KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE
FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES
_The following Volumes are now ready_:--
THOMAS CARLYLE. By HECTOR C. MACPHERSON.
ALLAN RAMSAY. By OLIPHANT SMEATON.
HUGH MILLER. By W. KEITH LEASK.
JOHN KNOX. By A. TAYLOR INNES.
ROBERT BURNS. By GABRIEL SETOUN.
THE BALLADISTS. By JOHN GEDDIE.
RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor HERKLESS.
SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By EVE BLANTYRE SIMPSON.
THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. GARDE BLAIKIE.
JAMES BOSWELL. By W. KEITH LEASK.
TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By OLIPHANT SMEATON.
FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. OMOND.
THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS.
NORMAN MACLEOD. By JOHN WELLWOOD.
SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor SAINTSBURY.
KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. By LOUIS A. BARBÉ.
[Illustration:
KIRKCALDY
OF GRANGE
BY
LOUIS
A. BARBÉ
FAMOUS
SCOTS
SERIES
PUBLISHED BY:
CHARLES
SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK]
PREFACE
THE materials available for a biography of Sir William Kirkcaldy of
Grange are very unequally distributed over the two portions into which
his life naturally divides itself. For the first of them, I have been
obliged to content myself with the rather meagre and fragmentary
information to be gathered from the old chroniclers. As regards the
incidents that occur during those earlier years, I cannot, therefore,
claim much novelty for my sketch. By looking closely into dates,
however, I have been able to rectify some minor details, and to set
forth events in their proper sequence.
On the second part of Sir William’s public career, the documents
preserved in the Record Office throw considerable light. Some of them
have been utilised, to a certain extent, in connection with the general
history of the time; but, so far as I know, no attempt has yet been
made to base on them a connected narrative of this important period
of Grange’s life, or to draw from them an explanation of his policy.
By using his own correspondence--both the letters which he wrote, and
those which were addressed to him--I have endeavoured to represent the
man as he wished to be understood by his contemporaries.
It has not been my special object to justify Kirkcaldy’s conduct;
but I am not without the hope that the impartial account of it which
I have striven to give, may show how unfair it is to form an estimate
of him from a consideration of the bare fact that he was, in turn, the
champion of two conflicting parties.
L. A. B.
8 WILTON MANSIONS, GLASGOW,
_October 1897_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE KIRKCALDYS 9