a decreet-arbitral, appointing the two noblemen, grantees of his father's estate, to restore the same, or make some compensation for retaining it. The barony of Crichton, with its beautiful castle, was surrendered by the curators of Francis, Earl of Buccleuch, but he retained the far more extensive property in Liddesdale. James Stewart also, as appears from writings in the author's possession, made an advantageous composition with the Earl of Roxburghe. "But," says the satirical Scotstarvet, "male parta pejus dilabuntur; for he never brooked them (enjoyed them), nor was anything the richer, since they accrued to his creditors, and are now in the possession of Dr Seaton. His eldest son Francis became a trooper in the late war; as for the other brother John, who was Abbot of Coldingham, he also disponed all that estate, and now has nothing, but lives on the charity of his friends. " * Francis Stewart, who had been a trooper during the great Civil War, seems to have received no preferment, after the Restoration, suited to his high birth, though, in fact, third cousin to Charies II. Captain Crichton, the friend of Dean Swift, who published his Memoirs, found him a private gentleman in the King's Life-Guards. At the same time this was no degrading condition; for Fountainhall records a duel fought between a Life-Guardsman and an officer in the militia, because the latter had taken upon him to assume superior rank as an officer, to a gentleman private in the Life-Guards. The Life-Guardsman was killed in the rencontre, and his antagonist was executed for murder. The character of Bothwell, except in relation to the name, is entirely ideal NOTE C, p. 48. MURDERERS OF ARCHBISHOP SHARPE. The leader of this party was David Hackston of Rathillet, a gentleman of ancient birth and good estate. He had been profligate in his younger days, but having been led from curiosity to attend the conventicles of the nonconforming clergy, he adopted their principles in the fullest extent. It appears, that Hackston had some personal quarrel with Archbishop Sharpe, which induced him to decline the command of the party when the slaughter was determined upon, fearing his acceptance might be ascribed to motives of personal enmity. He felt himself free in conscience, however, to be present; and when the archbishop, dragged from his carriage, crawled towards him on his knees for protection, he replied coldly, "Sir, I will never lay a finger on you." It is remarkable that Hackston, as well as a shepherd who was also present, but passive, on the occasion, were the only two of the party of assassins who suffered death by the hands of the executioner. On Hackston refusing the command, it was by universal suffrage conferred on John Balfour of Kinloch, called Burley, who was Hackston's brother-in-law. He is described as a little man, squint-eyed, and of a very fierce aspect."- He was," adds the same author, "by some reckoned none of the most religious; yet he was always reckoned zealous and honest-hearted, courageous in every enterprise, and a brave soldier, seldom any escaping that came into his hands. He was the principal actor in killing that arch-traitor to the Lord and his church, James Sharpe." + NOTE D, p. 54. SCOTTISH DOMESTICS. A masculine retainer of this kind, having offended his master extremely, was commanded to leave his service instantly. "In troth and that will I not," answered the domestic; "if your honour disna ken when ye hae a gude servant, I ken when I hae a gude master, and go away I will not." On another occasion of the same nature, the master said, "John, you and I shall never sleep under the same roof again;" to which John replied, with much naïveté, "Whare the deil can your honour be ganging?" NOTE E, p. 75. LOCKING the DOOR DURING DINNER. The custom of keeping the door of a house or chateau locked during the time of dinner, probably arose from the family being anciently assembled in the hall at that meal, and liable to surprise. But it was in many instances continued as a point of high etiquette, of which the following is an example: The Staggering State of the Scots Statesmen for one hundred years, by Sir John Seot of Scotstarvet. Edinburgh, 1754. P. 154. † See Scottish Worthies. 8vo. Leith, 1816. P. 532 A considerable landed proprietor in Dumfries-shire, being a bachelor, without near relations, and determined to make his will, resolved previously to visit his two nearest kinsmen, and decide which should be his heir, according to the degree of kindness with which he should be received. Like a good clansman, he first visited his own chief, a baronet in rank, descendant and representative of one of the oldest families in Scotland. Unhappily the dinner-bell had rung, and the door of the castle had been locked before his arrival. The visitor in vain announced his name and requested admittance; but his chief adhered to the ancient etiquette, and would on no account suffer the doors to be unbarred. Irritated at this cold reception, the old Laird rode on to Sanquhar Castle, then the residence of the Duke of Queensberry, who no sooner heard his name, than, knowing well he had a will to make, the drawbridge dropped, and the gates flew open-the table was covered anew-his grace's bachelor and intestate kinsman was received with the utmost attention and respect; and it is scarcely necessary to add, that upon his death some years after, the visitor's considerable landed property went to augment the domains of the Ducal House of Queensberry. This happened about the end of the seventeenth century. A Highland laird, whose peculiarities live still in the recollection of his countrymen, used to regulate his residence at Edinburgh in the following manner: Every day he visited the Water-gate, as it is called, of the Canongate, over which is extended a wooden arch. Specie being then the general currency, he threw his purse over the gate, and as long as it was heavy enough to be thrown over, he continued his round of pleasure in the metropolis; when it was too light, he thought it time to retire to the Highlands. Query-How often would he have repeated this experiment at Temple Bar? NOTE G, p. 88. WOODEN MARE. The punishment of riding the wooden mare was, in the days of Charles and long after, one of the various and cruel modes of enforcing military discipline. In front of the old guard-house in the High Street of Edinburgh, a large horse of this kind was placed, on which now and then, in the more ancient times, a veteran might be seen mounted, with a firelock tied to each foot, atoning for some small offence. There is a singular work, entitled Memoirs of Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (son of Queen Anne), from his birth to his ninth year, in which Jenkin Lewis, an honest Welshman in attendance on the royal infant's person, is pleased to record that his Royal Highness laughed, cried, crow'd, and said Gig and Dy, very like a babe of plebeian descent. He had also a premature taste for the discipline as well as the show of war, and had a corps of twenty-two boys, arrayed with paper caps and wooden swords. For the maintenance of discipline in this juvenile corps, a wooden horse was established in the Presence-chamber, and was sometimes employed in the punishment of offences not strictly military. Hughes, the Duke's tailor, having made him a suit of clothes which were too tight, was appointed, in an order of the day issued by the young prince, to be placed on this penal steed. The man of remnants, by dint of supplication and mediation, escaped from the penance, which was likely to equal the inconveniences of his brother artist's equestrian trip to Brentford. But an attendant named Weatherly, who had presumed to bring the young prince a toy (after he had discarded the use of them), was actually mounted on the wooden horse without a saddle, with his face to the tail, while he was plied by four servants of the household with syringes and squirts, till he had a thorough wetting. "He was a waggish fellow," says Lewis," and would not lose anything for the joke's sake when he was putting his tricks upon others, so he was obliged to submit cheerfully to what was inflicted upon him, being at our mercy to play him off well, which we did accordingly." Amid much such nonsense, Lewis's book shows that this poor child, the heir of the British monarchy, who died when he was eleven years old, was, in truth, of promising parts, and of a good disposition. The volume, which rarely occurs, is an 8vo, published in 1789, the editor being Dr Philip Hayes of Oxford. NOTE H, p. 107. ROMANCES of the SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. As few, in the present age, are acquainted with the ponderous folios to which the age of Louis XIV. gave rise, we need only say, that they combine the dul ness of the metaphysical courtship with all the improbabilities of the ancient Romance of Chivalry. Their character will be most easily learned from Boileau's Dramatic Satire, or Mrs Lennox's Female Quixote. NOTE I, p. 107. SIR JAMES TURNER. Sir James Turner was a soldier of fortune, bred in the civil wars. He was intrusted with a commission to levy the fines imposed by the Privy Council for non-conformity, in the district of Dumfries and Galloway. In this capacity he vexed the country so much by his exactions, that the people rose and made him prisoner, and then proceeded in arms towards Mid-Lothian, where they were defeated at Pentland Hills, in 1666. Besides his treatise on the Military Art, Sir James Turner wrote several other works; the most curious of which is his Memoirs of his own Life and Times, which has just been printed, under the charge of the Bannatyne Club. NOTE K, p. 108. TILLIETUDLEM. The Castle of Tillietudlem is imaginary; but the ruins of Craignethan Castle, situated on the Nethan, about three miles from its junction with the Clyde, have something of the character of the description in the text. NOTE L, p. 109. JOHN GRAHAME OF CLAVERHOUSE. This remarkable person united the seemingly inconsistent qualities of courage and cruelty, a disinterested and devoted loyalty to his prince, with a disregard of the rights of his fellow-subjects. He was the unscrupulous agent of the Scottish Privy Council in executing the merciless severities of the Government in Scotland during the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; but he redeemed his character by the zeal with which he asserted the cause of the latter monarch after the Revolution, the military skill with which he supported it at the battle of Killiecrankie, and by his own death in the arms of victory. It is said by tradition, that he was very desirous to see, and be introduced to, a certain Lady Elphinstoun, who had reached the advanced age of one hundred years and upwards. The noble matron, being a staunch whig, was rather unwilling to receive Claver'se (as he was called from his title), but at length con sented. After the usual compliments, the officer observed to the lady, that having lived so much beyond the usual term of humanity, she must in her time have seen many strange changes. "Hout na, sir," said Lady Elphinstoun, "the world is just to end with me as it began. When I was entering life, there was ane Knox deaving us a' wi' his clavers, and now I am ganging out, there is ane Claver'se deaving us a' wi' his knocks." Clavers signifying, in common parlance, idle chat, the double pun does credit to the ingenuity of a lady of a hundred years old. NOTE M, pp. 142, 145. CORNET GRAHAME. There was actually a young cornet of the Life-Guards named Grahame, and probably some relation of Claverhouse, slain in the skirmish of Drumclog. In the old ballad on the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, Claverhouse is said to have continued the slaughter of the fugitives in revenge of this gentleman's death. "Haud up your hand," then Monmouth said; "Gie quarters to these men for me;" But bloody Claver'se swore an oath, His kinsman's death avenged should be. The body of this young man was found shockingly mangled after the battle, his eyes pulled out, and his features so much defaced, that it was impossible to recognise him. The Tory writers say that this was done by the Whigs; because, finding the name Grahame wrought in the young gentleman's neckcloth, they took the corpse for that of Claver'se himself. The Whig authorities give a different account, from tradition, of the cause of Cornet Grahame's body being thus mangled. He had, say they, refused his own dog any food on the morning of the battle, affirming, with an oath, that he should have no breakfast but upon the flesh of the Whigs. The ravenous animal, it is said, flew at his master as soon as he fell, and lacerated his face and throat. These two stories are presented to the reader, leaving it to him to judge whe ther it is most likely that a party of persecuted and insurgent fanatics should mangle a body supposed to be that of their chief enemy, in the same manner as several persons present at Drumclog had shortly before-treated the person of Archbishop Sharpe; or that a domestic dog should, for want of a single breakfast, become so ferocious as to feed on his own master, selecting his body from scores that were lying around, equally accessible to his ravenous appetite. NOTE N, p. 150. PROOF AGAINST SHOT GIVEN BY SATAN. The belief of the Covenanters that their principal enemies, and Claverhouse in particular, had obtained from the Devil a charm which rendered them proof against leaden bullets, led them to pervert even the circumstances of his death. Howie of Lochgoin, after giving some account of the battle of Killiecrankie, adds: "The battle was very bloody, and by Mackay's third fire Claverhouse fell, of whom historians give little account; but it has been said for certain, that his own waiting-servant, taking a resolution to rid the world of this truculent bloody monster, and knowing he had proof of lead, shot him with a silver button he had before taken off his own coat for that purpose. However, he fell, and with him Popery, and King James's interest in Scotland."-God's Judgment on Persecutors, p. xxxix. Original Note.-"Perhaps some may think this anent proof of a shot a paradox, and be ready to object here, as formerly, concerning Bishop Sharpe and Dalziel How can the Devil have or give a power to save life?' &c. Without entering upon the thing in its reality, I shall only observe, -1st, That it is neither in his power, or of his nature, to be a saviour of men's lives; he is called Apollyon, the destroyer. 2d, That even in this case he is said only to give enchantment against one kind of metal, and this does not save life: for the lead would not take Sharpe or Claverhouse's lives, yet steel and silver would do it; and for Dalziel, though he died not on the field, he did not escape the arrows of the Almighty."-Ibidem. NOTE O, p. 151. CLAVERHOUSE'S CHARGER. It appears, from the letter of Claverhouse afterwards quoted, that the horse on which he rode at Drumclog was not black, but sorrel. The author has been misled as to the colour by the many extraordinary traditions current in Scotland concerning Claverhouse's famous black charger, which was generally believed to have been a gift to its rider from the Author of Evil, who is said to have performed the Cæsarean operation upon its dam. This horse was so fleet, and its rider so expert, that they are said to have outstripped and coted, or turned, a hare upon the Bran-Law, near the head of Moffat Water, where the descent is so precipitous, that no merely earthly horse could keep its feet, or merely mortal rider could keep the saddle. There is a curious passage in the Testimony of John Dick, one of the suffering Presbyterians, in which the author, by describing each of the persecutors by their predominant qualities or passions, shows how little their best-loved attributes would avail them in the great day of judgment. When he introduces Claverhouse, it is to reproach him with his passion for horses in general, and for that steed in particular, which was killed at Drumclog in the manner described in the text: "As for that bloodthirsty wretch, Claverhouse, how thinks he to shelter himself that day? Is it possible the pitiful thing can be so mad as to think to secure himself by the fleetness of his horse (a creature he has so much respect for, that he regarded more the loss of his horse at Drumclog, than all the men that fell there, and sure there fell prettier men on either side than himself?) No, sureCould he fall upon a chemist that could extract the spirit out of all the horses in the world, and infuse them into his one, though he were on that horse never so well mounted, he need not dream of escaping."-The Testimony to the Doctrine, Worship, Discipline, and Government of the Church of Scotland, &c. as it was left in write by that truly pious and eminently faithful, and now glorified Martyr, Mr John Dick. To which is added, his last Speech and Behaviour on the Scaffold, on 5th March 1684, which day he sealed this testimony. 57 pp. 4to. No year or place of publication. The reader may perhaps receive some farther information on the subject of Cornet Grahame's death and the flight of Claverhouse, from the following Latin lines, a part of a poem entitled Bellum Bothuellianum, by Andrew Guild, which exists in manuscript in the Advocates' Library: VOL. V. "Mons est occiduus, surgit qui celsus in oris, At numerosa cohors, campum dispersa per omnem, MS. Bellum Bothuellianum. NOTE P, p. 157. SKIRMISH AT DRUMCLOG. This affair, the only one in which Claverhouse was defeated, or the insurgent Cameronians successful, was fought pretty much in the manner mentioned in the text. The Royalists lost about thirty or forty men. The commander of the Presbyterian, or rather Covenanting party, was Mr Robert Hamilton, of the honourable House of Preston, brother of Sir William Hamilton, to whose title and estate he afterwards succeeded; but, according to his biographer, Howie of Lochgoin, he never took possession of either, as he could not do so without acknowledging the right of King William (an uncovenanted monarch) to the crown. Hamilton had been bred by Bishop Burnet, while the latter lived at Glasgow; his brother, Sir Thomas, having married a sister of that historian. "He was then," says the Bishop, "a lively, hopeful, young man; but getting into that company, and into their notions, he became a crack-brained enthusiast." Several well-meaning persons have been much scandalized at the manner in which the victors are said to have conducted themselves towards the prisoners at Drumclog. But the principle of these poor fanatics (I mean the high-flying, or Cameronian party) was to obtain not merely toleration for their church, but the same supremacy which Presbytery had acquired in Scotland after the treaty of Rippon, betwixt Charles I. and his Scottish subjects, in 1640. The fact is, that they conceived themselves a chosen people, sent forth to extirpate the heathen, like the Jews of old, and under a similar charge to show no quarter. The historian of the Insurrection of Bothwell makes the following explicit avowal of the principles on which their General acted :— "Mr Hamilton discovered a great deal of bravery and valour, both in the conflict with, and pursuit of, the enemy; but when he and some other were pursuing the enemy, others flew too greedily upon the spoil, small as it was, instead of pursuing the victory; and some, without Mr Hamilton's knowledge, and directly contrary to his express command, gave five of those bloody enemies quarter, and then let them go; this greatly grieved Mr Hamilton when he saw some of Babel's brats spared, after that the Lord had delivered them into their hands, that they might dash them against the stones. Psalm cxxxvii. 9. In his own account of this, he reckons the sparing of these enemies, and letting them go, to be among their first steppings aside, for which he feared that the Lord would not honour them to do much more for him; and says, that he was neither for taking favours from, nor giving favours to, the Lord's enemies." See A true and impartial Account of the persecuted Presbyterians in Scotland, their being in arms, and defeat at Bothwell Brigg, in 1679, by William Wilson, late Schoolmaster in the parish of Douglas. The reader who would authenticate the quotation, must not |