[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.

[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.

[4] Napier's Montrose and the Covenanters, i. 81-88.

[5] Montrose and the Covenanters, i. 67-72.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[11] His first wife was the Lady Dorothea Graham; on her death in 1638 he had married Lady Mary Campbell.

[12] Napier's Memorials of Montrose (printed for the Maitland Club), ii. 146.

[13] The patent is dated at Oxford, May 6th, 1644.

[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.

[15] Lord Kilpont was the son of the Earl of Airth and Menteith, for whom see p. 28.

[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.

[17] Memorials of Montrose, i. 215.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.