James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose

“ After the invasion had been crowned with success, Montrose still continued to cherish his now hopeless policy. On the 27th of May 1641 he was summoned before the Committee of Estates charged with intrigues against Argyll, and on the 11th of June he was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. When Charles visited Scotland to give his formal assent to the abolition of Episcopacy, Montrose communicated to him his belief that Hamilton was a traitor. It had indeed been alleged, on Clarendon’s authority, that he proposed to murder Hamilton and Argyll ”

“ Charles had fled in disguise from Oxford to the Scottish camp. He seems to have persuaded himself that he would be welcomed as an ally by men who were growing weary of a struggle now fast shaping itself to issues they had never dreamed of and for which they would assuredly have never fought. He found himself insulted as a prisoner. On the very day of his arrival he was imperiously requested by Lothian, as President of the Committee, to command James Graham to lay down his arms. "He who made you an Earl," was the spirited answer, "made James Graham a Marquis." ”

“ He swore passionately that, greatly as he desired the King's restoration, he would rather that it should never be effected, than effected with the help of this cruel and inhuman James Graham. How much of this indignation was sincere, and how much assumed as a cloak for the intrigues of faction, it would be hard to say. That there was a deep and widespread feeling in Scotland against Montrose is certain; but it is difficult to believe that pity for human suffering can at any time have strongly moved such a man as Lauderdale. ”

“ And all the while Charles knew well that the one inevitable condition, whatever else might be taken or left, without which no basis of an understanding with the Covenant was possible, must be the dismissal of James Graham from his service. Elizabeth of Bohemia, who knew her nephew's disposition too well, had always foreseen this risk. "I pray God keep the King in his constancy to you and his other true friends and servants," she had written to Montrose ”

“ The history of his exploits was attached to his neck by the public executioner: but he smiled at their inventive malice; declared, that he wore it with more pride than he had done the garter; and, when his devotions were finished, demanding if any more indignities remained to be practised, submitted calmly to an unmerited fate."—Laing's History of Scotland, Vol. I. p. 404.
Such was the death of James Graham, the great marquis of Montrose, over whom some lowly bard has poured forth the following elegiac verses. To say, that they are far unworthy of the subject, is no great reproach ”

“ JAMES GRAHAM, MARQUIS OF MONTROSE.
Even though when search was made at the restoring of the church and the erection of the effigy the remains could not be found, there has been that justification by procession and by faith, that justification of loyalty that we remember when we remember Montrose—
"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all."
Holyrood
Holyrood, ruined as it is, empty as it is, spurious as it is, still can house the Stewarts. Nowhere else are they so completely and splendidly Stewart. ”

“ According to a ‘Memorandum of Rob Roy's Dealings in Cattle’ among the ‘Montrose Papers,’ he had for several years traded in bringing black cattle from the highlands to the lowlands in May or June for persons who had advanced the price in money the winter before; but ‘finding his affairs backward’ in 1711, he absconded with the money to the Western Isles, ‘with the intention of leaving the country’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. p. 381) . On obtaining promise of protection from James Graham, first duke of Montrose [q. v.] ”

“ The direction of their flight had been betrayed by the discovery of Montrose's star and sword, and word sent into Assynt to be on the watch, with promise of reward to whomsoever should take James Graham alive. The fugitives were discovered in [Pg 212] the last extremity of hunger and brought to the Laird's house at Ardvrech. The Macleods of Assynt had long been followers of the Earls of Sutherland with whose family they were connected by marriage, and Neil Macleod, the present Laird, had been recently appointed the Earl's Deputy-Sheriff of that district. ”

“ It was a sufficiently barbarous measure to advertise an unfortunate man as a fraudulent bankrupt seeking to screen himself from justice; but the Duke of Montrose—in some other respects but a poor representative of his illustrious great-grandfather—went further: he caused his factor, Mr Graham of Killearn, to fall upon Macgregor’s poor little holding of Craigrostan and Inversnaid, and thrust out from it the wife and family of the late owner. ”

“ At the same time he warned the King that Montrose was a dangerous young man, very ambitious, [Pg 28] very powerful and popular in Scotland, and not unlikely in the event of any national rising to be set up as king by virtue of an old strain of royal blood in his family. This last insinuation would not fall on deaf ears. Hamilton, indeed, had himself been accused of a similar design, for which his descent from a daughter of James the Second, who had married the first Lord Hamilton, gave at least as much colour as any that Montrose's pedigree could supply ”

“ Among their fellow-captives, but not companions for no intercourse was permitted them, were Keir himself and young Lord Graham with his tutor. Their imprisonment was close, but their condition was easy compared with that of Crawford, Ogilvy, and the other Royalists, who suffered the treatment of the lowest criminals in the Tolbooth. To this time, too, belongs the only trace of Montrose's wife that history vouchsafes between the records of her marriage and her death, in a warrant of the Committee of Estates entrusting her with the care of her third son Robert. ”

“ Princes little know how ill-chosen attendants speak of them, almost within ear-shot. A king who suffers the licentious in his ante-chamber, may be certain that their libertine tongues will make free with himself.
"How long Overbury stays!" said another; "if Rochester does not mind, he will supplant him in James's favour."
"He does not seem particularly high in Carr's favour just now," rejoined Graham; "for he has been hunting him all the morning, and the noble lord favourite has avoided him vigorously and successfully." ”

“ They must stand to their arms, and close their ranks, and prepare for a firm, manly, and uncompromising resistance!" Now, considering that not more than two years have elapsed since it was the fashion of the Liberal journals to aver that the country party was all but extinct, helpless in the House of Commons, and unsupported beyond its doors, this estimate of Sir James Graham is undoubtedly remarkable. We are naturally led to inquire how it is that the cause of protection has made so prodigious a stride—why it should now appear so formidable in the eyes of an old and experienced statesman? ”

“ The enemy stripped him of a rich dress he had put on the same day, and left his body lying naked in the street. A few other gentlemen were killed, and some taken prisoners, but the greater part escaped. Hurry left the town next day, and, on his return to Baillie’s camp, entered the town of Montrose, and carried off Lord Graham, Montrose’s second son, a boy of fourteen years of age, then at school, who, along with his teacher, was sent to Edinburgh, and committed to the castle. ”

“ Macdonald had rejoined him with the rest of the Irish and fifteen hundred Highlanders. Patrick Graham brought up the Atholemen. Stout old Airlie, now restored to health, rode in with a troop of Ogilvies; and after some delay Aboyne appeared with a strong following of Gordons. In the first days of August Montrose was ready to take the field again with the largest force that had yet been mustered under the King's banner in Scotland. He was anxious for battle, but he was resolved to choose his own ground. The King's affairs were now desperate indeed. Naseby had been lost; Wales was growing cold ”

“ Train him up in the good faith and in loyalty to the king; tell him how Montrose fought for the good cause and died for it, and how his own father followed in the steps of the Marquis. Train him for the best life a man can live and make him a soldier, and lay upon him from his youth that ye will not die till he has avenged his father’s murder. That will be worthy of your blood and your rank, aye, and the love which has been between us, Jean Cochrane and John Graham. ”

“ I shall now have the usufruct of a kingdom—his kingdom by courtesy, mine by right. Hark, Graham! How is this vision to be realised? The seer pointed to James's death—who is to kill the tyrant?"
"I with this hand shall strike the blow," replied Graham. "My plans are already laid, and I wanted only your cooperation and assistance; for why, you know, should I be so improvident as to kill one king, until another is ready to take his place?"
"I cannot speak lightly of this affair," said the duke, in check of Graham's levity. "What are your plans? The fewer co-operators in a conspiracy the better." ”

“ Besides a royal descent, Viscount Dundee also claimed to be descended, through the family of Morphy in Mearns, from the illustrious house of Montrose, and was also allied to the noble family of Northesk by his mother, Lady Jean Carnegy, who was fourth daughter of the first earl. Young Graham entered the university of St. Andrews in the year 1660, where, according to his partial biographer, he made “very considerable progress” in “Humanity and Mathematics.” ”

“ Few more audacious feats have been performed. After some rapid changes of place (the fatigue attending which was the only annoyance that Mr. Graham seems to have complained of) , he carried his prisoner to an island on Loch Katrine, and caused him to write to the Duke, to state that his ransom was fixed at L3400 merks, being the balance which MacGregor pretended remained due to him, after deducting all that he owed to the Duke of Montrose. ”

“ The Covenanters were not, I dare say, addicted, more than their successors "to the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making." [A] Still, however, they could not refrain from some strains of exultation, over the defeat of the truculent tyrant, James Grahame. For, gentle reader, Montrose, who, with resources which seemed as none, gained six victories, and reconquered a kingdom; who, a poet, a scholar, a cavalier, and a general, could have graced alike a court, and governed a camp ”

“ If degradation from that position of influence and power which they have hitherto so justly and naturally possessed be thought no evil, we confess, that we would wish to see 600 that great interest—whose importance to the welfare of the State we have ever vindicated to the best of our power—selecting a more graceful and magnanimous mode of self-destruction. The retention of an undiminished rent-roll Sir James Graham has set his heart upon, as is unblushingly implied in the speech already quoted—but this will not be allowed him ”

“ The Free-lance system has gone out of fashion; and we confess that we are not sorry to observe that Sir James Graham has at last committed himself so decidedly, that the country party must hereafter regard him in the light of a permanent foe. Do not let us be misunderstood. We acknowledge the great advantage of his services as a friend: we have not the least desire to depreciate or undervalue his abilities as a debater. But now, more than ever, it is important to know distinctly who are for us, and who against us. ”

“ For the second time in so many days we tasted food, a handful of meal to the quaich of water—no more and no less; and James Grahame, Marquis of Montrose, supped his brose like the rest of us, with the knife from his belt doing the office of a horn-spoon.
Some hours after us came up the Camerons, who had fallen behind, but fresher and more eager for fighting than our own company, for they had fallen on a herd of roe on the slope of Sgur an Iolair, and had supped savagely on the warm raw flesh. ”

“ Judgment, which had been passed in parliament some days before, was then pronounced, by the dempster, that James Graham should be hanged for the space of three hours on a gibbet thirty feet high, that his head should be fixed on a spike in Edinburgh, his arms on the gates of Perth or Stirling, his legs on those of Glasgow and Aberdeen, and his body be interred by the hangman on the burrowmuir, unless he were previously released from excommunication by the kirk. ”

“ These stories were not written down till after the event, but enough was known of Sir Robert Graham to lead men to dream or to invent stories of the coming danger. In the parliament of 1435 Graham, the uncle and tutor of Malise, earl of Strathearn, whose earldom the king had seized, had taken hold of James in the presence of the three estates, and said that he arrested him in their name for his cruel conduct and illegal acts. ”

“ The two bodies of horse and foot now mustered and armed by Montrose were composed of men entirely devoted to him, and more or less antagonistic to the MacGregors, at whose hands they had all suffered severely. They wore the duke's livery—blue coats faced with red, with trews of the Grahame tartan, and each wore in his bonnet a laurel leaf. There was not a man among them but had something to revenge, in the shape of a farm burned, a kinsman slain, or a herd carried off ”