It appears, however, from the most authentic documents, that the Scotch gentlemen, though willing to obey the call of the Chevalier, were, from the first, by no means sanguine of success. They saw well what slight chances of victory were to be balanced against the imminent hazard of their lives and fortunes; and the death of Louis the Fourteenth, of which they were soon apprised, however it might be glossed over by Mar's creatures,* seemed to the most discerning a fatal blow. Yet a deep and devoted, however mistaken, sense of duty overbore every other consideration in their breasts. Who that reads of the lofty forgetfulness of self, of the chivalrous attachment to the fallen, that shone forth in the three rebellions of 1689, 1715, and 1745, and that notwithstanding repeated reverses, "for all that, and all that, and twice as much as all that," in the words of their own spirit-stirring song, still stood firm and undismayed, does not feel inclined to cry shame upon the charges of mean selfishness and calculating caution, so often cast upon this brave Scotch people? Who will not own that they have generous actions to show against the empty words of their maligners? Never, in my opinion, did any nation combine in a more eminent degree the sense and shrewdness which are sometimes thus unfairly urged as their reproach, with the highest courage and most unconquerable fidelity!

Lord Mar, having sent orders to his vassals to join him, raised the standard of the Chevalier on the 6th of September, at Kirkmichael, a village of Brae Mar. He was then attended by no more than sixty men. The standard, on its erection, was consecrated by prayers; but the Highlanders, ever watchful of omens, observed as an unfavourable sign that as the pole was planted in the ground the gilt ball fell down from its summit.

The next care of Mar was to issue several letters, declarations, addresses, and manifestoes; papers very various in title, but nearly the same in substance. His little force was now daily increased by fresh followers. About 500 of his own vassals joined him on foot. The gentlemen who came on horseback were formed into a body under the Earl of Linlithgow, entrusted with the guard of the standard, and dignified by the name of the "Royal Squadron." This body, which at the outset was only of twenty horse, soon grew into several hundreds.§ Meanwhile the flame was spreading in all directions. The white cockade-such was the emblem of the English as it is now of the French Pretender-was assumed by clan after clan. The first to rise was that of McIntosh; they had nearly 500

"Malcolm said (on being told of Louis's death) he was very well pleased to hear it, for a young prince such as the Regent would push our affair with more vigour than the old King, who was half doated." Master of Sinclair's MS. p. 84. See also p. 105. † Patten's History of the Rebellion of 1715, p. 153, ed. 1717.

In his letter to his own bailiff, on the 9th, he says, "Let my own tenants in Kild rummie know that if they come not forth with their best arms, I will send a party immediately to burn what they shall miss taking from them! By all that's sacred, I'll put this in execution!"

§ Master of Sinclair's MS., p. 118.

.

in arms, and seized the important post of Inverness. James was proclaimed by the Earl of Panmure at Brechin, by the Earl Marischal at Aberdeen, by Lord Huntly at Gordon, and by Mr. Graham, brother to the celebrated Claverhouse, at Dundee. On the 14th, Colonel John Hay, brother of the Earl of Kinnoul, obtained possession of Perth; and the Earl of Rothes, who was advancing to secure that place for the Government, with some men from Fifeshire, retired without a blow. In short, nearly the whole country to the north of the Tay was in the hands of the insurgents.

Meanwhile a scheme had been formed by the Jacobites in another part of Scotland, which, if successful, would probably have put them at once in possession of the whole of that kingdom. About eighty persons at Edinburgh, chiefly Highlanders, had plotted to seize and surprise the Castle, a stronghold of infinite importance, and containing nearly all the arms, stores, and money then at the disposal of the Government. At the head of the conspirators was a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Drummond. By dint of some bribery, and the cheaper expedient of high promises, they gained over three soldiers in the garrison,* and resolved to scale the Castle rock, at a place on the north side near the sallyport, where it seemed the least precipitous, and where one of their friends would be the sentinel at the time appointed, the 9th of September, at nine o'clock at night. Ladders of a peculiar construction had been prepared, which were to be drawn up by the Jacobite soldiers, and fastened to a strong stake within the wall, so as to enable the conspirators to climb. It had also been concerted, that on obtaining possession of the Castle, they should fire three cannon; that when this signal should be heard by some men stationed on the opposite coast of Fife, a fire should be kindled on the heights; and that these beacons, continued northward from hill to hill, should, with the speed of a telegraph, apprise Mar of his advantage, and enable him to complete it by immediately pushing forward to Edinburgh.

But, unhappily for Mar, a very slight accident was sufficient to defeat this promising scheme. One of the Jacobites engaged in it, Mr. Arthur, had communicated the whole design to his brother, Dr. Arthur, a physician. Dr. Arthur, a timid man, and a recent convert, was much agitated at these tidings, and could not disguise from his wife his feelings of uneasiness and anxiety; nor, when pressed by her curiosity for the cause of them, had he the firmness to conceal it. Thus entrusted to a woman, the secret soon ceased to be so. The lady, without her husband's knowledge, sent an anonymous letter to the Lord Justice Clerk, informing him of the whole conspiracy. Her letter did not reach his Lordship till ten, nor his express the Castle till eleven o'clock on the evening of the 9th; so that, had the conspirators been punctual to their time, their object might have been already attained, in spite of the disclosure.

"One sergeant, William Ainslie, and two privates, were engaged in the scheme. Ainslie was afterwards hanged." Sir Walter Scott's note on Sinclair's MS., p. 97.

But some of them carousing at a tavern, and drinking deep bumpers to the success of their enterprise, allowed the moment for its execution to slip by, and did not bring the ladders to the foot of the Castle rock until two hours after their appointment.* Scarcely had the three sentinels above begun to draw the ladders, when the time for the change of guard arrived, and when the officers of the garrison were roused by the news of the express. One of the Jacobite sentinels, seeing other soldiers coming round the rampart, fired his piece, and called out below that they had ruined both themselves and him. His companions, at the same time, let go the ropes. The conspirators beneath (some of them much hurt by the fall of the ladders) immediately dispersed; and, although a party of the city guard sallied out upon them from the West Port, in hopes of making prisoners, only four of them were taken. These proved to be, Ramsay and Boswell, writers to the Signet; Leslie, late page to the Duchess of Gordon; and Captain Maclean, a veteran of the field of Killiecrankie. Thus, through the combined influence of wine and women, was this daring scheme defeated.

The Cabinet of St. James's meanwhile had no easy game to play. The whole force at its disposal in Great Britain was scarcely above 8000 men. With these it had not only to encounter secret conspiracies, undisguised rebellions, and threatened landings in many places, but also to keep the peace in several other districts where the mob, inflamed by malicious insinuations, and zealous in the cause of the Church, which they believed to be endangered, pulled down meeting houses of Dissenters, and committed other acts of riot and outrage. With such scanty numbers the Ministers had to support the throne of George and to brave the enmity of Louis; to confirm a new dynasty and overawe an ancient rival. The chief control and direction in this arduous duty fell upon Secretary Stanhope, on account of his military character. The Duke of Marlborough was indeed far 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," 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

"They were so far from carrying on their affairs privately, that a gentleman who was not concerned told me that he was in a house that evening, where eighteen of them were drinking, and heard the hostess say they were powdering their hair to go to the attack of the Castle!" Sinclair's MS. p. 103. A strange sort of powder to provide on such an occasion!

†The army estimates for 1715 show us a total of more than 16,000 men at the ex pense of 556,000l.; but of these less than 9000 were at home. See the Comm. Journ., vol. xviii. p. 47.

Look back to p. 78; 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.

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-inChief 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 administration, 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,

To the Duchess, March 25, 1710.

Tindal's History, vol. vi. p. 421. 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.

$ 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.

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; 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 Carnwarth 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 nonappearance, to be denounced as rebels. This provision was immediately put in force by the Lord Advocate, and a great number of persons 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 four-score 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 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

See the collection of Original Letters and Papers on the Rebellion of 1715, printed at Edinburgh, 1730, p. 20.