Philip Chesney Yorke and Hugh Chisholm

“ It was about this time that William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, referred to Argyll as “a goodly gentleman universally honoured of all Scotland.” Owing to his friendship with Mary, Argyll was separated from the party of Knox, but he forsook the queen when she determined to marry Lord Darnley; he was, however, again on Mary’s side after Queen Elizabeth’s refusal to aid Murray in 1565. Argyll was probably an accomplice in the murder of Rizzio ”

“ He compelled Huntly to retreat in April, and in July advanced to meet the Irish troops now landed in Argyllshire, which were acting in conjunction with Montrose, who had put himself at the head of the royalist forces in Scotland. A campaign followed in the north in which neither general succeeded in obtaining any advantage over the other, or even in engaging battle. Argyll then returned to Edinburgh, threw up his commission, and retired to Inveraray Castle. ”

“ Argyll, who inherited the title by the death of his father in 1638, had originally no preference for Presbyterianism, but now definitely took the side of the Covenanters in defence of the national religion and liberties. He continued to attend the meetings of the Assembly after its dissolution by the marquess of Hamilton, when Episcopacy was abolished. In 1639 he sent a statement to Laud, and subsequently to the king, defending the Assembly’s action; and raising a body of troops he seized Hamilton’s castle of Brodick in Arran. ”

“ His policy had failed, his power had vanished. In his estate he was hopelessly in debt, and on terms of such violent hostility with his eldest son as to be obliged to demand a garrison in his house for his protection. ”

“ He sat in the House of Commons for Glasgow from 1744 to 1761, when on his father’s succession to the dukedom he became legally disqualified, as courtesy marquess of Lorne, for a Scottish constituency; he could sit, however, for an English one, and was returned for Dover, which he represented till 1766, when he was created an English peer as Baron Sundridge, the title by which till 1892 the dukes of Argyll sat in the House of Lords. The 5th duke was an active landlord, and was the first president of the Highland and Agricultural Society. ”

“ In 1690 an act was passed restoring his title and estates, and it was in connexion with the refusal of the Macdonalds of Glencoe to join in the submission to him that he organized the terrible massacre which has made his name notorious. In 1696 he was made a lord of the treasury, and his political services were rewarded in 1701 by his being created duke of Argyll. ”

“ In Mr Gladstone’s cabinet of 1868 he was secretary of state for India, and somewhat infelicitously signalized his term of office by his refusal, against the advice of the Indian government, to promise the amir of Afghanistan support against Russian aggression, a course which threw that ruler into the arms of Russia and was followed by the second Afghan War. His eminence alike as a great Scottish noble, and as a British statesman, was accentuated in 1871 when his son, the marquess of Lorne, married Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria ”