1715. THE DUKE OF ARGYLE. 151 * more highly qualified for that or any other service; but, as I have already mentioned, was then an object of aversion at Court, and deprived of all real and effective power. The state of Scotland had, of course, been from the first a matter of great anxiety. So early as the 24th of July, Stanhope had obtained leave to bring in a Bill" for "the encouragement of loyalty in Scotland," †t by which it was hoped in some degree to bridle the disaffected clans. Yet, when at the end of August the first intelligence came that these clans were actually gathering, Stanhope and his colleagues concurred in thinking that this array was only designed as a stratagem to draw the King's forces northward, and favour the projected insurrection of Ormond in the west; and such, in fact, was the opinion held at this time by the Jacobites themselves at Bristol and other places. The Ministers accordingly determined to send no more troops to Scotland; on the contrary, it was to the south-western counties that they ordered the few regiments at their disposal. They directed General Whitham, the Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, to march with the handful of regular troops (about fifteen hundred) that could be mustered, and take post at Stirling, so as to maintain the passage of the Forth; but almost immediately afterwards they superseded him in behalf of the Duke of Argyle, whose personal knowledge of the country, and whose princely influence over it, could not fail to be most important in the coming struggle. Argyle might be considered an hereditary foe of the Stuarts, yet his attachment to the Whig party was very recent and doubtful, and no man had taken a more active part towards their expulsion from office than himself. On that occasion he seems to have been guided by a mean resentment against Marlborough, who thought but lightly of his character, and who goes so far as to say, in one of his private letters, "I cannot have a worse opinion of any man than I have "of the Duke of Argyle."§ By the new Tory adminis *Look back to p. 104.; and see Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 81. + Comm. Journ. vol. xviii. p. 237. This Act received the Royal Assent on the 30th of August. Tindal's History, vol. vi. p. 421. tration, which he had contributed to raise, he was sent to succeed Stanhope in Spain-an appointment which, from the desperate state of affairs, added nothing to his laurels. His return to England was soon followed by his rupture with the Ministry; he was dismissed from his employments, and rejoined his former friends, who, though they could scarcely place any very unmixed confidence in his support, yet knew its value too well to receive it otherwise than warmly. This powerful chieftain was born in 1678.* His influence was not confined to the Highlands, nor his talent to a field of battle; he was also distinguished as a speaker in the House of Lords; and though extremely cool and collected in his conduct, his oratory was warm and impassioned. † His manner was most dignified and graceful, his diction not deficient in elegance; but he greatly impaired its effect by too constantly directing it to panegyrics upon his own candour and disinterestedness-qualities of which I firmly believe that no man ever had less. The Earl of Sutherland, also a zealous friend of the Protestant Succession, was directed to embark in a King's ship, the Queenborough, and sail for his domains in the extreme north of Scotland, with a commission to raise his vassals, as well as any other clans on which he might prevail in favour of the established Government. Other measures of great vigour and activity were taken by Stanhope and his colleagues. According to an article in the guarantee for the Protestant Succession, the Dutch had bound themselves to furnish a body of 6000 men, in case of need; and to claim this contingent, Horace Walpole was now despatched to the Hague. At home, the Parliament was induced to vote most loyal Addresses * It is stated in Collins's Peerage (vol. vi. p. 443.) that he was twenty-three in 1705; but here he appears to be confounded with his brother, the Earl of Isla, who afterwards succeeded him in the Dukedom. 66 †Thomson says of him, "From his rich tongue persuasion flows." I thought him," says Lord Chesterfield, "the most affecting, persuasive, and applauded speaker I ever heard. I was captivated, "like others; but when I came home and coolly considered what he "had said, stripped of all those ornaments in which he had dressed "it, I often found the matter flimsy and the arguments weak." Letter to his son, December 5. 1749. 1715. LORD BREADALBANE. 153 to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act-to grant liberal supplies to offer a reward of 100,000l. for seizing the Pretender alive or dead—and to empower the King to seize suspected persons. All half-pay officers were recalled to active service. Twenty-one regiments (7000) men) were ordered to be raised. At Edinburgh the Government, availing themselves of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, arrested and imprisoned in the Castle several noted Jacobites; the Earls of Hume, Wigtoun, and Kinnoul, Lord Deskford, and Messrs. Lockhart of Carnwath and Hume of Whitfield. By a clause in the new Act for encouraging loyalty in Scotland, which had passed on the 30th of August, the King had also been empowered to summon any suspected persons to Edinburgh, there to give security for their good behaviour; or, in case of non-appearance, to be denounced as rebels. This provision was immediately put in force by the Lord Advocate, and a great number of persons were summoned; but the effect is admitted, on all hands, to have been very unfavourable to the Government. It drove to a decision those wavering politicians who would, in all probability, have remained quietly at home, without declaring for either party; and the decision thus forced upon them was almost always for their secret inclination-the Pretender. Scarcely any obeyed the requisition; and most of them gave civil excuses to the one party, but active assistance to the other. Thus, for example, the veteran Earl of Breadalbane, a man nearly fourscore years of age, sent to Edinburgh an affidavit of his ill health, which is still preserved, and which exhibits a most dreadful array of all human infirmities. Coughs, rheums, and defluxions-gravel and stitches-pains in the back and kidneys-seem the least in the catalogue; it declares him unable to move without danger to his life; and it is attested " upon soul and conscience" by a neighbouring physician, and by the minister of the parish.* Yet, on the very day after the date of this paper, the old Earl had left home and joined the army of Mar! That general was still in the Highlands. He had * See the collection of Original Letters and Papers on the Rebellion of 1715, printed at Edinburgh, 1730, p. 20. found great difficulty in raising the Athol men, from the Duke of that name making no manifestation in his favour; but it has been alleged by his enemies that he himself had secretly endeavoured to disgust the Duke of Athol with the enterprise, apprehending that, should this powerful nobleman join the insurgents, he and not Mar would be considered their leader.* To obtain the Duke's men, but without the Duke, is said to have been Mar's object; and he at length succeeded in it, through the exertions of Lord Tullibardine and two of his brothers. Above 500 from that country joined their young Marquis. At length, on the 28th of September, Mar made his entry into Perth; when his forces fell but little short of 5000 men. On the same day, also, he was cheered by the arrival of Mr. James Murray, second son of Lord Stormont, with most auspicious tidings from Commercy. Twelve ships, full of arms and ammunition, were described as ready to sail, and the Chevalier as resolved to follow them without delay. One or two small ships of that kind had, in fact, already reached the Scottish coast, and safely disembarked their stores, and accident threw into Lord Mar's hands a similar supply from a different quarter. A vessel had been equipped at Leith by the government, and freighted with 300 stand of arms for the use of the Earl of Sutherland's party in the North. Stress of weather compelled the vessel to take shelter under the Fife coast near Burntisland; and the skipper, being a native of that place, took advantage of the gale to go ashore and visit his family. On the 2d of October, intelligence of his neglect of duty was brought to Perth; it was determined to try this favourable opportunity; and at five o'clock the same evening, a party of eighty horse, under the command of the Master of Sinclair, sallied from the gates. They arrived at Burntisland about mid *Sinclair's MS., p. 116. "It is certain," he adds, "the Duke was "of that consequence that he'd have done more in one day in raising "the Highlands than Mar in two months." See also p. 236. I have seen in the King's Library at the Brit. Mus. (Polit. Pamph. case 95.) a MS." Mémoire de ce qui s'est passé dans le pays d'Athol et des 'loyales defences que sa Grandeur le Duc a faites pour le service du 66 gouvernement." 1715. It was no doubt drawn up in French in order to be laid before the King. 66 1715. LORD MAR AT PERTH. 155 night, surprised the skipper in his bed, seized the arms in the ship, and returned safely the same night with their booty, though, both in going and coming, they had to pass within ten miles of Stirling. This exploit gave peculiar satisfaction to the insurgents, as tending not only to augment their own resources, but to impair those of a formidable enemy; and it also encouraged Mar to push his outposts along the coast of Fife, and to station garrisons in the castles of Burntisland and of Falkland. Meanwhile the Duke of Argyle had arrived in Scotland about the middle of September, and hastened to the camp at Stirling. He had brought with him not a single battalion of troops, not one piece of artillery. He had found under his command no more than 1000 foot, and a body of dragoons, partly from that excellent regiment the Scots Greys*, but altogether of only 500 men. His own clan was kept quiet by the dread of an inroad from General Gordon with a party of Mar's followers; on his flank and rear, Glasgow, Dumfries, and other towns, were threatened by the Jacobites; and there seemed great danger of his being completely surrounded at Stirling, and yet he could not move from before its ramparts without still more imminent peril. Under such circumstances, the course for Mar to follow was plain. He could, early in October, have mustered above 8000 men; with which, says Marshal Berwick, he ought to have immediately marched forward; and he could scarcely have failed to drive Argyle before him headlong over the Tweed, and obtain possession of the whole of Scotland.† But it was now that Mar's want of military 66 "The dragoons, called the Scots Greys for many years, main"tained a character greatly superior to that of an ordinary regiment. They never gave a bounty exceeding a crown, and were recruited "from a class of persons greatly superior to those who usually enter "the army, such as the sons of decent farmers and tradesmen, who "felt a vocation for the army. No ignominious punishment was "ever inflicted, and a criminal who had merited such was previously "transferred to another regiment." Sir Walter Scott's note on Sinclair's MS. p. 304. † Mém. de Berwick, vol. ii. p. 160. The Marshal adds, "L'on peut "avoir beaucoup d'esprit, beaucoup de courage personnel, être "habile ministre, et toutefois n'avoir pas les talens requis pour une entreprise de cette nature. Il est certain que Mar ne les avait pas." 66 66 |