but that all God's judgments are just. And this measure,
for my private sins, I acknowledge to be just with God. I wholly
submit myself to Him. But, in regard of man, I may say they are but
instruments. God forgive them; and I forgive them. They have oppressed
the poor, and violently perverted judgment and justice. But He that
is higher than they will reward them. What I did in this kingdom
was in obedience to the most just commands of my sovereign: and in
his defence, in the day of his distress, against those who rose up
against him. I acknowledge nothing; but fear God and honour the King,
according to the commandments of God, and the just laws of nature
and nations. And I have not sinned against man, but against God; and
with Him there is mercy, which is the ground of my drawing near unto
Him. It is objected against me by many, even good people, that I am
under the censure of the Church. This is not my fault, seeing it is
only for doing my duty, by obeying my Prince's most just commands,
for religion, his sacred person, and authority. Yet I am sorry they
did excommunicate me; and, in that which is according to God's laws,
without wronging my conscience or allegiance, I desire to be relaxed.
If they will not do it, I appeal to God, who is the righteous Judge of
the world, and who must, and will, I hope, be my Judge and Saviour.
It is spoken of me, that I would blame the King. God forbid! For the
late King, he lived a saint, and died a martyr. I pray God I may end
as he did. If ever I would wish my soul in another man's stead, it
should be in his. For his Majesty now living, never any people, I
believe, might be more happy in a king. His commands to me were most
just; and I obeyed them. He deals justly with all men. I pray God he
be so dealt withal; that he be not betrayed under trust as his father
was. I desire not to be mistaken; as if my carriage at this time, in
relation to your ways, were stubborn. I do but follow the light of my
conscience; my rule, which is seconded by the working of the Spirit of
God that is within me. I thank Him I go to heaven with joy the way He
paved for me. If he enable me against the fear of death, and furnish
me with courage and confidence to embrace it, even in its most ugly
shape, let God be glorified in my end, though it were in my damnation.
Yet I say not this out of any fear or mistrust, but out of my duty to
God and love to His people. I have no more to say, but that I desire
your charity and prayers. And I shall pray for you all. I leave my
soul to God, my service to my Prince, my good-will to my friends, my
love and charity to you all. And thus briefly I have exonerated my
conscience."
Once more the ministers pressed round him, proffering the remission
of his spiritual sentence if he would confess his sins against the
Church and the Covenant. Once more he answered that he could not
accept it on those terms, but desired their prayers. They bid him pray
for himself if he would; they would make no intercession for a man who
died under the ban of the Church. One of these misguided creatures
did not scruple to call him a faggot of hell, which his prophetic eye
could already see in flames. Montrose made no reply, but bent his
head in silent prayer, covering his face with his hat and raising one
hand to heaven. As the executioner then approached to tie round his
neck the copies of his declaration and the memoirs of his campaigns,
Montrose gave the man a few pieces of gold, saying that he was even
more proud of such a collar of merit than when the King had sent him
the Garter. Only when his arms were pinioned did he show any signs
of displeasure; but he contented himself with asking if they had any
more compliments to bestow on him, as he was anxious to lose no honour
during the short time left to him on earth. He then climbed the huge
ladder with a steady foot and a countenance that had assumed its
wonted serenity. "May God have mercy on this afflicted kingdom," he
cried with a loud voice, and then moved his arms for the signal. The
hangman burst into tears as he thrust him off the step, and as the
body swung slowly out into the air, a universal sob of pity broke from
all that vast crowd.
The inhuman sentence was carried through in all its details, and
the dismembered trunk was placed in a rude shell and thrust into
the common earth below the gallows on the Borough Moor. A pretty
story, which there is no reason to discredit, tells how a few nights
later the grave was secretly opened, and that heroic heart removed,
embalmed, and carried to Lady Napier. For the strange adventures
of this precious relic, how it was lost to the family, found, and
lost again, there is no room here; the curious will find them fully
described in the elaborate and interesting work to which these pages
already owe so much.[27]
* * * * *
Eleven years passed, and again a vast crowd thronged the High Street
of Edinburgh to witness a different scene. The King, for whom Montrose
had died, was now restored to the throne of his fathers, and had
decreed the empty tribute of a public funeral for the man whom he had
not dared to lift a finger or speak a word to save. The scattered
remains had been previously collected, and carried amid great pomp to
Holyrood. There they lay in state from January 7th, 1661, to May 11th,
on which day they were placed beside the bones of his grandfather in
the old cathedral church of St. Giles. No more imposing ceremony, it
is said, was ever seen in Edinburgh. The streets were lined by the
Train-bands; the Royal Life-Guards formed the escort. Marshalled by
the heralds in their robes of office, the provost and magistrates
of the City with the barons and burgesses of Parliament walked two
abreast all clad in deep mourning. The coffin was carried by fourteen
earls, while twelve noblemen of lesser rank held the pall. The
armour worn by the dead man in battle, his field-marshal's baton,
his Garter, and the other insignia of his state were borne before
it by various members of his House. Behind walked the young Marquis
and his brother Lord Robert, followed by the nearest relatives of
the family. The long procession was closed by Middleton, now Lord
High Commissioner of Scotland, representing the King, in an open
mourning-coach drawn by six horses and attended by six gentlemen of
quality on either side, bareheaded and also in deep mourning. Though
the day broke dark and rainy, the sky cleared and the sun shone as the
solemn pageant passed on its way from the palace to the cathedral,
while the bells pealed from every steeple in the city. Nothing was
wanting to enhance the splendour of the scene; to those who allowed
themselves to reflect, nothing could have been wanting to add to its
irony. The route was the same as that by which the living man had
been dragged before the eyes of many now present amid brutal insults
to an ignominious doom. As the coffin was lowered into the vault
the Train-bands fired a volley, and the cannon thundered in answer
from the Castle. In that Castle, a prisoner under sentence of death,
execrated by all Scotland, lay Archibald, Marquis of Argyll.
It was left for our own generation to pay the last honours due to the
memory of the illustrious dead. In the little aisle that now bears
his name a lofty window, blazoned with the royal arms of Scotland and
the shields of the families and clans that shared his triumphs and
his fall, looks down upon the plain stone slab that for more than two
hundred years alone marked the grave of Montrose. Over against the
grave rises a stately shrine. Beneath an arched and fretted roof,
supported on gilded pillars, lies carved in white marble the figure
of the Great Marquis, bareheaded, in full armour, with his sword
upon his breast. Above the figure a Latin inscription records that
this monument has been raised to the memory of James Graham, Marquis
of Montrose, by his descendants and kinsmen, by the bearers of his
name, and by the admirers of his lofty genius. On a tablet below are
engraved the lines with which he solaced the long hours of his last
night on earth:
Scatter my ashes, strew them in the air--
Lord, since Thou knowest where all these atoms are,
I'm hopeful Thou'lt recover once my dust,
And confident Thou'lt raise me with the just.[28]
THE END
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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Almost all that is known or can be conjectured of
Montrose's youth is derived from the accounts of his father's
household expenses and of his own at Glasgow and St. Andrews, which
were discovered about forty years ago in the charter-chest at Kinnaird
Castle. They have been abundantly and cleverly used by Mark Napier in
the opening chapters of his _Memoirs of Montrose_ (2 vols., Edin.,
1856), the last and most complete of the many volumes published by him
on his famous kinsman. In respect of the facts of Montrose's life, he
may be considered to have exhausted all known sources of information;
but outside the facts he must be read with caution. For this purpose
there can be no better antidotes than Dr. Burton and Mr. Gardiner have
supplied in their grave and judicial histories. The second volume of
the latter's _History of the Great Civil War_ is invaluable to all who
would trace the intricate course of Montrose's Highland campaign. It
is unnecessary to enumerate all the original authorities that may be
consulted. Students of history are well aware of them, and others may
be content to trust Dr. Burton and Mr. Gardiner, who have neglected no
means of enabling readers to draw their own conclusions.
Montrose, it may be observed, did not disdain tobacco in all its
forms, if the testimony of the Stuart Exhibition may be trusted. In
that most interesting collection of relics was to be seen the silver
snuff-box, shaped like a watch-case, which he is said to have carried
in his hand to the foot of the scaffold.]
[Footnote 2: In a later generation it was to be drawn again closer.
In 1639 Sir John Carnegie, Lord Carnegie's brother, was created Lord
Lour, and in 1647 was promoted to the earldom of Ethie, which was
exchanged after the Restoration for that of Northesk. His daughter,
also Magdalene, was married to Sir William Graham of Claverhouse,
grandson to Montrose's guardian, and their son was the famous Dundee.
Lord Carnegie had been created Earl of Southesk at the King's visit to
Edinburgh in 1633.]
[Footnote 3: There are four portraits extant of Montrose, all engraved
in Napier's book, and very carefully described in the appendix to
his first volume. (1) By Jameson, 1629, _ætat._ 17, now at Kinnaird
Castle, the seat of the Earl of Southesk. (2) Also by Jameson, 1640,
_ætat._ 28, known as the Camstradden portrait, now at Buchanan House,
the seat of the Duke of Montrose. (3) By Dobson, _ætat._ 32, probably
painted at Oxford in 1644, also at Buchanan House; this was for a
long time attributed to Vandyck, owing to a mistake of the engraver
Houbraken. (4) By Gerard Honthorst, _ætat._ 37, painted at the Hague
in 1649, and given by Montrose to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia; it
is now at Brechin Castle, the seat of the Earl of Dalhousie. It is
from this last portrait that the frontispiece to this volume has been
taken.]
[Footnote 4: Napier's _Montrose and the Covenanters_, i. 81-88.]
[Footnote 5: _Montrose and the Covenanters_, i. 67-72.]
[Footnote 6: The grim tragedy known as the Burning of Frendraught,
in which young Aboyne, Huntly's brother, with some other Gordons,
were treacherously murdered while guests under Crichton's roof, had
happened only nine years earlier, in 1630.]
[Footnote 7: See _Memoirs of Montrose_, chap. xv., and Professor
Masson's _Drummond of Hawthornden_, pp. 272-287 and 343-348. The
_Irene_ was not published in Drummond's lifetime, but copies were
freely circulated in manuscript towards the latter end of 1638. Mr.
Masson thinks that the _Noble Lord_ to whom one of the copies was
sent, with a note containing the significant words, "Force hath less
power over a great heart than duty," may have been Montrose; and
Mark Napier thinks that the _Noble Sir_ to whom Montrose addressed
his state-paper may have been Drummond. The paper was found by
Napier in a volume of transcripts in Wodrow's handwriting in the
Advocates' Library, where it must have lain for many years unread and
apparently unsuspected. Wodrow himself has made no allusion to it in
his _Analecta_, nor has any subsequent writer noticed it on either
side. In short, from the time it was written (1640-1641) till Napier
published his biography, it has never entered history.]
[Footnote 8: The letter was addressed _au Roi_, and this, it was
argued by the Lord Keeper, implied that the writers recognised Lewis
as their king, that style being only used by subjects to their
sovereign. This seems an unnecessary point to have raised. The letter
was plainly an appeal for aid from France by subjects of the English
King, and as such came certainly within the range of a treasonable
correspondence. Loudon's assertion that he did not understand French,
and that so far as he knew the letter was perfectly harmless, was
sheer impudence. The indifference of Parliament proves how good was
the understanding between England and Scotland, and how helpless
Charles really was.]
[Footnote 9: A copy of it was discovered by Mark Napier among the
manuscripts of Sir James Balfour (Lyon King-at-Arms) in the Advocates'
Library; see _Memoirs of Montrose_, i. 269.]
[Footnote 10: The first edition of Clarendon's _History of the
Rebellion_ was published at Oxford, 1702-4, under the direction
of his sons, with many alterations and suppressions. This edition
was reprinted several times. In 1826 many suppressed passages were
restored, and the text collated with the original manuscript in the
Bodleian Library. It was then that the earlier version of the Incident
was made public, though Hume had already discredited the popular one
on the somewhat insufficient grounds that Montrose, being a prisoner,
could not have been admitted to an interview with the King. More
careful collations were made for the editions of 1849 and 1888, when
several fresh passages that had been previously overlooked were added.]
[Footnote 11: His first wife was the Lady Dorothea Graham; on her
death in 1638 he had married Lady Mary Campbell.]
[Footnote 12: Napier's _Memorials of Montrose_ (printed for the
Maitland Club), ii. 146.]
[Footnote 13: The patent is dated at Oxford, May 6th, 1644.]
[Footnote 14: Alaster, or Alexander Macdonald, son of Coll Keitach
Macdonald of Colonsay. Coll Keitach means he who can fight with either
hand. The Lowland corruption, Colkitto, has been improperly given
to the son, whose correct designation would be Mac Coll Keitach.
Macdonnell, the family name of the Earl of Antrim, is the same as
Macdonald. The father of the first Earl of Antrim was Sorley Buy
Macdonald, brother of Coll Keitach's grandfather.]
[Footnote 15: Lord Kilpont was the son of the Earl of Airth and
Menteith, for whom see p. 28.]
[Footnote 16: An explanation of this strange story has been given in
the Introduction to _A Legend of Montrose_. The welcome accorded to
Stewart by Argyll, and the terms in which his pardon was recorded by
the Covenanters, certainly lend some colour to the original belief
that Kilpont was slain for refusing to join in a plot to murder
Montrose. See _Montrose and the Covenanters_, ii. 323-25.]
[Footnote 17: _Memorials of Montrose_, i. 215.]
[Footnote 18: It is not clear whether Lord Graham was still a prisoner
in the castle, which does not seem to have surrendered with the city.
A few days before the battle of Kilsyth he had been committed by the
Estates to the Earl of Dalhousie for his education, but it is not
certain that his removal had been effected before the surrender. It
would not have been safe for Montrose to have led his army into a
plague-stricken town. The boy was not among the released prisoners,
nor did he and his father ever meet again.]
[Footnote 19: The various accounts of this battle are more than
usually conflicting. Patrick Gordon makes out a very bad case indeed
against Montrose, whom he declares to have been frequently warned
during the evening of the 12th of an enemy's advance, and to have
contented himself with transmitting these reports to his officers,
relying on their assurances that all was well. He even asserts that
one of Montrose's pickets was actually engaged with some of Leslie's
men at the little village of Sunderland, four miles from Philiphaugh
on the same side of the river, which, and not Melrose, he makes
the Covenanters' headquarters for the night; and that Montrose,
when informed of the affair, set it down to a mere drunken brawl.
This is not credible; but it is clear that Montrose was both badly
served by his officers, who allowed themselves to be deceived by
the country-people, and himself guilty of gross negligence. I have
followed Sir Walter Scott's account of the affair (_Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border_, part i. "Battle of Philiphaugh"; ed. 1830), who was
evidently writing from local tradition as well as from contemporary
narrative. For events which happened in his own neighbourhood the
Sheriff of Selkirkshire is, I suspect, as good a guide as can be
found.]
[Footnote 20: The revolting details were given at the time by Patrick
Gordon, and have been copied by Napier in the _Memoirs of Montrose_,
where the curious, if they will, may consult them.]
[Footnote 21: It was at the execution of Ogilvy ("a boy lately come
from the schools," writes Guthrie) that the memorable words, which
afterwards passed into a proverb, fell from the lips of the Reverend
David Dickson,--_The work goes bonnily on!_]
[Footnote 22: See the correspondence printed in _Memoirs of Montrose_,
vol. ii. chap. xxxiv., and _Memoirs of the Electress Sophia of
Hanover_. If the latter is to be believed Montrose was a suitor for
the hand of her sister, the Princess Louise, who afterwards retired
into a nunnery. But there is no hint of this in the Queen's letters,
nor in any other contemporary authority. Nor is it likely that
Montrose at the great crisis of his life should have found either
leisure or inclination to indulge in dreams of matrimony.]
[Footnote 23: Napier has printed all these letters and instructions
from the Wigton Papers, _Memoirs of Montrose_, ii. 748-768. It is
worth while to note the dates. The despatch enclosing the Garter and
urging Montrose "to proceed vigorously and effectually" was dated from
Jersey, January 12th (old style), 1650. Montrose was in Scotland on
April 14th. He was defeated on April 27th. The despatch ordering him
to disband his forces was dated from Breda on May 10th; it reached
Leith on May 18th, the day on which Montrose was brought a prisoner
to Edinburgh. On May 25th, four days after his execution, a letter
was read in Parliament from the King, dated May 12th, at Breda,
"showing that he was heartily sorry that James Graham had invaded
this kingdom, and how he had discharged him from doing the same, and
earnestly desires the Estates of Parliament to do himself that justice
as not to believe that he was accessory to that invasion in the least
degree."--Balfour's _Annals_, iv. 24. Argyll was conscious throughout
of the double part the King was playing, but was of course careful
to keep it secret. It is not agreeable to Englishmen to contrast the
behaviour of Charles with that of the young French King. Among the
Montrose archives is a letter addressed to the Scottish Parliament by
Lewis, acting under the advice of the Queen Regent and prompted by the
Cardinal de Retz, in which mercy is asked for their prisoner "seeing
he hath done no more than devote himself in a most generous spirit
to his paramount duty in fulfilling the commands of the King, his
sovereign lord and yours." But Montrose was dead before the letter was
sent.]
[Footnote 24: I cannot find any good authority for the popular
tradition that has branded Macleod with the treachery of betraying
an old friend and companion-in-arms. After the Restoration, when the
act of his having delivered an officer holding the royal commission
over to a usurping power would of course be called treasonable, he was
twice tried on this indictment; first before the Scottish Parliament,
when, after four years' imprisonment, he was released by order of the
King under an Act of Indemnity; a second time at Law, when he was
acquitted of this and other treasonable charges. In Nichol's _Diary
of Transactions in Scotland_, the father is said to have been out
with Montrose; but neither in Gordon's _History of the Earldom of
Sutherland_ (where the story of the capture is told by one who knew
the Laird) nor in Mackenzie's _History of the Macleods_ is there a
trace of any Macleod of this line having been in arms for the King
during the war. On the contrary, the evidence of both books, such
as it is, tends the other way, and Gordon explicitly says that Neil
fought under the Earl of Sutherland for the Covenant. John Macdonald,
the bard of Keppoch, composed a pathetic lament for Montrose, "the
manly, mighty lion," in which Neil "of woful Assynt" and his family
are not spared; but he is not accused of betraying a friend (_Cumha
Mhontroise_ in Mackenzie's _Beauties of Gaelic Poetry_, for a
translation of which I am obliged to Mr. Alexander Nicolson, Advocate,
of Edinburgh; according to the bard three fourths of the meal, which
formed a part of the reward, were found to be sour). In the _Old
Statistical Account of Scotland_ it is alleged that Neil was on the
march to join Montrose in Caithness, that the fugitive was brought to
his house during his absence, and that the traitor was (presumedly)
his wife, a sister of Monro of Lamlair one of Strachan's officers.
This story (first told in 1792 by the minister of Kincardine) is,
however, directly at variance with Gordon's, and it was proved
moreover before Parliament that Neil had received the promised reward.
On the whole evidence it seems hard to suppose that Macleod acted
otherwise than any Covenanter in his situation would at that time have
acted towards the man whom he had been taught to regard as the most
dangerous enemy of his country.]
[Footnote 25: In the _Memory of the Somervilles_ Montrose is said to
have very nearly effected his escape through the help of the Lady of
Grange, at whose house, near Dundee, he was lodged for a night. The
story is mentioned nowhere else--not even in the minute account of the
journey written by an eye-witness, the Rev. James Fraser, chaplain
to Lord Lovat, from which and from an account by another eye-witness
(printed from the Wigton Manuscripts for the Maitland Club), these
details are taken. Napier accepted it at first, but eventually
rejected it on grounds which seem to me sufficient (_Memoirs of
Montrose_, ii. ch. 38 and 39).]
[Footnote 26: This disgraceful scene is mentioned in more than one
contemporary document; among others, though in a slightly different
form, in a letter from M. de Graymond, French Resident in Edinburgh,
to Cardinal Mazarin. See _Memoirs of Montrose_, ii. 77-82, and
_notes_. Argyll always maintained that he had refused to take any part
in pronouncing sentence on Montrose.]
[Footnote 27: See _Memoirs of Montrose_, ii. 814-816, and Appendix I.
The carnation silk stockings, and the linen sheet in which the body
was wrapped, are in the possession of Lord Napier and Ettrick.]
[Footnote 28: This memorial was erected by general subscription in
1888. Among its most active promoters was the late Mr. Graham Murray
of Stenton, to whose kindly assistance this little book has been much
indebted.]
Transcriber's Notes
Minor punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
Page 187: "Innerquharity" is probably a typo for "Inverquharity."
Macmillan's Globe Library: "MORTE DARTHUR" was original spelling for
"MORTE D'ARTHUR."