The most poetical chronicler would find it impossible to render the incidents of Montrose's brilliant career more picturesque than the reality. Among the devoted champions who, during the wildest and most stormy period of our history, maintained the cause of Church and King, "the Great Marquis" undoubtedly is entitled to the foremost place. Even party malevolence, by no means extinct at the present day, has been unable to detract from the eulogy pronounced upon him by the famous Cardinal de Retz, the friend of CondÉ and Turenne, when he thus summed up his character:—"Montrose, a Scottish nobleman, head of the house of Grahame—the only man in the world that has ever realised to me the ideas of certain heroes, whom we now discover nowhere but in the lives of Plutarch—has sustained in his own country the cause of the King his master, with a greatness of soul that has not found its equal in our age."

But the success of the victorious leader and patriot is almost thrown into the shade by the noble magnanimity and Christian heroism of the man in the hour of defeat and death. Without wishing, in any degree, to revive a controversy long maintained by writers of opposite political and polemical opinions, it may fairly be stated that Scottish history does not present us with a tragedy of parallel interest. That the execution of Montrose was the natural, nay, the inevitable, consequence of his capture, may be freely admitted even by the fiercest partisan of the cause for which he staked his life. In those times, neither party was disposed to lenity; and Montrose was far too conspicuous a character, and too dangerous a man, to be forgiven. But the ignominious and savage treatment which he received at the hands of those whose station and descent should at least have taught them to respect misfortune, has left an indelible stain upon the memory of the Covenanting chiefs, and more especially upon that of Argyle.

The perfect serenity of the man in the hour of trial and death, the courage and magnanimity which he displayed to the last, have been dwelt upon with admiration by writers of every class. He heard his sentence delivered without any apparent emotion, and afterwards told the magistrates who waited upon him in prison, "that he was much indebted to the Parliament for the great honour they had decreed him"; adding, "that he was prouder to have his head placed upon the top of the prison, than if they had decreed a golden statue to be erected to him in the market-place, or that his picture should be hung in the King's bedchamber." He said, "he thanked them for their care to preserve the remembrance of his loyalty, by transmitting such monuments to the different parts of the kingdom; and only wished that he had flesh enough to have sent a piece to every city in Christendom, as a token of his unshaken love and fidelity to his king and country." On the night before his execution, he inscribed the following lines with a diamond on the window of his jail:—

After the Restoration, the dust was recovered, the scattered remnants collected, and the bones of the hero conveyed to their final resting-place by a numerous assemblage of gentlemen of his family and name.

There is no ingredient of fiction in the historical incidents recorded in the following ballad. The indignities that were heaped upon Montrose during his procession through Edinburgh, his appearance before the Estates, and his last passage to the scaffold, as well as his undaunted bearing, have all been spoken to by eyewitnesses of the scene. A graphic and vivid sketch of the whole will be found in Mr. Mark Napier's volume, The Life and Times of Montrose—a work as chivalrous in its tone as the Chronicles of Froissart, and abounding in original and most interesting materials; but, in order to satisfy all scruple, the authorities for each fact are given in the shape of notes. The ballad may be considered as a narrative of the transactions, related by an aged Highlander, who had followed Montrose throughout his campaigns, to his grandson, shortly before the battle of Killiecrankie.