XXXI. Battle of Auldearn-Fourth Victory XXXIII. Battle of Alford-Fifth Victory XXXIV. The Castle of Gloom destroyed XLII. Last Battle of Alaster MacColl XLIV. Montrose and the Palatine XLV. Last Campaign of Montrose . for ages CHAPTER I. BOYHOOD OF MONTROSE. By no nation have the Scots been surpassed either in heroic valour, or the passion for military adventure. After contending with a power possessing five times their numerical force and wealth, and partially closing that long and glorious struggle by a federal union in 1603, it was falsely thought that the accession of their monarch, the weak James VI., to the English throne, But that would sheath the sword on British ground for ever. accession, which was cotemporary with the great contest between Protestantism and Catholicism abroad, led almost immediately to the scarcely less deadly struggle between Presbytery and Episcopacy at home; for the evil measures of James sowed among the Scottish people those seeds of dissension, which the English ministers of his unfortunate son and successor so fatally fanned into a flame. That flame, the blood of more than fifty years of civil war and savage persecution could not quench; and to the dark shadow of those disastrous times, we owe much B of the sectarianism which at this hour is socially and politically the bane of Scotland, and which has sapped the foundations of her Church. Among the many brilliant and chivalric leaders who shone in the strife of the great Civil War, the first in loyalty and renown, the most prominent by his victories, and by his cruel death, the most glorious, was James, first Marquis of Montrose, “A Scotsman and chief of the family of Grahame, the only man in the world," says Cardinal de Retz, "who has ever reminded me of that description of heroes who are no longer to be found except in the Lives of Plutarch; he sustained the interests of the king of England in his own country with a degree of magnanimity which in that age was unrivalled." He sprang from a long line of illustrious ancestors, whom our genealogists (with what truth I venture not to say) trace back through the dark ages of history, to that valiant Græme who led the bare-kneed Caledonians through the wall of Severus, and from William de Græme, a knight of Lothian, in the reign of King David I. Sir David de Græme is mentioned by the Baronet of Glenbervie, as the first undoubted ancestor of the great Marquis, having in the 12th century obtained from King William the Lion, a gift of the lands of Charleton and Barrowfield, near old Montrose. Of this family was Sir Patrick, who died, fighting for Scotland, at the battle of Dunbar, and his son, the valiant Sir John the Grahame of Dundaff, who was styled the friend and Richt Hand of Wallace. When Sir Patrick was expiring on the field of Dunbar, he gave his sword to his son, and made him solemnly swear upon the blade, that while he lived, he would fight under Wallace for Scotland's freedom; and this sword is said to be still possessed by the House of Montrose. Sir John was severely wounded at the victorious battle of Blackearnside, and was afterwards slain, in 1298, at the fatal field of Falkirk, near which his tomb is yet to be seen. The old yew tree under which he expired, and where Wallace wept above his body, was cut down by a modern Vandal a few years ago. Two other members of this noble family fell in defence of the national honour; viz., William, third Lord Grahame of Kincardine (created Earl of Montrose in 15041), who perished with King (1) "Comes de Montrose compeared as ane of the Commissioners, Produced ane instrument under the Subscription of Walter Foster, Ultimo Martij 1505, containing, there intill a precept of Seasing made in the tyme of King James 4 to William Earl of Montrose, of the lands of old Montrose, containing also ane erection of the said lands in an Earldom, quhilk precept is of date 18 March 1504."-DE JURE PRELA TIONIS NOBILIUM SCOTIE 1606, Mait. Club. James IV. at Flodden, in 1513; and his grandson, Robert Lord Grahame, who was slain at the battle of Pinkey, in 1547, being struck by a cannon-ball, tired from an English ship, which lay across the mouth of the Esk, while the Scottish army defiled along the Roman bridge at Musselburgh. This Robert was the great-grandfather of our hero. His son, Earl John, was chancellor of that jury which so justly condemned the Regent Morton to death. In 1581, he was Lieutenant of the Borders, and had a guard of 200 pikemen and 500 horse, to enforce his authority (Moyse); and in 1585, “oure soverane Lord, remembering the guid trew and thankfull service of Johne Erl Montroise," confirmed all his privileges in Parliament. He was successively Lord High Treasurer and Lord High Chancellor of Scotland, and was Royal Commissioner to the Parliament which was appointed to meet at Perth in 1604.1 Two years after, a pension of six thousand merks was conferred on him and his heirs, heritably. He died in 1608, and many of his quaint letters to James VI. have been recently printed by the Bannatyne Club, in their collection of papers referring to the ecclesiastical state of Scotland between 1603 and 1625. He was succeeded by his son John, who became fourth Earl of Montrose. In 1595, when Lord Grahame, he fought a single combat in the High Street of Edinburgh, with Sir James Sandilands, to avenge the death of his kinsman, John Grahame, Lord Hallyards, a senator of the College of Justice, whom the knight had shot (three years before, at Leith) by the ball of a pistolette. Four of the senator's friends were at the same time slain by the sword. Immediately upon his accession, Charles I. appointed the Earl, President of the Scottish Privy Council. His countess, Margaret Ruthven, daughter of William, the turbulent Earl of Gowrie, against whom he had drawn his sword in the Raid of Ruthven, had six children; James, the first Marquis, and five daughters: Lilias married to Sir John Colquhoun of Luss, through whom she became ancestress of the eminent senator, Patrick Grant Lord Elchies; Margaret, whom her portrait shows to have been a fair-complexioned girl, with auburn hair, married to the Lord Napier, who, in one of his letters, affectionately calls her " a woman religious, chaste, beautiful, and his chief joy in this world;" Dorothea, married to Lord Rollo of Duncruib; Beatrix, to David, last Lord of Madertie; and Katharine, whom Crawford and Douglas have blotted from the rolls of nobility for a cause of shame to be related hereafter. (1) Lives of Officers of State. Fol. (2) Birrel's Diary. Cronikill of the Kinges of Scotland. (3) MS. Birth Brief |