SIR THOMAS URQUHART
OF CROMARTIE

Sir Thomas Urquhart.

SIR THOMAS
URQUHART
OF CROMARTIE KNIGHT.
BY
JOHN WILLCOCK

M.A.B.D.

LERWICK.

1899

EDINBURGH & LONDON

OLIPHANT

ANDERSON & FERRIER

SIGNATURE OF SIR THOMAS URQUHART, SLIGHTLY ENLARGED.

[All Rights Reserved]

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH

TO

A. B. W.

WHOSE PRAISE, SO FREELY GIVEN,

IS THE AUTHOR'S MOST COVETED

REWARD.

PREFACE

EW persons who take an interest in general literature are wholly unacquainted with the name of Sir Thomas Urquhart, as that of the translator of a great French classic. Only the more erudite can tell how the name of another literary man, Pierre Antoine Motteux, comes to be associated with his in connexion with the translation in question, and are aware that the Scottish knight is the author of original compositions in such diverse departments as poetry, trigonometry, genealogy, and biography, and that he played a prominent part in the public life of his time.

It has been my object to bring together in the following volume all the materials which are available for giving a vivid picture of the personality of Sir Thomas Urquhart, and of the circumstances in which his life was passed, as I think it would be a pity if his romantic, fantastical figure were to pass into oblivion. The materials for his life are fairly abundant, though they have to be sought for in many out-of-the-way corners. The slight but fairly accurate sketch prefixed to his Works in the Maitland Club edition, and the carefully written articles in Dr Irving's Scottish Writers, and the Dictionary of National Biography, contain the only previous attempts which have been made to give his history. The limits within which the authors of these notices had to work, have, however, prevented their giving more than a bare outline of his career. I have attempted, with what success it is for my readers to say, to clothe the skeleton with sinews and flesh, and to impart to the figure some measure of animation.

As I have had to do my work at a great distance from public libraries, I have been obliged to enlist the services of friends, more fortunately situated, in the task of looking up multitudinous references and allusions, which bore upon the history of the person in whom I was interested, or of the time in which he lived. Miss Kemp, James Walter, Esq., and Alexander Middlemass, Esq., Edinburgh, have been extremely serviceable to me in this way.

A variety of details of historical and biographical interest has been furnished me by Dr. Milne, King-Edward; Garden A. Duff, Esq., Hatton Castle, Turriff; Capt. Douglas Wimberley, Inverness; J. L. Anderson, Esq., Edinburgh; and P. J. Anderson, Esq., of Aberdeen University Library.

Professors Crum Brown, Saintsbury, Butcher, and Eggeling of my own Alma Mater have been very willing to give the information I have sought from them; and through Professor Grierson of Aberdeen I have had the loan of many books containing material of value for my purpose. Sheriff Mackenzie, Wick, and Sheriff Shennan, Lerwick, have aided me in questions of literary taste and of legal information; and from W. F. Smith, Esq., Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, I have received valuable help in writing the chapter on the translation of Rabelais. From the latter's scholarly volumes upon the great Frenchman I have borrowed some notes, which appear with his initials attached to them. To Professor Ferguson of Glasgow I am indebted for the photograph of Urquhart's handwriting.

In the work of correcting proofs—a somewhat laborious task in the present case—I have had kindly assistance from Dr Milne, above mentioned, and also from A. J. Tedder, Esq., London, Rev. T. Mathewson, Rev. D. Houston, M.A. and J. M. Goudie, Esq., Lerwick.

If I have omitted the name of any helper, or if by frivolous comment I have done wrong to the shade of Sir Thomas, I would adopt the language of Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice. "We are all liable to err," he says. "I have certainly meant well through the whole affair; ... and if my manner has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to apologize."

JOHN WILLCOCK.

United Pres. Manse, Lerwick, Shetland.

CONTENTS

SIR THOMAS URQUHART

CHAPTER I

The Urquharts and their Predecessors in Cromartie—Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior—Birth of our Author—School and University Days—Pecuniary and other Troubles at Home—The Castle of Cromartie—Our Author's Studious Bent—Foreign Travel—The Englishman Abroad—The Scot Abroad.

HE right of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie to be included in the list of famous Scots will scarcely be granted by many of his fellow-countrymen without some inquiry into the grounds upon which it is based. He himself, undoubtedly, would not have been backward in asserting his claim to such honourable distinction, though he would have entered a protest against the presence of some of those in whose company he would find himself. In the ecclesiastical and political controversies of the first half of the seventeenth century, he was, as an Episcopalian and a Cavalier, connected with the losing side, and, consequently, it is not to be expected that posterity should be so impartial as to cherish his name along with those of the victors in the conflict. It is to his literary, and not to his martial achievements, that he owes his fame. His translation of Rabelais is probably the most brilliant feat of the kind ever accomplished, and casts all his own original writings into the shade. The fantastical character of his own compositions, indeed, both in regard to their subject-matter and the diction in which they are clothed, forbids their ever having a large circle of readers. An author whose phraseology is like a combination of that used by Ancient Pistol with that of Sir Thomas Browne may have enthusiastic admirers, but they are almost certain to be few in number. Yet his works contain much interesting matter, and to them we are indebted for many details of the life of their author.

Though it is hard to believe Sir Thomas Urquhart's assertion that the connexion of the Urquharts with the north-west of Scotland dates as far back as the year B.C. 554, when an ancestor of his named Beltistos crossed over from Ireland, and built a castle near Inverness, the family was of considerable antiquity, and for many generations was one of the most distinguished in that part of the country. Nisbet, the great authority on heraldry, says that "they enjoyed not only the honourable office of hereditary Sheriff-Principal of the Shire of Cromartie, but the far greater part, if not the whole of the said shire did belong to them, either in property or superiority, and they possessed a considerable estate besides in the Shire of Aberdeen."[1] The admiralty of the seas from Caithness to Inverness also belonged to them.

The Urquharts were not, however, the earliest to bear rule in the part of Scotland with which their name is connected. Cromartie was originally the Crwmbawchty (or Crumbathy) of which Macbeth was reputed thane, before he became king. Wyntown in his Cronykil relates Macbeth's dream that he was first Thane of Cromartie, then Thane of Moray, and then King of Scotland.[2] After the first and second titles had been conferred upon him, he took steps to secure the third. Probably the mote-hill of Cromartie was the site of his official residence as thane of the district when he was at the beginning of his ambitious career.

In the thirteenth century the family of Mouat (then de Monte Alto) were in possession,[3] but early in the following century the estate had accrued to King Robert the Bruce, probably because the Mounts had submitted to the English king, Edward I. King Robert granted Cromartie to Sir Hugh Ross, eldest son of William, Earl of Ross, in 1315, and by him it was afterwards, in the reign of King David Bruce (1329-70), given to an Adam of Urquhart ("de Vrquhartt"),[4] with whose descendants it remained for many generations. In 1357 he got from the Crown the hereditary sheriffdom of Cromartie, and eight years later the same Hugh Ross gave him the estate of Fisherie, in King-Edward, Aberdeenshire. This Adam is the first of the family to emerge from the darkness of antiquity into the light of history, and probably his name, as the founder of the Urquhart fortunes, suggested the still more famous progenitor to whom our Sir Thomas traced back his pedigree link by link, as our readers will afterwards hear.

Our author's father, also a Thomas, and the first of his line who was a Protestant in religion, was born in 1585. He succeeded to the property in 1603, and in 1617 was knighted by James VI. in Edinburgh. As he was left an orphan at an early age, he was brought up under the care of his grand-uncle, John Urquhart of Craigfintray, who has been commonly called from this circumstance "the Tutor of Cromartie."[5] His great-grandnephew, our Sir Thomas, has celebrated his praise in very high terms. "He was," he says, "over all Britain renowned for his deep reach of natural wit, and great dexterity in acquiring of many lands and great possessions, with all men's applause."[6]

From all accounts, it seems that the "Tutor" was faithful in the discharge of all the duties belonging to his office,[7] though he did not succeed in imparting to his pupil the secret of acquiring landed property, either with or without applause.

Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, received his estates, we are informed, "without any burthen of debt, how little soever, or provision of brother, sister, or any other of his kindred or allyance wherewith to affect it."[8] He married Christian, the fourth daughter of Alexander, fourth Lord Elphinstone (1552-1638), and received with her a dowry of nine thousand merks Scots (i.e. £500 Sterling). The date of our author's birth is given by Maitland as 1605, but it is now certain that this is an error, and that the true date is 1611.[9] Sir Thomas was the eldest of the family, and he tells us that he was born five years after the marriage of his parents. He also informs us that his mother's father, Lord Elphinstone, held the office of High Treasurer in Scotland at the time of the marriage. As that nobleman was High Treasurer only from just before 19th April, 1599, till 22nd September, 1601, it would not have been unreasonable to fix the date of the marriage as probably some time in 1600, if we had no other information on the subject. But it so happens that the marriage-contract is in existence,[10] and is dated the 9th of July, 1606, and consequently Sir Thomas's birth would fall in the year 1611. Our author must therefore have been in error in describing his grandfather as being High Treasurer at the time of his daughter's marriage. He had, indeed, occupied this office some years before. Sir Thomas should have said "had been," instead of "was," but his lordly disposition of mind would probably make him contemptuous of such trifles.

In 1611, James VI. was drawing near to the end of the first period of his reign, during which he had been under the influence of the traditions of the days of Elizabeth and Burghley, and had not yet passed into his own keeping, and the hands of profligate favourites. Bacon was still in the shade of distrust, from which, however, he was soon to emerge: he was now, indeed, Solicitor-General, but his ambition was not satisfied by this post. The heir-apparent to the throne was Prince Henry, who died in the following year. Charles, his brother, was now eleven years of age. Shakespeare brought out this year his play of The Winter's Tale, and Ben Jonson his Catiline. Sir Walter Raleigh was a prisoner in the Tower, and was busily engaged in writing his History of the World, which he completed in the following year, though it was not published until 1614. The Authorised Version of the English Bible appeared this year. Milton was now a child of scarcely three years old, and Cromwell a boy of twelve.

The birthplace of our author is unknown; for though the castle of Cromartie was the official residence of the sheriffs, Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, is known to have had several other manor-houses, one of which was Fisherie,[11] in the parish of King-Edward, Aberdeenshire, in which he resided from time to time. It is probable that the future translator of Rabelais laid the foundation of the erudition by which in after years he was distinguished, in Banff,[12] which then possessed a grammar-school, rather than in the more northern town which is associated with his name.

Sir Thomas was only eleven years old when, in 1622, he entered the University of Aberdeen,[13] but there is no reason to believe that the average age of the "men" of his year would be in excess of his own. Donne was the same age as Urquhart when he entered Oxford. The famous Crichton went up to St Andrews at the age of ten, though up to that time he had not given evidence of any extraordinary precocity. A generation before, Montaigne had already completed his collegiate course when he attained his thirteenth year. It seems strange to us that boys of such tender age should have been found able to pass through a university curriculum; and we are forced to conclude either that the boys of those days were intellectually superior to those with whom we are familiar, or that the studies which occupied them were less deep and severe than those which are now pursued in seats of learning. The latter is probably the true explanation of the matter. University education in Scotland had been remodelled, and adapted to the requirements of the time and of a Protestant society in the previous generation, and in this work Andrew Melville had a very notable part. In 1583 a new constitution had been drawn up for the University of Aberdeen, and the arrangements prescribed by it may have existed there when our author was a student. The Principal, according to this constitution, was Professor of Theology, as well as incumbent of the parish of Old Machar, and was responsible for the government and discipline of the college.[14] Under him were four Regents, one of whom was Sub-Principal, and to them was assigned the duty of training students in various departments of learning. Thus physiology, geography, astrology, history, and Hebrew were assigned to the Sub-Principal. Another Regent explained "the principles of reasoning from the best Greek and Latin authors, with practice in writing and speaking"; while a third lectured upon Greek, and read the more elementary Latin and Greek authors. The fourth Regent taught arithmetic and geometry, and, along with them, a portion of Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, and Politics, and Cicero's De Officiis. This attempt to assign special departments to the various regents respectively, was a marked improvement upon the older system, under which they were each responsible for teaching all the subjects included in the curriculum.

The students paid fees, which varied in amount according to their social standing. On entering the university they were required to take an oath of loyalty to the Reformed religion. None were allowed to carry arms, or to converse in any other tongue than Greek or Latin. Perhaps, however, this latter rule was merely an attempt to restrain the measureless tide of human speech. And in order that nothing might interfere with the progress of the students, the Nova Fundatio, or new constitution of Aberdeen University, abolished all holidays ("omnes consuetas olim a studiis vacationes aboleri penitus").[15]

Sir Thomas Urquhart's name does not appear in the list of graduates in 1626, so that there are no means of determining from the records of King's College how many years he spent there. For the city in which he had received his education he ever afterwards had a high regard. Thus he says of it: "For honesty, good fashions, and learning, Aberdeen surpasseth as far all other cities and towns in Scotland, as London doth for greatness, wealth, and magnificence, the smallest hamlet or village in England."[16]

He gives unmeasured praise to some of those eminent men who were associated with the fame of Aberdeen University in what has been called its "Augustan age"—the first four or five decades of the seventeenth century. Thus, according to him, William Lesley, D.D.,[17] was "one of the most profound and universal scholars then living"—like Socrates in having published no works, but, unfortunately, unlike that philosopher in not having among his disciples a Plato and an Aristotle to receive their master's knowledge and transmit it to future generations.[18] Of his successor in the principalship, Dr William Guild, he says: "He deserveth by himself to be remembered, both for that he hath committed to the press many good books, tending to the edification of the soul, and bettering of the minde; and that of all the divines that have lived in Scotland these hundred yeers, he hath been the most charitable, and who bestowed most of his own to publike uses."[19] At the time when he wrote these estimates of the sages at whose feet he had sat as a student, some of his old friends were under a cloud, and he had to be careful not to compromise them by his praise. And so he says of "Master William [?] Seaton," who had been his tutor, "[he was] a very able preacher truly, and good scholar, and [one] whom I would extoll yet higher, but that being under the consistorian lash, some critick Presbyters may do him injury, by pretending his dislike of them, for being praised by him who idolizeth not their authority."[20]

At the time of the marriage of Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, Lord Elphinstone, who was fully acquainted with the prosperous condition of his son-in-law's affairs, made him pledge himself to manage his property so that it might descend to his heir as he had himself received it. Unfortunately this pledge was not fulfilled. Through mismanagement and neglect his affairs got into disorder, and the later years of his life were troubled by pecuniary difficulties.[21] His son says of him: "Of all men living [he was] the justest, equallest, and most honest in his dealings, [and] his humour was, rather than to break his word, to lose all he had, and stand to his most undeliberate promises, what ever they might cost; which too strict adherence to the austerest principles of veracity, proved oftentimes dammageable to him in his negotiations with many cunning sharks, who knew with what profitable odds they could scrue themselves in upon the windings of so good a nature.... By the unfaithfulnes, on the one side, of some of his menial servants, in filching from him much of his personal estate, and falsehood of several chamberlains and bayliffs to whom he had intrusted the managing of his rents, in the unconscionable discharge of their receits, by giving up one account thrice, and of such accounts many; and, on the other part, by the frequency of disadvantagious bargains, which the slieness of the subtil merchant did involve him in, his loss came unawares upon him, and irresistibly, like an armed man; too great trust to the one, and facility in behalf of the other, occasioning so grievous a misfortune, which nevertheless did not proceed from want of knowledge or abilitie in natural parts, for in the business of other men he would have given a very sound advice, and was surpassing dextrous in arbitrements, upon any reference submitted to him, but that hee thought it did derogate from the nobility of his house and reputation of his person, to look to petty things in matter of his own affairs."[22]

One of the ways in which the elder Sir Thomas succeeded in impoverishing himself and his family was in becoming bail for people who absconded; so, at least, we would infer from an entry in the Court-book of the Burgh of Banff under date of 21st April, 1629, in which we find that "Sir Thomas Urquhurt of Cromarty, having become caution for the appearance of Alexander Forbes, merchant in Balvenye, alleged forestaller, and the said Alexander not having appeared, Sir Thomas is decerned to pay £40 Scots (£3, 6s. 8d. Sterling)."[23]

In 1637 we find that he was obliged to appeal to his sovereign against the urgency of his creditors, and a Letter of Protection was issued in his favour. It ran as follows: "Letter of Protection granted by King Charles the First, under his great seal, to Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, from all dilligence at the instance of his creditors, for the space of one year, thereby giving him a persona standi in judicio, notwithstanding he may be at the horn, and taking him under his royal protection during the time. Dated at St James's, 20th March, 1637."[24] A somewhat humorous situation is suggested by this document. The creditors might "put him to the horn," i.e., according to the usual legal form, order him in the king's name to pay his debts on penalty of being outlawed as a traitor, while the king himself authorised him to take no notice of the proceedings.

In the same year we have intimation of the elder Sir Thomas's pecuniary misfortunes being aggravated by domestic strife, for we find him instructing a high legal functionary to raise an action against his sons, Thomas and Alexander, for their unfilial conduct. The charge was that of "putting violent hands on the persone of the said Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knycht, their father, taking him captive and prissoner, and detening him in sure firmance within ane upper chalmer, callit the Inner Dortour, within his place of Cromertie, tanquam in privato carcere, fra the Mononday to the Fryday in the efter none therefter, committit in the moneth of December last, 1636." The case came up for trial before the Court of Justiciary on the 19th of July, and was postponed for a week, when it was abandoned. The Lords of Council had appointed a commission to settle all differences between the father and sons and on receiving their report the Court dismissed the case.[25] We have no particulars as to the causes of disagreement which led to such all unhappy state of affairs, but we are not likely to be far wrong in assuming that the sons wished to prevent their father's taking some legal step which they considered would be detrimental to his and their interests. The affectionate terms in which our author describes his father's character ten years after his death, in the words above quoted, make us sure that he sincerely regretted any wrong towards him of which he may have been guilty at this time.

The old castle of Cromartie has now long disappeared, the stones of which it was built having been used for the erection of a modern house in 1772, after the estate had passed, by purchase, from the family of Urquhart to Mr George Ross. It was a building of considerable antiquity. In 1470 a royal grant was made by James III. to William Urquhart of the Motehill, or Mount of Cromartie, with permission to erect on this a tower or fortalice. Advantage was taken of this permission to fortify the family mansion, and it was converted into a castle of considerable strength.[26] Sir Thomas says of it: "The stance thereof is stately, and the house it selfe of a notable good fabrick and contrivance."[27] An interesting description of the building as it was just before its demolition is given by Hugh Miller. "Directly behind the site of the old town," he says, "the ground rises abruptly from the level to the height of nearly a hundred feet, after which it forms a kind of table-land of considerable extent, and then sweeps gently to the top of the hill. A deep ravine, with a little stream running through it, intersects the rising ground at nearly right angles with the front which it presents to the houses; and on the eastern angle, towering over the ravine on the one side, and the edge of the bank on the other, stood the old castle of Cromarty. It was a massy, time-worn building, rising in some places to the height of six storeys, battlemented at the top, and roofed with grey stone. One immense turret jutted out from the corner, which occupied the extreme point of the angle, and looking down from an altitude of at least one hundred and sixty feet on the little stream, and the struggling row of trees which sprung up at its edge, commanded both sides of the declivity and the town below." Of the interior we are told by the same writer, on the authority of an old woman who, as a child, had lived in the castle, that "two threshers could have plied their flails within the huge chimney of the kitchen; and that, in the great hall, an immense, dark chamber, lined with oak, a party of a hundred men had exercised at the pike."[28]

The elder Sir Thomas had also a winter residence in Banff.[29] In the Court-book of the Burgh of Banff we have the following entry: "1630, July 21st, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie gave in ane Act of the Session of Banff, geiveing licence to him to erect ane desk and loft in the kirk of Banff (seeing he is both a parochiner and resident within the said toun) for his accomodatione. The brethren gave their approbatione with express provision that neither the edifice nor lichtes of the said kirk suld be deteriorat."[30]

Beyond the bare fact of his having been a student in the University of Aberdeen, we have no information concerning the manner in which the earlier years of our author's life were passed, or the circumstances in which he acquired the miscellaneous erudition which his writings display. The only remark he makes about the education he received is to the effect that his father laid out but a very insignificant portion of his income upon this item of family expenses. Yet, however little the expenditure may have been, Urquhart evidently profited fully by the education which he had received, and attained to something more than a gentlemanly acquaintance with some of the abstruser departments of learning.

The special bent of his mind in early years, and his love for study rather than sport, are shown in the following reminiscence of his youth, which he narrates with his characteristic diffuseness. "There happening," he says, "a gentleman of very good worth to stay awhile at my house, who, one day amongst many other, was pleased, in the deadst time of all the winter, with a gun upon his shoulder, to search for a shot of some wild-fowl; and after he had waded through many waters, taken excessive pains in quest of his game, and by means thereof had killed some five or six moor fowls and partridges, which he brought along with him to my house, he was by some other gentlemen, who chanced to alight at my gate, as he entered in, very much commended for his love to sport; and, as the fashion of most of our countrymen is, not to praise one without dispraising another, I was highly blamed for not giving my self in that kind to the same exercise, having before my eys so commendable a pattern to imitate; I answered, though the gentleman deserved praise for the evident proof he had given that day of his inclination to thrift and laboriousness, that nevertheless I was not to blame, seeing whilst he was busied about that sport, I was imployed in a diversion of another nature, such as optical secrets, mysteries of natural philosophie, reasons for the variety of colours, the finding out of the longitude, the squaring of a circle, and wayes to accomplish all trigonometrical calculations by sines, without tangents, with the same compendiousness of computation,—which, in the estimation of learned men, would be accounted worth six hundred thousand partridges, and as many moor-fowles."

There can be little doubt that Sir Thomas had the best of the argument. But he was not satisfied with this: for nothing less would content him than vanquishing his opponent on his own ground, as well as with the weapons of logic. With the same lordliness of temper which had led him to re-capitulate the dignified subjects which had occupied his studious mind—the squaring of the circle being but one of them—he chose the breaking-in of a horse as a set-off against his friend's achievements of the day before. The success of the scientific student and the discomfiture of the mere sportsman are told in the conclusion of the story. "In the mean while," he says, "that worthy gentleman, being wet and weary after travel, was not able to eat of what he had so much toyled for, whilst my braine recreations so sharpened my appetite, that I supped to very good purpose. That night past, the next morning I gave six pence to a footman of mine, to try his fortune with the gun, during the time I should disport my self in the breaking of a young horse; and it so fell out, that by [the time] I had given my selfe a good heat by riding, the boy returned with a dozen of wild fouls, half moor foule, half partridge, whereat being exceeding well pleased, I alighted, gave him my horse to care for, and forthwith entred in to see my gentlemen, the most especiall whereof was unable to rise out of his bed, by reason of the Gout and Sciatick, wherewith he was seized for his former daye's toyle."[31]

In the early years of his manhood, before our author felt himself qualified to take part in public life, he spent some time in foreign travel. The kind of figure cut by a young English gentleman of that period upon the Continent we know from the testimony of Portia, for it can scarcely be that much change had taken place in the interval of a generation, between her time and the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth century. He was generally unversed in the languages of the countries he visited, and, from his lack of Latin, French, or Italian, was apt to fail in understanding the natives, or in making himself understood by them. He might be handsome in figure, but conversation with him was reduced to the level of a dumb-show. His dress was often very odd, and his manners eccentric, as though he had bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour—everywhere. A strong contrast to him in the matter of language was the young Scotchman of the period, if Sir Thomas Urquhart is to be taken as at all an average specimen of his nation, and if his account of himself can be relied upon. He says of himself that when he travelled through France, Spain, and Italy, he spoke the languages to such perfection that he might easily have passed himself off as a native of any one of these countries. Some advised him to do so, but his patriotic feelings were too strong to allow him to follow such a course: "he plainly told them (without making bones thereof), that truly he thought he had as much honour by his own country, which did contrevalue the riches and fertility of those nations, by the valour, learning, and honesty, wherein it did parallel, if not surpass them."[32]

It is somewhat difficult for the mind to grasp the idea of a Scotchman in those days, when so many of the things which we now associate with the nationality were not in existence—when his Church was Episcopalian in constitution, the Shorter Catechism not yet written by Englishmen for his use, Burns unborn, and distilled spirits not extensively used as a beverage. We could scarcely even know him by his costume. For no self-respecting representative of that country would assume the Highland garb which so many Englishmen believe to be generally worn north of the Tweed, if we are to credit the authoritative statement of Macaulay to the effect that "before the Union it was considered by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a thief."[33] The characteristics by which "a Scot abroad" in those days was recognised, were, from some accounts, not shrewdness in making bargains, economical habits, indomitable perseverance, and unsleeping caution, but the pride and high-spiritedness which made him keen in detecting and swift in avenging slights that might be cast upon the country from which he came. So deep was the impression made by these peculiarities upon foreign nations, that they became proverbial. "He is a Scot, he has pepper in his nose!"[34] said they, somewhat familiarly, yet with a touch of fear, when they noticed the flashing eye, and the hand instinctively seeking the sword-hilt. "High-spirited as a Scot!"[35] they exclaimed with admiration, when among themselves some soul was moved to unwonted courage. Such, at least, is the impression produced upon the mind by some of those novels in which Scott and his imitators trace the wanderings of their fellow-countrymen through European lands in those earlier times. That there is some foundation of truth for the lofty superstructure is rendered credible by the case of Sir Thomas Urquhart. "My heart,"[36] he says, "gave me the courage for adventuring in a forrain climat, thrice to enter the lists against men of three severall nations, to vindicate my native country[37] from the calumnies wherewith they had aspersed it; wherein it pleased God so to conduct my fortune, that, after I had disarmed them, they in such sort acknowledged their error, and the obligation they did owe me for sparing their lives, which justly by the law of arms I might have taken, that, in lieu of three enemies that formerly they were, I acquired three constant friends, both to my selfe and my compatriots, whereof by severall gallant testimonies they gave evident proofe, to the improvement of my country's credit in many occasions."[38]

The fair critic, whose estimate of the young Englishman has been referred to, gives her opinion also of his Scottish rival; but, strangely enough, she observes in him qualities of a kind opposite to those displayed by Sir Thomas Urquhart. She was struck by his neighbourly charity, "for he borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay him back again when he was able."[39] Can it be that the words put into her mouth are merely the ribald wit of an envious Southron, or are we to understand that the spirit which triumphed over so many inferiors was yet wise enough to discern when it stood in the presence of a mightier than itself?

How a young man on his travels should occupy his time, had been laid down in a little volume which had been published just before Urquhart set out to see the world abroad. In this he might read a list of the things which should engage his attention, drawn up in sonorous language by no less a personage than a late Lord Chancellor of England—a man who was ready to give advice to all his fellow-creatures in all conceivable circumstances. "The things," says Lord Bacon, "to be seen and observed are: the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns, and so the havens and harbours; antiquities and ruins; libraries, colleges, disputations and lectures, where any are; shipping and navies; house and gardens of state and pleasure near great cities; armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, burses, warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of jewels and robes, cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where they go.... As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men need not be put in mind of them; yet they are not to be neglected."[40]

To what extent Urquhart followed a plan of this kind it is impossible to say; for, though his writings are so discursive that we might expect to find in them allusions to anything remarkable he had seen or heard, he has very little to say about his foreign experiences. Dr Johnson spoke with contempt of an English peer, who had extended his travels as far as Egypt, but who had brought back only one small contribution to the general stock of human information—the fact that he had seen "a large serpent in one of the pyramids of Egypt." Urquhart was not quite so poverty-stricken as this; for he seems to have observed examples of mental infirmity, illustrations of which he might doubtless have found nearer home.

"I saw at Madrid," he says, "a bald-pated fellow who beleeved he was Julius Cæsar, and therefore went constantly on the streets with a laurel crown on his head; and another at Toledo, who would not adventure to goe abroad unlesse it were in a coach, chariot, or sedane, for fear the heavens should fall down upon him. I likewise saw one in Saragosa, who, imagining himself to be the lawfull King of Aragon, went no where without a scepter in his hand; and another in the kingdome of Granada, who beleeved he was the valiant Cid that conquered the Mores. At Messina, in Sicilie, I also saw a man that conceived himself to be the great Alexander of Macedone, and that in a ten years space he should be master of all the territories which he subdued; but the best is, that the better to resemble him he always held his neck awry, which naturally was streight and upright enough; and another at Venice, who imagined he was Soveraign of the whole Adriatick Sea, and sole owner of all the ships that came from the Levante. Of men that fancied themselves to be women, beasts, trees, stones, pitchers, glasse, angels, and of women whose strained imaginations have falne upon the like extravagancies, even in the midst of fire and the extremest pains fortune could inflict upon them, there is such variety of examples, amongst which I have seen some at Rome, Naples, Florence, Genua, Paris, and other eminent cities, that to multiply any moe [more] words therein, were to load your ears with old wives' tales, and the trivial tattle of idly imployed and shallow braind humorists."[41]

He also tells, though not in the same connexion, of his having been witness of the honour and admiration lavished upon one of his fellow-countrymen, Dr Seaton, by the élite of Parisian society. "I have seen him," he says, "circled about at the Louvre with a ring of French lords and gentlemen, who hearkned to his discourse with so great attention, that none of them, so long as he was pleased to speak, would offer to interrupt him, to the end that the pearles falling from his mouth might be the more orderly congested in the several treasures of their judgements."[42]

Part of his time abroad was devoted to the fascinating occupation of book-hunting, and he had great pleasure in the spoils he had won. When they were set in order on shelves in the library of the castle of Cromartie, he looked on them with the joy which only book-collectors know. "They were," he says, "like to a compleat nosegay of flowers, which, in my travels, I had gathered out of the gardens of above sixteen several kingdoms."[43]

[1] System of Heraldry, ii, 274.

[2] Wyntown's narrative is as follows (quoted in Sir William Fraser's Earls of Cromartie):—

"A nycht he thowcht in hys dreming,
Dat syttand he wes besyd þe Kyng
At a Sete in hwnting; swà
Intil his Leisch had Grewhundys twà.
He thowcht, quhile he wes swà syttand,
He sawe thre wemen by gangand;
And þai wemen þan thowcht he
Thre werd Systrys mást lyk to be.
De fyrst he hard say gangand by,
'Lo yhondyr þe Thayne of Crwmbawchty.'
De toyir woman sayd agayne,
'Of Morave yhondyre I se þe Thayne.'
De thryd þan sayd, 'I se þe Kyng.'
All þis he herd in hys dreming."
Wyntown's Cronykil, i. 225.

Wyntown's date is about A.D. 1395. Macbeth was killed at Lumphanan by Macduff, 5th December A.D. 1056.

[3] A charter of lands in Cromartie granted by William de Monte Alto, between 1252 and 1272, is still in existence. The granter of the charter, having been owner of Cromartie, was claimed by Sir Thomas Urquhart as one of his Urquhart ancestors, but with no better authority than the earlier ancestors who figure in our author's Pedigree. See Earls of Cromartie, by Sir William Fraser.

[4] It would seem from this that Urquhart was originally a place-name, probably Gaelic. There were two parishes of Urquhart in the old province of Moray—one with a priory near Elgin, and the other with a castle in what is now Inverness-shire.

[5] "Tutor" here simply means "legal guardian"—for boys until fourteen years of age, and for girls until twelve. After these ages and before that of twenty-one such wards are in the charge of "Curators." Owing to our author's having the same Christian name as his father, the mistake is often made of asserting that John Urquhart was his tutor.

[6] Works, p. 172. In a MS. volume of unpublished poems by Sir Thomas, which is described on p. 116, there is the following:—"Upon the tutor of Cromarty, my great-grandfather's younger brother, and my father's tutor:

"The present tyme, the preterit, nor futur
T' ourselves, our fathers, nor posteritie,
Do now, have yet, nor will produce a tutor,
For's Pupils weil of more dexteritie,
For he left free th' estate he had in charge:
And by meer industrie did's own enlarge" (iii. 7).

We are sorry to quote a poem of Sir Thomas's at this early stage, before the atmosphere has been created which is needed for perceiving and appreciating its true value. The judicious reader will, however, return to it with interest when that process has been completed.

[7] John Urquhart, "the Tutor of Cromartie," died in 1631, at the age of eighty-four, and was buried in the old church of King-Edward, Aberdeenshire, where there is a marble monument to his memory.

[8] Works, p. 340.

[9] Another erroneous date is in the edition of the Tracts of 1774, where 1613 is given as the year of our author's birth.

[10] This is now amongst the Gardenston papers, having been formerly in the possession of Mr. Dunbar. All account of its contents is given in Antiquarian Notes, by C. Fraser Mackintosh, p. 195. An independent corroboration of the above date of the marriage is by a document now in the Register House in Edinburgh (Aberdeen Sasines), in which Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, gives sasine of the barony of Fisherie to Lady Christian Elphinstone. The "precept," or clause in the marriage-contract, which directs the notary to give sasine of the estate settled on the bride, is also dated the 9th of July, 1606, and in it she is described as being in suâ purâ virginitate. Probably the marriage took place either on that day or very soon afterwards. The bridegroom was just of age, while Lady Christian was under sixteen, the date of her birth being 19th December, 1590 (The Lords Elphinstone, Fraser, i. 167).

The issue of this marriage were at least the following sons and daughters:—(l) Thomas; (2) Alexander; (3) George; (4) John; (5) [name unknown]; (6) Henry; and (7) Jane, m. Sir Alexander Abercromby of Birkenbog; (8) Helen, m. Sir James Gordon of Lesmoir; (9) Annas, m. Alexander Strachan of Glenkindie; (10) Margaret, m. John Irving of Brucklay; (11) [name unknown], m. —— Campbell of Calder.

[11] Fisherie is about six miles from Banff.

[12] It is quite possible, however, that, in the parish school of King-Edward, our author could have got the rudiments of a classical education. In 1649 (15th Nov.), Mr James Petrie, who was school-master there, applied for the school of Banff and, as a test of his power, "was ordeined to teache the sext satyr of Persius to-morrow in the school of Banf be nyne hours in presence of the bailyies and others in the toune who wer scholars." He passed through the test successfully, and was appointed to the office (Annals of Banff, ii. 30, New Spalding Club).

[13] The entry of his name as a student on the roll is in the following terms: "In Academiam regiam Aberdonensem recepti sunt adolescentes quorum nomina sequuntur, præceptore Alexandro Lunano, Anno 1622.

...

...
Thomas Urquhardus de Cromartie.

... ...
Fasti Aberdonenses, 1854."

[14] King's College: Officers and Graduates, by P. J. Anderson, M.A., pp. 347, 348.

[15] An "eminent Yorkshire educationist" introduced the same rules into the establishment under his charge. It is probable, however, that in Mr Squeers's case the arrangement was the result of independent research into methods of education, rather than a hint borrowed from Andrew Melville. "No holidays—none of those ill-judged comings home twice a year that unsettle children's minds so!" (Nicholas Nickleby, chap. iv.).

It is only fair to say that there are doubts as to how far the arrangements under the Nova Fundatio, as above described, were in force in Sir Thomas Urquhart's student days. If the older system were still in operation, the Alexander Lunan, who is mentioned as his preceptor, would virtually have taught our author all the subjects contained in the curriculum through which he passed. As there is no proof that Alexander Lunan was another Admirable Crichton, the fact of his doing so would strengthen what we have said above as to the comparative slightness of the erudition imparted in a university education in those days. Sir Thomas Urquhart speaks of having "learned the elements of his philosophy" in the University of Aberdeen under William Seaton (Works, p. 263). It has been suggested that it is an error for John Seaton, and that it indicates that our author, like many other students of King's College, took a session or two at Marischal College (see Anderson's Fasti Acad. Marisc. ii. 34, 588).

[16] Works, p. 395.

[17] Dr Lesley was successively Humanist, Regent, Sub-Principal, and Principal of King's College. In 1639 he was deprived of his office by the Covenanting party.

[18] Works, p. 262.

[19] Works, p. 263. The editor of the Book of Bon Accord gives a lower estimate of Dr Guild's character: he says that his works are of no literary merit, and that he got fame by his wealth and ostentatious liberality. He was minister of King-Edward before he went to Aberdeen; and his widow, Catharine Rolland, founded a bursary at the university for young men belonging to that parish.

[20] Ibid. p. 263: see p. 11, note.

[21] Lord Elphinstone died 14th January, 1638. During the four preceding years his son-in-law had "made ducks and drakes" of his ancestral possessions. His portrait, which is still preserved at Carberry Tower, is engraved in Sir William Fraser's work, The Lords Elphinstone. It gives one the impression of a grave, melancholy man. He had fourteen sons and five daughters. It is to be hoped that none of his sons and no other of his sons-in-law had the faculty for getting into difficulties which Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, displayed.

[22] Works, p. 336.

[23] The offence of forestalling consisted in buying merchandise, victuals, etc., before they appeared in a fair or market-place for sale, or in taking steps to raise the prices of such things, or in dissuading anyone coming to market from carrying his goods thither. The amount of fine for a first offence was, as above, £40 Scots (or £3, 6s. 8d. Sterling); for a second offence, 100 merks (or £5, 11s., 1d. Sterling); while for a third offence it was forfeiture of movable goods.

[24] M'Farlane's Genealogical Collections, ii. 283. MS. Advocates' Library.

[25] Records of the Court of Justiciary.

[26] It was built in the old turreted style, and defended on the south by a moat and high wall. When it was taken down, in the surrounding ground were found human skeletons, and urns containing human remains, both enclosed in graves made of flags (Old Stat. Account).

[27] Works, p. 312. "The situation appears in every view most delightful" (Pococke's Tour, 1760).

[28] Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, pp. 78, 80.

[29] This was a fortalice-tower, with gardens, orchards, dovecots, etc., in the south part of Banff, which afterwards came into the possession of the Earl of Airlie. The bounds are thus described: "The common vennel at the north, the loch called the Saltlochs at the east, the lands called Little Guishauch at the south, and the road to Overak at the west." Shortly before its demolition it was the headquarters of the Duke of Cumberland's army on its passage to Culloden. Besides this house and the castle of Cromartie, the Urquharts occasionally occupied their mansion-house of Fisherie. This stood a few yards to the south-west of the present farmhouse of Mains of Fisherie. It was taken down some sixty years ago. Some old trees still stand near the site of the house and garden.

[30] Annals of Banff (New Spalding Club), ii. 28. The old church in which Sir Thomas had a "desk" or pew, and a "loft" or small gallery, is now in ruins. Only the south transept is standing. In the parish church of King-Edward, Aberdeenshire, the handsome silver communion cups bear an inscription to the effect that they were a joint present from Dr William Guild, the then incumbent of the parish, Sir Thomas Urquhart, and his uncle John Urquhart of Craigfintray. That the Sir Thomas Urquhart here named is not our author but his father, is evident from the date of the incumbency of his fellow-donor, Dr Guild, who was minister of King-Edward from 1608 to 1631. The cups bear date of 1619.

[31] Works, p. 331.

[32] Works, p. 272.

[33] History of England, chap. xiii.

[34] "Scotus est, piper in naso," Mediæval proverb.

[35] "Fier comme un Ecossais," French proverb.

[36] It may be as well to warn our readers at this point that Sir Thomas Urquhart's vanity, or what would be called vanity in any other man, was unbounded. So calm and unconscious is it, that it often seems to betray a disordered mind. Those who seek in his estimates of himself for illustrations of the grace of humility will seek in vain. They may, however, find other things, which, if not so edifying, are far more amusing.

[37] The reader who has sufficient curiosity and leisure may compare with the above the account which his contemporary, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), gives of his duels in his Autobiography. That nobleman was a kind of Sir Thomas Urquhart in water-colour, and his single combats are surrounded with a proportionately milder glow of romance. Indeed, they seem to have been generally undertaken in order to compel impudent young men to give back pieces of riband to charming young ladies from whom they had snatched them.

[38] Works, p. 311.

[39] Merchant of Venice, Act I. Scene ii.

[40] Essays, Civil and Moral, xviii.

[41] Works, p. 364.

[42] Ibid. p. 256.

[43] Works, p. 402.

CHAPTER II

Recalled Home—The Covenanting Movement—The Trot of Turriff—Our Author escapes to England—Is Knighted—Publishes his Epigrams—His Father's Embarrassments increase—Lesley of Findrassie—Death of Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior—Our Author struggles in vain to keep his Creditors at bay—Other Wrongs and Losses—On bad Terms with the Church.

HILE Urquhart was engaged in foreign travel, the ecclesiastical and political controversies in Scotland came to such a height, that it was evident that matters could only be settled by an appeal to the sword, and, accordingly, he returned home to assist the party to which his family adhered. He, doubtless, like Milton, considered it disgraceful that, while his fellow-countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, he should be travelling abroad for amusement and intellectual culture. His father, who had been the first of the Urquharts to give up Roman Catholicism for Protestantism, took the unpopular side in the conflict that agitated the Church of Scotland. He was a staunch Episcopalian, and refused to accept the National Covenant, when those who had voluntarily and enthusiastically entered into it attempted to coerce others into following their example, and so turned it into an instrument of tyranny.

The determined efforts of Charles I. and his advisers to make the Church of Scotland in all respects like the Church of England, were fiercely opposed, and, for a time, the party which was resolved to make them as dissimilar as possible prevailed. Episcopacy, liturgy, ancient ecclesiastical customs and rites, and all that savoured of Prelacy or Popery, were swept away by the rising flood. Yet, without committing oneself to the doctrine of passive obedience, it may be doubted whether the course of policy followed by the Covenanters was either wise or scriptural. For, notwithstanding the vehement protestations of loyalty expressed in the National Covenant, armed resistance to the royal authority was not obscurely hinted at in it. "We," said the subscribers, "promise and swear by the great name of the Lord our God to continue in the profession and obedience of the said religion; and that we shall defend the same, and resist all those contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation, and to the utmost of that power which God hath put into our hands, all the days of our life." It is quite possible, it may be hoped, for one to be in sympathy with a certain political party, and yet to regret that the Church should identify itself with that party; and it certainly was not in the end a good thing for the cause of religion that it should have been so closely allied as it was with party politics in the seventeenth century. "My kingdom is not of this world," said Christ; "if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight." "Put up again thy sword into his place," He said to St Peter, "for all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword." It is difficult to see how these clear and emphatic utterances can be made to harmonise with the resolution not only to use force in the correction of ecclesiastical abuses and religious errors, but also to coerce those who were not prepared to follow the same course of policy.[44]

The Covenanting party were successful beyond their hopes. The influence of the Marquis of Argyle secured the allegiance to the cause of the Highlanders in the west of Scotland; while, in Inverness and the region north of the Moray Firth, the movement was enthusiastically welcomed. Only one district in Scotland held aloof—that of which Aberdeen was the centre. The community there had probably but little sympathy with the innovations which Laud was bent upon bringing in, but they had still less with the Covenant. They were attached to the modified form of Episcopacy which had now existed in Scotland since the Reformation (with the exception of the years between 1592 and 1610), in which the bishops were little more than permanent moderators of Presbyteries, and were subject to the General Assembly, and in which the ritual was of a very simple character.

As a University and Cathedral city, and the residence of a large number of wealthy landed proprietors, Aberdeen occupied a position of great importance in Scotland, and was by no means under the command of the capital. The heads of the Covenanting party very speedily found it necessary to take steps for bringing this corner of the kingdom into subjection to themselves. They could scarcely hope to succeed in overcoming the powerful forces at the command of the English Government, if they were to allow this enemy to remain undisturbed in their rear.

Accordingly, at a very early stage in the proceedings, they attempted to gain over to their side the great territorial magnate of the district, the Marquis of Huntly, who, from his rank and wealth and hereditary loyalty to the throne, was likely to be the leader of the King's party in the North. Had they succeeded, they would virtually have had the whole country at their back, for the community of Aberdeen, and the few neighbouring lairds, who, like Sir Thomas Urquhart, refused to accept the Covenant, would not have dared to resist the national policy by force of arms. In the negotiations between the Covenanting leaders and the Marquis of Huntly, we have an illustration of the very muddy roads along which religion is dragged, when it forms an alliance with a political party. It is certainly with somewhat of a shock that one who is under the impression that all the Covenanters were saints of a very spiritually-minded type, learns of the grim option which they offered to their possible opponent. Colonel Robert Munro, who had seen service in Germany, was appointed to wait upon the Marquis at Strathbogie, and to acquaint him with the resolutions to which the Covenanters had come. "The sum of his commission to Huntly was," we are told, "that the noblemen Covenanters were desirous that he should join with them in the common cause; that, if he would do so, and take the Covenant, they would give him the first place, and make him leader of their forces; and, further, they would make his state and his fortunes greater than ever they were; and, moreover, they should pay off and discharge all his debts, which they knew to be about one hundred thousand pounds sterling; that their forces and associates were a hundred to one [in comparison] with the king; and, therefore, it was to no purpose to him to take up arms against them, for if he refused this offer and declared against them, they should find means to disable him for to help the king; and, moreover, they knew how to undo him, and bade him to expect that they will ruinate his family and estates." The hands were, perhaps, the hands of Christian, the voice was certainly the voice of Mr Worldly Wiseman!

The reply of the Marquis was admirable for the spirit of generosity and chivalry which it breathed. "To this proposition," we are told, "Huntly gave a short and resolute repartee, that his family had risen and stood by the kings of Scotland; and for his part, if the event proved the ruin of this king, he was resolved to lay his life, honours, and estate under the rubbish of the king's ruins."[45]

Though Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, was a staunch Episcopalian and a devoted Royalist, the circumstances in which he was placed forbade his aiding the ecclesiastical and political causes which were dear to him with more than good wishes. He was surrounded by neighbours of the opposite party,[46] and isolated from those with whom he would gladly have co-operated. Consequently, it remained for his eldest son, our author, who apparently was residing at that time at Balquholly Castle, in Aberdeenshire, where the adherents of the Royalist cause were numerous, to play a more heroic part.

Between the date of the signing of the Covenant and that of the meeting of the General Assembly in Glasgow in 1638, The Tables, for such was the name by which the executive government established by the revolutionary party was designated, decided to subdue the city of Aberdeen and the neighbouring country, and to compel the people there to accept the Covenant. Before resorting to force, however, an attempt was made to persuade. A committee of three eminent clergymen, Henderson, Dickson, and Cant, with the Earl of Montrose as president, was sent north to deal with the somewhat unimpressible Aberdonians. The hospitable corporation of the northern city invited the visitors to a banquet of wine, but their invitation was scornfully declined. The deputation "would drink with none till first the Covenant was subscribed." Such incivility was new in the history of the city, and a very satisfactory rebuke was given to it by the materials for the proposed banquet being distributed among the poor. It can be easily imagined that after this unsatisfactory beginning the sermons delivered by the clerical deputation fell upon unsympathetic ears, and made but few converts. "The commissioners had one powerful ally in the town, in the person of Earl Marischal, the son of the founder of the College, who had died in 1623; and, when they were refused licence to preach in the city churches, they adjourned to his residence at the north end of what is now Marischal Street. The mansion consisted of several buildings with galleries surrounding a courtyard, and from these galleries the three Covenanting ministers held forth from eight o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon, trying to convince the people of the truth of the Covenant. The children of granite, however, proved absolutely impervious to the 'apostles,' whom they scornfully pelted with mud."[47]

A paper-war, which attracted considerable notice, sprang up between the commissioners and six of the Aberdeen clergy—popularly designated in contemporary literature as "the Aberdeen Doctors."[48] In this warfare the representatives of the Covenanting party came off rather badly. "The position taken by the Doctors," says John Hill Burton, "is the unassailable one of the dry sarcastic negative. Whatever the Covenant might be—good or bad—and whatever right its approvers had to bind themselves to it, how were they entitled to force it on those who desired it not? And when their adversaries became eloquent on its conformity to Scripture and the privileges of the Christian Church, the Doctors ever went back to the same negative position—even if it were so, which we do not admit, yet why force it upon us?"[49]

Early in the following year, 1639, The Tables resolved to suppress the northern Malignants, as they were called, before preparing to enter on a campaign against their enemy in the south, and thus save themselves from the dangers involved in having an enemy in their rear. The Earl of Montrose went north at the head of a considerable body of troops, and took possession of Aberdeen. The opponents of the Covenant fled from the city, and Huntly, the leader of the Royalists, felt unable to offer effective resistance. In spite of a safe-conduct granted him by Montrose on his coming in to a conference, he was taken prisoner to Edinburgh and lodged in the Castle.

This kidnapping of the Royalist chief caused great irritation; and upon a rumour of the fleet's coming to the Firth of Forth, and of the Royal army's approach to the Scottish border, the northern Royalists, of whom our Sir Thomas Urquhart was one, resolved to take arms on the King's side. The first mention of our author in history is in connexion with this rising; and the annalist Spalding relates two exciting incidents that occurred in one week, in both of which he took part.

The first, which happened on Friday, the 10th of May, was an attempt made by him and some of the other Royalist lairds or "barons," as they are called,[50] to take the castle of Towie-Barclay,[51] in Aberdeenshire. It seems that the lairds of Delgatie and Towie-Barclay had plundered the house of Balquholly,[52] which was occupied by our author, and carried off a large supply of "muskets, guns, and carabines." Sir Thomas was not a man to submit quietly to such an outrage as this; and, doubtless, to his desire for vengeance was added a strong wish to get possession of the firearms, now that there was a good cause to be defended and brave men to use the weapons. They had intended to surprise the castle, but when they came to it they found the gates shut, and the place strongly guarded. Lord Fraser and the eldest son of Lord Forbes had already known that an attempt was to be made to recover the weapons, and had manned the castle so effectually that the idea of storming it was out of the question. A few shots were exchanged, and then the attacking party rode away. The only casualty was the death of a David Prott, who was a servant of the laird of Gight,[53] one of Urquhart's friends. "This," the historian remarks, "was the first time that blood was drawn here since the beginning of the Covenant."[54]

Four days after, a more serious encounter took place between the two forces. The Covenanters of the north had decided to assemble in force, and fixed upon Turriff, in Aberdeenshire, as their headquarters. The Royalists drew to a head at Strathbogie, some eleven miles off, and resolved to disperse their opponents. The Covenanting party was about twelve hundred strong, and the Royalists about eight hundred, but the latter had four brass cannon, which very materially strengthened them as an attacking force. They were under the leadership of skilful officers, among whom Arthur Forbes of Blacktown [in King-Edward] is specially mentioned. Sir Thomas himself informs us that, "having obtained, though with a great deal of pain, a fifteen hundreth [hundred] subscriptions to a bond conceived and drawn up in opposition of the vulgar [popular] Covenant, he selected from amongst them so many as he thought fittest for holding hand to [taking in hand] the dissolving of their committees and unlawful meetings."[55]

About ten o'clock on the night of Monday, the 13th of May, they started for Turriff, marching in a "very quiet and sober manner," and by daybreak managed to steal upon the village by an unguarded path. The sound of trumpets and of drums aroused the unsuspecting Covenanters to the fact that they had been fairly surprised. "Some were sleeping, others drinking, and smoaking tobacco, others walking up and down." A few volleys of musketry, and a few shots discharged from the cannon, served to disperse them, and the village was taken possession of by the attacking force. It was but a slight skirmish,[56] in which three men were killed, two of the Covenanters, and one of the Royalists; but it was the first of the battles in the great Civil War, which raged for so many years, and deluged with blood so many fruitful plains in each of the three kingdoms. On this account "the Trot of Turriff," as it was called, should not be forgotten.

After this victory, the Royalists being masters of the village, the common soldiers, who were hungry after their night's march, plundered the houses of those they thought were Covenanters, and supplied themselves with meat and drink. The greatest loss fell upon the minister, Mr Mitchell, who, however, received very liberal compensation from Parliament in the following year. They next gathered as many of the inhabitants of Turriff together as they could find, and made them accept and subscribe the King's Covenant.[57] This device for securing adherents was, however, ineffectual, for, a few weeks later, those who had sworn to the King's Covenant, on a declaration that they had acted under compulsion, were solemnly absolved by their minister from all obligation to keep it.

The Royalist leaders now began to think of further projects, as the number of their followers increased after the victory at Turriff. They lost no time in marching upon Aberdeen, and in quartering themselves upon its inhabitants, especially upon those who were known to belong to the Covenanting party. In a few days, however, they found their position untenable. A considerable number of their Highland forces disbanded, and marched away to their homes, plundering as they went—"a thing," the historian remarks, "verye usuall with them." The others retreated from Aberdeen, when the Covenanting army under the Earl Marischal entered the city, on the 23rd of May, 1639.

A small number of prominent Royalists,[58] of whom our Sir Thomas was one, now resolved to leave Scotland, where the cause to which they were devoted was at such a low ebb. A ship, belonging to one Andrew Findlay, had been kept in readiness for an emergency like this, and on it they embarked hastily, and sailed away to England, to offer their services to Charles I. "Urquhart," says Dr Irving, "who professes to have launched forth in the view of six hundred of his enemies, was, within two days, landed at Berwick, where he found the Marquis of Hamilton, and delivered to him a letter from the leaders of the northern Royalists. He had likewise undertaken to be the bearer of despatches to the King, containing the signatures of the same chieftains; and, having proceeded to the royal quarters, he obtained an audience of His Majesty, and explained to him their past exertions and future plans for his service. He appears to have been satisfied with his own reception, and the written answer 'gave great contentment to all the gentlemen of the north that stood for the king.'"[59]

In one of our author's tracts, published in 1652, we have a pedigree of the family of Urquhart. Under his own name he states that "he was knighted by King Charles, in Whitehall Gallery, in the yeer 1641, the 7 of April." In the same year he first made his appearance as an author in the publication of his three books of Epigrams, Moral and Divine, of which a fuller notice will be found in a later chapter. Let us now for a little leave Sir Thomas, happy in his sovereign's favour, his head encircled with the ivy-wreath that clothes the brows of learned poets, and his eye fixed upon a prominent crag of Mount Parnassus as henceforth specially his own, and turn to his father, whose golden dreams have long since fled away, and left him but the dreariest and shabbiest prose.

For thirty-six years the elder Sir Thomas had been in possession of the ample estates of the house of Urquhart, and during nearly the whole of this time the country had been at peace, so that he had no one but himself to blame for the impoverished condition in which they were when his son received them. The latter described the state of matters in the following terms: "All he bequeathed unto me, his eldest Son, in matter of worldly means, was twelve or thirteen thousand pounds sterling of debt, five brethren all men, and two sisters almost mariageable, to provide for, and lesse to defray all this burden with by six hundred pounds sterling a year, although [i.e. even if] the warres had not prejudiced me in a farthing, then [than] what for the maintaining of himself alone in a peaceable age he inherited for nothing."[60]

So exasperated was the old man by the importunity of his creditors, that at last, we are told, the sound of one of their voices was in his ears as "the hissing of a basilisk." The great Civil war itself, which brought calamity and grief to so many homes, was almost welcomed by him for the relief it brought him from the "hornings" and "apprisings," and other legal processes, which threatened him in times of peace. "The disorderly troubles of the land," says his son of him, "being then far advanced, though otherways he disliked them, were a kind of refreshment to him, and intermitting relaxation from a more stinging disquietnesse. For that our intestin troubles and distempers, by silencing the laws for a while, gave some repose to those that longed for a breathing time, and by hudling up the terms of Whitsuntide and Martimass, which in Scotland are the destinated times for payment of debts, promiscuously with the other seasons of the year, were as an oxymel julip wherewith to indormiat them in a bitter sweet security."[61]

The most importunate of all the creditors, or, as Urquhart describes them, "the usurious cormorants," who harassed the unhappy proprietor of Cromartie, was a certain Robert Lesley of Findrassie. He held a mortgage upon the estate, and though he was indebted to its owner for many acts of kindness, he had been the first to foreclose upon the property, and had persuaded other creditors to join with him in taking this step. The annoyance and mortification caused by these proceedings hastened Sir Thomas's death. Two days before that event, animated by regret for the wrong he had done his heir by the impoverishment of the family property, he assembled his younger children, and bound them, "under pain of his everlasting curse and execration," to do all in their power to help their elder brother. The terms of this extraordinary bond, his son tells us, were these: "to assist, concur with, follow, and serve me, to the utmost of their power, industry, and means, and to spare neither charge nor travel, though it should cost them all they had, to release me from the undeserved bondage of the domineering creditor, and extricate my lands from the impestrements wherein they were involved; yea, to bestow nothing of their owne upon no other use, till that should be done; and all this under their own handwriting, secured with the clause of registration to make the opprobrie the more notorious in case of failing, as the paper itself, which I have in retentis, together with another signed to the same sense, by my mother, and also my brothers and sisters, Dunbugur [Dunlugas][62] only excepted, will more evidently testifie."[63] Sir Thomas Urquhart, the elder, died in April [?], 1642, after a long and lingering illness.[64]

Our author now returned home to enter on possession of his estates, and to attempt to reduce to something like order the chaos in which the family affairs were. He resolved to commit the management of his property to trustees, who, after paying his mother's jointure, were to devote the whole of the rest of the rents to the reduction of debt. He himself went to live on the Continent, in the hope that in a few years he would be able to return home and enjoy his inheritance unencumbered by debt. These proceedings, with the disappointing results that followed them, are related in a passage of his Logopandecteision, which is worth quoting. "Immediately after my father's decease," he says, "for my better expedition in the discharge of those burthens, having repaired homewards, I did sequestrate the whole rent (my mother's joynture excepted) to that use only, and, as I had done many times before, betook myself to my hazards abroad, that by vertue of the industry and diligence of those whom, by the advise and deliberation of my nearest friends, I was induced to intrust with my affairs, the debt might be the sooner defrayed, and the ancient house releeved out of the thraldome it was so unluckily faln into. But it fell out so far otherwayes, that after some few years residence abroad, without any considerable expence from home, when I thought, because of my having mortified and set apart all the rent to no other end then [than] the cutting off and defalking of my father's debt, that accordingly a great part of my father's debt had been discharged, I was so far disappointed of my expectation therin, that whilst, conform to the confidence reposed in him whom I had intrusted with my affairs, I hoped to have been exonered and relieved of many creditors, the debt was only past over and transferred from one in favours of another, or rather of many in the favours of one, who, though he formerly had gained much at my father's hands, was notwithstanding at the time of his decease none of his creditors, nor at any time mine; my Egyptian bondage by such means remaining still the same, under task masters different only in name, and the rents neverthelesse taken up to the full, to my no small detriment and prejudice of the house standing in my person. The aime of some of those I concredited [committed] my weightiest adoes [affairs] unto, being, as is most conspicuously apparent, that I should never reap the fruition nor enjoyment of any portion, parcell, or pendicle of the estate of my predecessors, unlesse by my fortune and endeavours in forrain countries, I should be able to acquire as much as might suffice to buy it, as we say, out of the ground. And verily," he concludes, "though not in relation to these ignoble and unworthy by-ends, it was my purpose and resolution to have done so, which assuredly, had not the turbulent divisions of the time been such as to have crossed and thwarted the atchievements of more faisible projects, I would have accomplished two or three severall ways ere now."[65]

One is inclined to wonder what the two or three lucrative undertakings were, which this Highland gentleman had in view when he spoke in this way of the practicability of making enough money to purchase back his estates. "What song the syrens sang," says Sir Thomas Browne, "or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture." But even as wise a man as Sir Thomas Browne might well pause before venturing on a conjecture in connection with this matter.

In one of the official records of the time,[66] there is an entry which shows that Urquhart was resident in London in 1644. On the 9th May of that year he is assessed for a forced loan at £1000; and, on the 16th of the same month, there is an order for him to be brought up in custody to pay his assessment; while, on the 21st, it is noted that his assessment is "respited till he shall speak with the Scottish committee and take further orders, be engaging to appear whenever required." He no doubt proved to the committee that he had no property in London, but was only a sojourner there, and was accordingly virtually discharged. His place of residence in London at this time was Clare Street,[67] then newly erected upon St Clement's Inn Fields, on the east side of Drury Lane, and called after John Holles,[68] second Earl of Clare, whose town-house was near by.

Sir Thomas Urquhart now resolved to take the management of his own affairs, and, if possible, so to conduct matters as to secure subsistence for himself, as well as satisfaction for his father's creditors; and, in the year 1645, he went to live in the ancestral home at Cromartie. His rental still amounted to £1000 Sterling a year, which represents about £7000 in our time, but a debt of twelve or thirteen years' income was a very serious burden upon such an estate.

There can be little doubt that the entanglement in which the financial affairs of the house of Urquhart were involved became none the less confused and confusing when the gallant knight applied himself to unravel it. That was scarcely a task for which he was fitted. Much more appropriate would it have been for him to draw the sword, like Alexander, and cut the Gordian knot. Perhaps his failure, as in another well-known case,[69] is partly to be attributed to his not having had a legal adviser, familiar with the intricacies of the law, and able to prevent his creditors getting more than their pound of flesh, if not to save even that from them. Charles I. once said that he knew as much law as a gentleman ought to know. Sir Thomas Urquhart seems to have had a somewhat similar acquaintance with the same subject, and this, like that of the person mentioned in the footnote on the preceding page, was probably acquired "as a defendant on civil process." There can be no doubt that he "made an effort" more than once. In vain did he have recourse to "pecunial charms, and holy water out of Plutus' cellar."[70] The charms were indeed potent, but they were not applied long enough; the holy water was composed of the right ingredients, but there was too little of it in the cellars at Cromartie. He could not, with all his struggles, succeed in curing what the Limousin scholar in Rabelais calls "the penury of pecune in the marsupie" [i.e. the want of money in the purse]—that complaint which is so mortifying to the pride of any gentleman, but which is specially exasperating to a Highland gentleman. His cares and distresses, or, as he calls them, his "solicitudinary and luctiferous discouragements," were enough "to appall the most undaunted spirits, and kill a very Paphlagonian partridge, that is said to have two hearts."[71]

Probably Sir Thomas Urquhart was harshly dealt with by his father's creditors, though, of course, it is possible that in the story as told by them they would appear in a more favourable light. They had to do with a man who was unpractical and fantastical in the highest degree, and morbidly sensitive in all matters that seemed to lower his dignity or to cast a slur upon his honour. His brains seethed with plans for the improvement of agriculture, trade, and education, but none of these did the importunity of his creditors permit him to carry into effect. "Truly I may say," he complains, "that above ten thousand severall times I have by these flagitators been interrupted for money, which never came to my use, directly or indirectly one way or other, at home or abroad, any one time whereof I was busied about speculations of greater consequence then [than] all that they were worth in the world; from which, had I not been violently pluck'd away by their importunity, I would have emitted to publick view above five hundred several treatises on inventions never hitherto thought upon by any."[72] Before his imagination there floated the dream of what he might have been, and his mind alternated between passionate remonstrances against his unfortunate circumstances and delusive hopes and anticipations.

The editor of the Maitland Club edition of Urquhart's works truly remarks that there is a melancholy earnestness, almost approaching insanity, in his wild speculations on what he might have done for himself and his country but for the weight of worldly incumbrances. "Even so," he says, "may it be said of myself, that when I was most seriously imbusied about the raising of my own and countrie's reputation to the supremest reach of my endeavours, then did my father's creditors, like so many millstones hanging at my heels, pull down the vigour of my fancie, and violently hold that under, what [which] other wayes would have ascended above the sublimest regions of vulgar conception."[73]

So convinced was he that the schemes and inventions with which his thoughts were occupied were of immense value, that he declared that he ought to have the benefit of that Act of James III. (36th statute of his fifth Parliament) which provides that the debtor's movable goods be first "valued and discussed before his lands be apprised." He claimed this as a right from the State; "and if," he says, "conform to the aforesaid Act, this be granted, I doe promise shortly to display before the world, ware of greater value then [than] ever from the East Indias was brought in ships to Europe."[74] But unfortunately the Philistines were too strong for him.

To these pecuniary difficulties were added annoyances and wrongs, which the meekest of mankind, among whom Sir Thomas is not to be reckoned, would have found it hard to bear.

Mention has already been made of Robert Lesley of Findrassie, the most relentless of all the creditors, who, according to Sir Thomas Urquhart's account of matters, made life bitter for him, and defeated his many schemes for the benefit of the human race. The injurious proceedings of this man form a subject which our author can never leave for any length of time, and to which it is necessary for his biographer to revert occasionally. His unfortunate debtor found a certain grim satisfaction, as well as an opportunity for gratifying his taste for genealogical research, in tracing Robert's descent from a celebrated murderer—that Norman Lesley whose hands were dipped in the blood of Cardinal Beaton. It is certain, however, that there was no real foundation for this opinion.[75]

Unless Robert Lesley is a much-maligned man, his conduct towards the son of his patron was both rapacious and ungrateful. On one occasion at least he acted in a very high-handed manner. "With all the horse and foot he was able to command," says Sir Thomas, "he came in a hostile manner to take possession of a farm of mine called Ardoch; unto which ... he had no more just title then [than] to the town of Jericho mentioned in the Scriptures; and at the offer of such an indignity to our house, some of the hot-spirited gentlemen of our name would even then have taken him, with his three sons, bound them hand and foot, and thrown them within the flood-mark, into a place called the Yares of Udol, there to expect the coming of the sea in a full tide, to carry him along to be seized in a soil of a greater depth, and abler to restrain the insatiableness of his immense desires, then [than] any of my lands within the shire of Cromartie." Sir Thomas, according to his own account, hindered the perpetration of this violence, and gave his enemy and those who accompanied him "a pass and safe-conduct to their own houses."[76]

Yet so far was the caitiff creditor from being touched by this proof of magnanimity on the part of his debtor, that he applied himself with renewed vigour to the concoction of schemes for his total destruction. So at least Sir Thomas would have us believe. On one occasion Lesley tried to inveigle him to Inverness, with the intention of having him arrested at the suit of an accomplice—James Sutherland, "Tutor of Duffus"—and kept in durance until he had satisfied all his enemy's demands. On another occasion Lesley managed to get a troop of horse quartered upon the tenants of Cromartie, till, says our author, "I should transact for a sum, of money to be paid to his son-in-law; which verily was the greater part of his portion."[77] In addition to this, a garrison was stationed for nearly a year in the castle of Cromartie, where they conducted themselves in a way calculated to wound and humiliate the proud spirit of its proprietor. Among other wrongs and losses inflicted upon him was the sequestration of his library, which he had collected with such pains. Sir Thomas says that he sought eagerly to be allowed to purchase back the precious volumes, but was hindered by the spitefulness and indifference of those to whom he made application, and was ultimately able to secure only a few of them, which had been stolen from the collection and dispersed through the country.[78]

In an amusing passage in the Logopandecteision, our author gives us a specimen of the peculiarities of speech which distinguished his arch-enemy, Lesley of Findrassie. As we read it we seem to hear the very tones in which he enunciated or defended his "felonious little plans." "Several gentlemen of good account," he says, "and others of his familiar acquaintance, having many times very seriously expostulated with him why he did so implacably demean himself towards me, and with such irreconciliability of rancor, that nothing could seem to please him that was consistent with my weal, his answers most readily were these: 'I have (see ye?) many daughters (see ye?) to provide portions for, (see ye?), and that (see ye now?) cannot be done, (see ye?) without money; the interest (see ye?) of what I lent, (see ye?), had it been termely [regularly] payed, (see ye?), would have afforded me (see ye now?) several stocks for new interests; I have (see ye?) apprized[79] lands (see ye?) for these summes (see ye?) borrowed from me, (see ye now?), and (see ye?) the legal [time] being expired, (see ye now?), is it not just (see ye?) and equitable (see ye?) that I have possession (see ye?) of these my lands, (see ye?), according to my undoubted right, (see ye now?)?' With these over-words of 'see ye' and 'see ye now,' as if they had been no less material then [than] the Psalmist's Selah, and Higgaion Selah, did he usually nauseate the ears of his hearers when his tongue was in the career of uttering anything concerning me; who alwayes thought that he had very good reason to make use of such like expressions, 'do you see' and 'do you see now,' because there being but little candour in his meaning, whatever he did or spoke was under some colour."[80]

It must have been very hard for the proud-hearted chieftain to see his farms devastated, his tenants maltreated, his library thrown to the winds, a garrison placed in his house, and troops of horse quartered upon his lands without any allowance, in addition to all the misery and impoverishment which his father's wastefulness and neglect had brought down upon his head.

In 1647 an event occurred which seriously affected the interests of our author, and placed him in a still more humiliating position. Sir Robert Farquhar[81] of Mounie had "apprised" the estate and sheriffship of Cromartie, and was now confirmed in the possession of them. He proceeded to sell his rights to (Sir) John Urquhart of Craigfintray, the great-grandson of the Tutor of Cromartie. Immediately upon this (Sir) John purchased a commission from Charles I. to become hereditary Sheriff of Cromartie. In this way the ancestral domains and jurisdiction of which Sir Thomas Urquhart was so proud virtually passed out of his hands. It was not, however, till after the Restoration apparently that the new proprietor entered into possession. He evidently allowed his claims to lie dormant until the death of his cousin, Sir Thomas, and then put them in force. Even if our author had no other troubles to contend with, the knowledge that this Damoclean sword was suspended above his head would have been enough to destroy his peace.

No doubt Sir Thomas sometimes thought that he was the most unlucky chieftain the Urquhart race had yet known,—that such a multitude of misfortunes had never come upon one who bore his name since that day when, on a sunny plain in Achaia, wild armed men first raised Esormon "aloft on the buckler-throne, and with clanging armour and hearts" hailed him as "fortunate and well-beloved."[82] Sir Theodore Martin, indeed, says that Urquhart's statements with regard to his misfortunes should not be construed to the letter, any more than should the announcements of his wonderful inventions and designs. They were both, he considers, in a great degree pet objects on which he had permitted his imagination to rest, till they had been transfigured into a magnitude to which the reality probably bore but a faint resemblance.[83] There is, however, ample evidence in what we have already quoted, to show that certain of the grievances he complained of were by no means imaginary. It is beyond dispute that he suffered heavily in his property in consequence of his adherence to the Royalist cause. In 1663 his brother, Sir Alexander, presented a petition asking compensation for the losses suffered in the time of his father and brother. The Commissioners appointed to examine into these claims reported that, before 1650, the damage inflicted upon the Urquhart property amounted to £20,303 Scots, and during 1651-52 to £39,203 Scots—in all £59,506 Scots, which is almost £5000 Sterling.[84]

The relations of Sir Thomas Urquhart with the ministers of the churches of which he was patron were unfortunately of a painful character. The grounds of misunderstanding and dispute were numerous. In addition to political and ecclesiastical differences of opinion between the ministers of the three parishes[85] (of which Sir Thomas was the sole heritor) and himself, there were disputes about augmentation of stipends,[86] which they thought inadequate but with which he had no fault to find, the abolition of his heritable right to the patronage of these churches, the legal proceedings taken by the incumbents to compel him to agree to arrangements decided upon by the Presbytery with regard to stipends and the upkeep of buildings, and there were also personal quarrels with the ministers themselves. In the following passage he tells his side of the story, and gives us a vivid, though not an edifying glimpse of the parochial politics of that far-off time and remote corner of Scotland. It is to be noticed that Sir Thomas writes of himself in the third person. "I think," says the supposed anonymous writer of him, "there be hardly any in Scotland that proportionably hath suffered more prejudice by the Kirk then [than] himself; his own ministers (to wit, those that preach in the churches whereof himself is patron, Master Gilbert Anderson, Master Robert Williamson, and Master Charles Pape by name, serving the cures of Cromartie, Kirkmichel, and Cullicudden), having done what lay in them for the furtherance of their owne covetous ends, to his utter undoing; for the first of those three, for no other cause but that the said Sir Thomas would not authorize the standing of a certain pew (in that country called a desk), in the church of Cromarty, put in without his consent by a professed enemy to his House, who had plotted the ruine thereof, and one that had no land in the parish, did so rail against him and his family in the pulpit at several times, both before his face and in his absence, and with such opprobrious termes, more like a scolding tripe-seller's wife then [than] good minister, squirting the poyson of detraction and abominable falshood (unfit for the chaire of verity) in the cares of his tenandry, who were the onely auditors, did most ingrately and despightfully so calumniate and revile their master, his own patron and benefactor, that the scandalous and reproachful words striving which of them should first discharge against him its steel-pointed dart, did oftentimes, like clusters of hemlock or wormewood dipt in vinegar, stick in his throat; he being almost ready to choak with the aconital bitterness and venom thereof, till the razor of extream passion, by cutting them into articulate sounds, and very rage it self, in the highest degree, by procuring a vomit, had made him spue them out of his mouth into rude, indigested lumps, like so many toads and vipers that had burst their gall.[87]

"As for the other two, notwithstanding that they had been borne, and their fathers before them, vassals to his house, and the predecessor of one of them had shelter in that land, by reason of slaughter committed by him, when there was no refuge for him anywhere else in Scotland; and that the other had never been admitted to any church had it not been for the favour of his foresaid patron, who, contrary to the will of his owne friends and great reluctancy of the ministry it self, was both the nominater and chuser of him to that function; and that before his admission he did faithfully protest he should all the days of his life remain contented with that competency of portion the late incumbent in that charge did enjoy before him; they nevertheless behaved themselves so peevishly and unthankfully towards their forenamed patron and master, that, by vertue of an unjust decree, both procured and purchased from a promiscuous knot of men like themselves,[88] they used all their utmost endeavours, in absence of their above recited patron, to whom and unto whose house they had been so much beholding, to outlaw him,[89] and declare him rebel, by open proclamation at the market-cross of the head town of his owne shire, in case he did not condescend [consent] to the grant of that augmentation of stipend which they demanded, conforme to the tenour of the above-mentioned decree; the injustice whereof will appeare when examined by any rational judge.

"Now the best is, when by some moderate gentlemen it was expostulated, why against their master, patron, and benefactor, they should have dealt with such severity and rigour, contrary to all reason and equity; their answer was, They were inforced and necessitated so to do by the synodal and presbyterial conventions of the Kirk, under paine of deprivation, and expulsion from their benefices: I will not say, κακου κόρακοϛ κακὸν ὠόν [an evil egg of an evil crow], but may safely think that a well-sanctified mother will not have a so ill-instructed brat, and that injuria humana cannot be the lawfull daughter of a jure divino parent."[90]

Sir Thomas Urquhart is not to be taken as infallible in the opinions which he formed and expressed concerning the quality of the sermons which were delivered from the Presbyterian pulpits of his time. But there can be no doubt that he hits upon one great fault by which many of them were marred—that of being rather political harangues than exhortations to godliness after the Pauline fashion. Indeed, he goes so far as to say that, as a rule, the preachers of his time seldom gave such exhortations, as they were "enjoyned by their ecclesiastical authority [authorities?] to preach to the times,[91] that is, to rail against malignants and sectaries, or those whom they suppose to be their enemies."[92] Preaching "to the times" Sir Thomas found meant in his neighbourhood preaching against him; and one may be allowed, it is to be hoped, without unduly wounding the feelings of those who admire the Covenanters, to think sympathetically of his sufferings. Sydney Smith once spoke of a form of capital punishment in which the victim was to be "preached to death by wild curates." If the above description of Mr Gilbert Anderson's sermons be true, he certainly was eminently qualified to officiate as one of the executioners in carrying out such a death sentence.[93]

But though Sir Thomas Urquhart was a Royalist in politics, and an Episcopalian in religion, he was certainly no bigot in his devotion to the King or the Church. In a passage in The Jewel, he plainly declares his belief "that there is no government, whether ecclesiastical or civil, upon earth that is jure divino, if that divine right be taken in a sense secluding all other forms of government, save it alone, from the privilege of that title."[94] Indeed, he treats such an idea as merely a pious fraud, by which despotism is established and maintained at a very cheap rate over tender consciences by threatening them with the vengeance of Heaven in case of disobedience. Such a man was not likely to be a blind partisan of any cause. Differences in religious beliefs and practices he attributed to differences of temperament among individuals, and to climatic and national peculiarities; and in no obscure terms he hints that he was of the opinion of Tamerlane, "who believed that God was best pleased with diversity of religions, variety of worship, dissentaneousness of faith, and multiformity of devotion."[95] However powerfully such opinions may appeal to a certain class of minds, it is hard to conceive of their being associated with deep religious feeling; and accordingly we can scarcely be wrong in concluding that one of the reasons why Sir Thomas Urquhart held aloof from the Covenanting movement was that he was at the antipodes to the majority of his fellow-countrymen in the matter of religious belief. A certain measure of aversion, suspicion, and horror is still manifested by many towards those whose creed is supposed to be of too limited and negative a character; and we can easily believe that in the middle of the seventeenth century this attitude was taken up even more openly and emphatically. On a later occasion, when, as we shall relate, Sir Thomas Urquhart applied to the Commission of the General Assembly to pardon his having taken part in the capture of Inverness, his case was referred to the minister of that town, Mr John Annand, "that he might confer with him [Sir Thomas] concerning some dangerous opinions, which, as is informed, he hes sometimes vented."[96] In the view of the Commission of Assembly the guilt of cherishing "dangerous opinions" was as great as that of rekindling the flames of civil war, if, indeed, it did not surpass it.

[44] The utter chaos which resulted from the fusion of religion and politics may be estimated from the fact that, in the October of 1650, there were in the narrow bounds of Scotland four different armies, at enmity with each other, and each prepared to maintain with the sword a different cause, namely, the Scottish (Presbyterian) army under General Lesley, for King and Covenant combined; the English (Independent) army, under Cromwell, which was against both; the Highland army, under General Middleton, which was for the King without the Covenant; and the Westland, or ultra-Covenanting army, which was for the Covenant without the King.

[45] Gordon's Scots Affairs, i. 49, 50. James Gordon (? 1615-1686) was minister of Rothiemay in Banffshire. His History of Scots Affairs from 1637 to 1641 is one of the principal authorities for this period. It has no pretensions to style, but is correct and impartial. It was first published in 1841 by the Spalding Club.

[46] Early in the year 1638 some account was given to King Charles of the chief persons in the north of Scotland whom he might regard as faithful to his cause. "In Rosse," it was said, "Sir Thomas Urqhward, Sheriff of Cromerty, with his following, but they [are] environed with Covenanters, ther neighbours" (ibid. i. 61).

[47] A History of the University of Aberdeen, 1495-1895, by J. M. Bulloch, p. 110.

[48] These courageous worthies were the bishop's son, Dr John Forbes, Professor of Divinity in King's College; Dr Robert Baron, Professor of Divinity, and minister in Aberdeen; Dr Alexander Scrogie, minister of Old Aberdeen; Dr William Leslie, Principal of King's College; and Drs James Sibbald and Alexander Ross, both ministers in Aberdeen.

[49] History of Scotland, vi. 235.

[50] See note on p. 123.

[51] Towie-Barclay is the name of an estate in the south-east corner of Turriff parish, Aberdeenshire, near Auchterless Station, and four and a half miles south-east of Turriff. The castle is supposed to have been built in 1593. It remained pretty perfect till 1792, was re-roofed in 1874, and retains a fine baronial hall with vaulted ceiling. From at least the beginning of the fourteenth century till 1733, the estate belonged to the Barclays, one of whose line was the celebrated Russian general, Prince Michael Barclay de Tolly (1759-1818). In 1792 it was sold to the governors of Gordon's Hospital, Aberdeen, for £21,000. Towie is a corruption of Tolly. See Billing's Baronial Antiquities, vol. iv.

[52] Balquholly, now Hatton Castle: a Square, castellated mansion of 1814, with finely wooded grounds, in Turriff parish, three and a quarter miles south-east of Turriff. It comprises a considerable fragment of the ancient baronial castle of Balquholly (Gael. bailecoille, "town in the wood"), the seat of the Mowats from the thirteenth century till 1729, when the estate was sold to Alexander Duff, Esq. Sir Thomas Urquhart must either have rented the house from the Mowats, or have obtained leave to keep arms there. The cellars in which the arms were probably kept are exactly as they were in 1638, except that the old loop-holes are partly filled up. The name of the mansion was changed to Hatton Lodge in 1745, and to Hatton Castle in 1814, when the modern part was built—Hatton being the name of the property in Auchterless, which previously belonged to the Duff family. The present proprietor is Garden Alexander Duff, Esq., who succeeded to the estates in 1866. There is behind Hatton Castle a small croft called Cromartie (see Ordnance Map), probably from our author's occupancy of Balquholly or connexion with it.

[53] An ancestor of Lord Byron.

[54] Spalding's Memorials, i. 185. Until within living memory the exact site of Prott's [or Pratt's] grave was pointed out; but it is now quite obliterated by being ploughed over repeatedly.

[55] MS. Epigrams: The Animadversion.

[56] "Ther fell only two gentlemen upon the Covenanters syde: one Mr James Stacker, a servant to the Lord Mucholles; and one Alexander Forbesse, servante to Forbesse of Tolqhwone: upon the Gordons syde, one common foote souldiour killed, (by the unskilfullnesse of his owne comerades fyring ther musketts, as was thoughte), whom the Gordons caused burye solemnly, that day, out of ane idle vante, in the buriall place of Walter Barcley of Towey, within the church of Turreffe; not without great terror to the minister of the place, Mr Thomas Michell, who all the whyle, with his sonne, disgwysd in a womans habite, had gott upp and was lurkinge above the syling of the churche, whilst the souldiours wer discharging volleyes of shotte within the churche, and peircing the syling with ther bulletts in severall places" (Gordon's Scots Affairs, ii. 258). The reader will keep in mind that Gordon was the family name of the Marquis of Huntly.

[57] This was originally the King's Confession, and was drawn up in 1580 by John Craig, minister of Holyrood House, and subscribed by James VI. and his household on 28th January, 1580-81. It is printed at length in Row's Historie of the Kirk of Scotland. It reaffirms the Confession of Faith of 1560, but contains also a solemn renunciation in great detail of the errors of Popery. It was approved by the General Assembly in April, 1581. A "General Band [Bond] for Maintenance of the true Religion" was added in 1588. The National Covenant of 1637 was an amplification of the previous Confessions, containing in addition an abjuration of Episcopal Church-government, as the King's Confession did of Popery. In September, 1638, Charles I. issued a proclamation for the Scottish people to subscribe this King's Confession and General Band, but the Covenanters regarded this as a subtle plot to divide them, and destroy the National Covenant, and, therefore, protested against the proclamation. The Confession and Band so subscribed, for it was subscribed by some, got the name of the "King's Covenant." It did not, of course, contain the abjuration of Episcopal Church-government. Those who adhered to it were called Malignants; while the name Covenanters was applied to those who subscribed the National Covenant.

[58] Among those who made their escape from Aberdeen along with Urquhart were Adam Bellenden, the bishop of the diocese; Alexander Innes, minister of Rothiemay; Alexander Scrogie, a Regent of King's College; together with the bishop's son, nephew, and servant (Spalding's Memorials).

[59] Lives of the Scottish Writers, vol. i.; Urquhart's MS. Epigrams: The Animadversion.

[60] Works, p. 340.

[61] Works, p. 346.

[62] Dunlugas is in the parish of Alvah, close by the river Deveron, on the east side.

[63] Works, p. 341.

[64] "He was alive last Whitsuntide! said the coachman.... Whitsuntide!—alas! cried Trim.... What is Whitsuntide, Jonathan, or Shrovetide, or any tide or time past, to this!" (Tristram Shandy, vol. v. chap. vii.).

Our author states (Works, p. 341) that "his father's death occurred in August in the year 1642, some four yeares after the hatching of the Covenant." He is, however, very careless in details of fact, and is in error concerning this date. Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, is termed "umqll" (i.e. "the late") in the Burgess Roll of Banff, on 14th June, 1642 (Annals of Banff, ii. 418). Perhaps the date was April instead of August. The Covenant was signed 1st March, 1638.

[65] Works, pp. 346, 347.

[66] Calendar of Proceedings of Committee for Advances of Moneys-Taxes, i. 381.

[67] The neighbourhood is now a cluster of narrow, dirty streets and passages, lined chiefly with butchers' and grocers' shops, which overflow into the adjacent streets, and are supplemented by fishmongers and miscellaneous stalls and barrows—a crowded, noisy, and unsavoury place on Saturday nights. In 1640, Charles I. granted his licence to Thomas York, his executors, etc., to erect as many buildings as they thought proper upon St Clement's Inn Fields, the inheritance of the Earl of Clare. He issued another licence in 1642, permitting Gervase Holles, Esq., to make several streets of the width of thirty, thirty-four, and forty feet. These streets still retain the names and titles of their founders—Clare Street, Denzil Street, and Holles Street. Clare Street is somewhat rich in interesting associations. There is a letter of Steele's to his wife, dated from the Bull Head Tavern in this street, 24th August, 1710. It seems likely that he was hiding there. Mrs Bracegirdle, a celebrated actress of that time, "was in the habit of going into that neighbourhood, and giving money to the poor basket-women, insomuch that she could not pass without having thankful acclamations from people of all degrees." It was to Clare Street and Clare Market that Jack Sheppard went, after his escape from Newgate: he there bought a butcher's frock and woollen apron, which he was wearing when captured at Finchley. Here was Johnson's Hotel, celebrated for upwards of seventy years for its à la mode beef. Isaac Bickerstaffe, too, lived in this street.

[68] John Holles, created Baron Houghton of Houghton, in the county of Nottingham, in 1616, and Earl of Clare in 1624.

[69] "If I had known that young man [Uriah Heep]," said Mr Micawber, "at the period when my difficulties came to a crisis, all I can say is, that I believe my creditors would have been better managed than they were" (David Copperfield, chap. xvii.).

[70] Works, p. 347.

[71] Ibid. p. 346. For the authority on which this interesting ornithological statement is made the reader will overhaul his Pliny (H. N. xi. chap. 3).

[72] Works, p. 326.

[73] Works, p. 328.

[74] Ibid. p. 325.

[75] Norman Lesley, Master of Rothes, eldest son of George, fifth Earl of Rothes, died without issue in 1554. This disposes of Sir Thomas Urquhart's statement. The Lesleys of Findrassie themselves claimed to be descended from Robert, the fourth son of Earl George. See Scotch Peerage Law, by J. Riddell, p. 190.

[76] Works, p. 379.

[77] Ibid. p. 380.

[78] One of these volumes containing the signature of our author is still in existence. It is a copy of Arthur Johnston's Latin poems, printed at Aberdeen by Raban, 1632, and is in the possession of the Rev. J. B. Craven, Kirkwall. It is a very fragile volume. The signature in this volume, and two others, attached to legal documents, are all that are known to be extant. We give a fac-simile of one of the latter on p. iv.

[79] "Apprizing" is a legal process to which Sir Thomas several times refers with great horror, and it may be as well to explain to our readers what it was, for fortunately it is now a thing of the past. It was for long the only method of attaching a debtor's heritable property. By the Act, 1469, c. 36, when payment of a debt could not be obtained out of the debtor's movables (including rent), "the King's letters might be obtained, under which a debtor's land might be sold by the Sheriff to the amount of his debts, and the creditor paid out of the proceeds. If within six months no purchaser could be found, a portion of the land equal to the debt was to be apprised by thirteen men chosen by the sheriff, and the portion apprised by them was to be made over to the creditor." The debtor could redeem within seven years. This procedure at first took place in the head burgh of the shire, where the jury probably knew enough to make a fair valuation of the land. But after a time the proceedings often took place in Edinburgh, where the jury had no special knowledge, and might be packed by the creditor. So that large estates were sometimes carried off in payment of trifling debts. The appriser at once entered into possession, and was not obliged to account for the rents (until 1631, c. 6). It was thus a powerful engine of oppression. If A. wished B.'s land, and B. owned land and nothing else, it was possible for A., if he could only get B. as his debtor even in a small sum, so to work matters that for the debt he might apprise all B's land. Being then in right of B.'s rents, he had B. completely in his power, and B. had no resources for gathering together the amount of the debt which he must pay in order to redeem his lands within the seven years allowed. The law was much relaxed by the Act, 1621, c. 6, but the above will enable us to understand how an unscrupulous creditor might get an easy-going, thriftless man into his clutches, and impoverish him and his family.

[80] Works, p. 382. The evident meaning of the last sentence is that Lesley's ways were so dark that it was highly necessary for him often to ask, "See ye?" Yet one cannot help feeling that this relentless creditor may not have been solely animated by malignant hatred of his debtor. Even in the above speech there seem to be claims which cannot be lightly brushed aside. One is again reminded of Mr Micawber, and of the sudden and unexpected glimpse of a better nature in his most truculent creditor, which was vouchsafed him when he got his discharge in bankruptcy. "Even the revengeful bootmaker," we are told, "declared in open court that he bore him [Mr M.] no malice, but that when money was owing to him he liked to be paid. He said he thought it was human nature" (David Copperfield, chap. xii.). An eminent American philosopher has said that there is a great deal of human nature in man. There seems at any rate to have been a great deal in Mr Lesley of Findrassie.

[81] In one of his queer Epigrams, after comparing the insatiable demands of his creditors to those of the grave and of the sea, he closes with the following alliterative litany:

"Free me from Farcher, Fraser, Fendrasie."

[82] "His subjects and familiars surnamed him [Esormon] ουροχἀρτοϛ, that is [to] say, 'fortunate and well-beloved'" (Works, p. 156).

[83] Rabelais, p. xv.

[84] Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol. vii. 479, a, b.

[85] The parish of Cromartie consists of the north-east portion of the peninsula called the Black Isle, terminating eastward in the precipice called the Southern Sutor, and stretches for about four miles along the shore of the Moray Firth on the east, and about six along that of the Firth of Cromartie on the north and west. To the west of the parish of Cromartie were situated the joint parishes of Kirkmichael and Cullicudden, on the southern shore of the Cromartie Firth. In Sir Thomas Urquhart's time these were separate parishes, but they were united in 1662, and a new church was built at Resolis, in Kirkmichael, near the border of Cullicudden. The newly constituted parish bore and still bears the name of Resolis.

[86] In his Logopandecteision he speaks of the "stipauctionarie tide" which began to overflow the land. He thought "with sufficient bulwarks of good argument to have stayed the inundation thereof from two of his churches"; but, he says, "I was violently driven like a feather before a whirlewind, notwithstanding all my defences, to the sanctuary of an inforced patience" (Works, p. 352). He does not, however, appear to have stayed long in this sanctuary, or else the shelter it afforded was but imperfect. His "stipauctionarie" (i.e. stipend-increasing) reminds us of Mr Micawber's calling his salary his "stipendiary emoluments."

[87] The attention of the reader is specially directed to the marvellous felicity and vigour of the above description. Sir Thomas himself has never written anything better in its way.

[88] We fear that this is meant as a description of a presbytery.

[89] The reference is to the process of "horning" described on p. 16.

[90] Works, p. 280-282.

[91] That Sir Thomas Urquhart is not exaggerating matters in speaking of such injunctions being given by ecclesiastical authorities, is proved by the following well-known passage in the memoir prefixed to the Works of Archbishop Leighton:—"It was a Question asked at [of] the Brethren, both in the classical and provincial Meetings of Ministers, twice in the Year, If they preached the Duties of the Times? And when it was found that Mr Leighton did not, he was quarrelled [sic] for this Omission, but said, If all the Brethern have preached to the Times, may not one poor Brother be suffered to preach on Eternity?"

[92] Works, p. 280.

[93] The notice given us by Sir Thomas of Mr Anderson's preaching makes us desirous of knowing more about him; but, unfortunately, only a very few facts concerning him are known. He was born in 1597; he graduated at Aberdeen in 1618; was settled at Cawdor, near Nairn, some time before 30th October, 1627; was transferred to Cromartie between 5th October, 1641, and 11th January, 1642; died in November, 1655, and was succeeded in the benefice by his son Hugh (Scott's Fasti).

[94] Works, p. 276.

[95] Ibid. p. 261.

[96] See p. 83.

CHAPTER III

Unsuccessful Rising in the North—Sir Thomas makes his Peace with the Church—Return of Charles II. to Scotland—Invasion of England—Battle of Worcester—Sir Thomas a Prisoner in the Tower—Makes Friends—Is liberated on Parole—Great Literary Activity—Revisits Scotland—Dies—Later History of the Urquharts of Cromartie—Characteristics of our Author—Glover's Portraits of him.

HORTLY after the news of the execution of Charles I. reached Scotland, a rising on the part of some of the leading Cavaliers in the north took place, with the view of restoring the Royal Family. The most prominent person in this attempt was Thomas Mackenzie of Pluscardine, a younger brother of George, the second Earl of Seaforth, who for nearly ten years past had managed the affairs of the family, and was looked up to, both on account of his ability and also on account of the great territorial influence he represented. He had seen a good deal of service abroad, and was at one time governor of Stralsund.[97] Along with him, and only second to him, was our Sir Thomas Urquhart, to whom even civil war was scarcely more fraught with anxiety and danger than was the life he had been forced to lead for some time past. Together with them were associated eight other Royalists of good standing,—among whom Colonel Hugh Fraser of Belladrum and John Munro of Lemlair had a certain pre-eminence,—and these ten formed a kind of revolutionary committee for the control of the movement they had set on foot, and the government of the district that might become subject to them.

Montrose had determined, on hearing of the execution of the King, to renew the war in Scotland, but Pluscardine and his associates did not wait for his arrival. Charles was beheaded on Tuesday, the 30th of January, 1649, and, by the 22nd of the next month, the Scottish gentlemen in the north had already taken the field, and captured Inverness. Four days after, on Monday, 26th February, a meeting of the Committee of War was held in that town, the minutes of which are still in existence,[98] and contain the name of our author next in order to that of Pluscardine himself.

The Committee passed certain enactments, by which they took into their own hands the customs and excise of the six northern counties—Inverness, Sutherland, Cromartie, Caithness, Nairn, and Elgin. An inventory of all the ammunition of the garrison was ordered to be taken. It was also decided that Sir Thomas's house at Cromartie should be put in a state of defence, and that the work should be carried out by the tenants of Sir James Fraser, a bitter Parliamentarian, and opponent of the Stuarts in the north, and by those of our knight's old enemy, Lesley of Findrassie.[99] It is easy for unregenerate human nature to understand the pleasure with which the members of the Committee of War would give this last order. By another enactment, the Committee declare that they consider it expedient for their safety that the works and forts of Inverness be demolished and levelled with the ground, and they ordain that each person appointed to this work should complete his proportion of it before eight days have passed, "under pain of being quartered upon and until the said task be performed."

On the 2nd of March, Mackenzie of Pluscardine, Sir Thomas Urquhart, and their associates, were proclaimed as rebels and traitors by the Estates of Parliament,[100]—as "wicked and malignant persouns intending so far as in thaine lyes, for their own base ends to lay the foundation of a new bloodie and unnaturall warre within the bowells of this their native country," etc. etc.

On the 1st of March the Commissioners of the General Assembly had written to Pluscardine and his associates expressing their wonder and grief at such a rising in the interests of "the Popish, Prelaticall and Malignant party," and threatening the penalty of excommunication within ten days if they would not "desist from and repent of that horrid insurrection."[101] The reply to this letter came in due time, and was signed by the principal leader in the insurrection, and by some other members of the Clan Mackenzie, and is, it must be confessed, a distinctly prevaricating and hypocritical document. For one sentence at least in it our author was responsible, though he neither signs the letter nor is named in it. His pedantic phraseology reveals his hand in the construction of the reply to the Commissioners' remonstrances and threats.

The letter is addressed "to the Honourable and Right Reverend," and begins as follows:—"Wee have lately received yours of the first of Merch, 1649, for the which and your wisdomes Christian care of ws, and your fatherly admonition to ws, we humbly and heartily rander yow all possible thanks." This lamb-like tone is maintained with admirable gravity all through the epistle, and is combined with a canting phraseology which was meant to be impressive, but which must have entertained any members of the Commission of the General Assembly who originally possessed and still retained a sense of humour. "And quheras [whereas]," so it goes on, "your wisdomes taks it a matter of no lesse wonder then [than] greife that we, being vnder the oath of God and tye of our Nationall Covenant, would make insurrection and take armes against the Lords people, certainly, if it were so, we acknowledge your wisdomes had reason to wonder and to be grieved. And it is no lesse winder and griefe to ws, being wnder the said oath and tye of Covenant, furthering the same with all our power and meanes, and at all occasions desireing nothing els then [than] the enjoying of the liberty of the subject, and proprietie of our goods, intended and promised in and by our Covenant." No one who has read any of Sir Thomas Urquhart's original works can doubt that the next sentence was either composed or revised by him. The two phrases which we have taken the liberty of putting into italics could scarcely have occurred to any other member of the Committee of War. "Yet we find, that evill willers and envyous vnderminers, in a singular and prœtextuous way aiming at our ruine, doe spend the quintessence of their witts to find out means whereby, under specious pretences of the publick [good?] to extermine ws with povertie, and by inventing fresh occasions to make ws odious, and bring ws vpon fresh stages [sic] vnder the base name of Malignancy." It is unnecessary to quote the whole of the letter, but a couple of sentences, which describe what the insurgents had done at Inverness, deserve notice. "But the whole countrey of all degrees, being sensible of the oppression and insolency of the vnnecessary and vnprofitable garison of Innernes to Church or State, did heartily and vnanimously contribute to the demolishing thereof, which being done, all disbanded peaceablie, and the people retired peaceablie to their owne homes, without offence to any nighbour of any degree or condition.... And now, when the said garison is dismantled, we shall be found not only disposed to live peaceablie, bot also ready to obey all publick ordours for the good of the Kingdome." The writers ask that "the taxes and impositions," which pressed with special severity on the class to which they belonged, should be remitted, and liberty given them to lead that religious, peaceful life, to which both by nature and by deliberate choice, they seem to say, they were strongly inclined. The sting of the letter is in its closing words. If these "evill willers" succeed in persuading the Commissioners of Assembly to go on with the sentence of excommunication, as fully deserved, they (the writers) formally appeal against such a decision from the Commission to the next General Assembly.[102]

The ecclesiastical court to which the above letter was sent may have contained a goodly sprinkling of fanatics, but it is certain that in it there were but few, if any, imbeciles; so that the communication from the Committee of War did not succeed in imposing upon those to whom its contents were read. They did not condescend to answer it, but at once issued a pamphlet, entitled A Declaration and Warning to all Members of this Kirk, "to recover, if possible, the disturbers of the peace of God's people out of the snare of Sathan, and to prevent others from falling therein." The document displays very genuine indignation and dismay at the possibility of the negotiations which were being carried on for restoring Charles II. as a "covenanted king" to the throne of his ancestors, being defeated, and of his coming back as an arbitrary ruler and oppressor of the Church. Those who have any doubt about the deterioration of both religion and politics when they are fused together, should read this and other State Papers of the period, and their eyes would be opened. The calm assumption by the writers that political opponents are the enemies of God, the claim to knowledge of the Divine purposes and counsels, the free use of the most sacred words of Scripture, the dark fanaticism which inspires so many of the utterances, and the intense passion which makes so many of them sound like mere raving—all combine to make these documents very painful reading. A circular letter of warning and exhortation was sent to Presbyteries, attempts were made to persuade individuals to disconnect themselves from the insurrectionary movement, and a message of encouragement was sent to Lieutenant-General David Lesley to strengthen his hands in the work of putting it down by fire and sword.[103]

The insurgents, after demolishing the fortifications of Inverness, retired before the troops sent to suppress them, and took refuge among the mountains of Ross-shire. Lesley advanced to Fortrose and garrisoned the castle there, and then proceeded to endeavour to make terms with the leaders of the insurrection. The only one who would listen to no accommodation was Mackenzie of Pluscardine. Immediately on Lesley's return south, he descended from the mountains, and attacked and took the castle of Chanonry. Our Sir Thomas Urquhart was now safely out of the conflict, but our readers may wish to know what became of the insurrectionary movement which he had such a large share in setting on foot, and from which he found it prudent to retire at an early stage.

Mackenzie's force was brought up to eight or nine hundred men by the accession of his nephew, Lord Reay, with three hundred followers. Soon afterwards he was joined by General Middleton and Lord Ogilvie, and advanced into Badenoch, with the view of raising the people in that and the neighbouring districts. In what is called the Wardlaw MS. a very vivid picture is given of the behaviour of the Highlanders from the Reay country, when they poured into Inverness on the morning of Sunday, the 2nd of May, 1649. "They crossed the bridge of Ness," says the Royalist minister of Kirkhill, "on the Lord's Day in time of divine service, and alarmed the people of Inverness, impeding God's worship in the town. For instead of bells to ring in to service I saw and heard no other than the noise of pipes, drums, pots, pans, kettles, and spits in the streets to provide them victuals in every house. And in their quarters the rude rascality would eat no meat at their tables until the landlord laid down a shilling Scots upon each trencher,[104] calling this 'airgiod cagainn' (chewing-money), which every soldier got, so insolent were they."

The campaign was a very brief one. The Royalists, joined by the Marquis of Huntly, attacked and took the castle of Ruthven, but, soon after, being hardly pressed by Lesley, they turned southwards and took up their quarters in Balvenie Castle. General Middleton and Mackenzie were despatched to treat with Lesley, but before they reached their destination, the troops from Fortrose, after a rapid march, surprised the Royalist forces at Balvenie. A fierce engagement took place, in which both sides suffered severely.[105] Eighty of the insurgents fell in defence of the castle. The Highlanders were dismissed to their homes on swearing never again to take up arms against the Parliament; while their leaders were sent as prisoners to Edinburgh, where most of them were set free soon after, on payment of fines, and on giving security that they would keep the peace. By sharp and vigorous action the remaining sparks of insurrection in the north were stamped out, and fresh bodies of troops were stationed in the principal strongholds of that part of the country. Thus ended a rising which would probably have had a very different result, if it had been postponed until the arrival of Montrose.

The same writer[106] who gave an account of the riotous and insolent demeanour of the Highland soldiers in Inverness, furnishes us with a companion-picture—that of them on their way back to their homes after their defeat at Balvenie. It is as follows:—"Next twenty horse, and three companies of foot, were ordered to convey the captives back over the Spey, and through Moray to Inverness, where I saw them pass through; and those men who, in their former march, would hardly eat their meat without money, are now begging food, and, like dogs, lap the water which was brought them in tubs and other vessels in the open streets. Thence they were conducted over the bridge of Ness, and dismissed everyone armless and harmless to his own house. This is a matter of fact which I saw and heard."

The profound feelings of anxiety which this abortive attempt at insurrection had excited in the minds of the ecclesiastical rulers of Scotland are very clearly indicated by the exuberance of joy with which the tidings of the victory at Balvenie were received by the Commission of Assembly.[107] They instantly decided to appoint a solemn Day of Thanksgiving, on the 25th of May, for "the Lord's mercifull defeat of the enemies of the peace of this land."[108] They tacked on a postscript to the above-mentioned Declaration and Warning, containing a statement of the causes of the Thanksgiving, and ordered both to be read from all the pulpits in Scotland. Letters of congratulation were despatched to the victorious officers, and to others who had been faithful in the recent crisis, and full particulars of what had taken place were sent to the Commissioners of Scotland at the Hague, who were engaged in the negotiations with "the young man, Charles Stuart." In the last-mentioned document there is a flicker of grim humour, as the writers send intelligence of the destruction of the hopes which news of the rebellion might have excited in the minds of Charles and his friends. The last sentence in the letter can scarcely have been written or read without a smile. "We have appointed," they say, "the twenty-fift day of Maij for a solemn thanksgiving for this and other late mercies, wherewith we thought good to acquaint yow, that yow manage this to the best advantage of the work in your hands, according as yow shall thinke fitt."[109] It was once said of a good man that he would have been better if he had had a little more of the devil in him; and one is inclined to think more highly of these good men for the touch of malice, which relieves the sombre character of their communication.[110]

The threatened bolt of excommunication was not launched, but our author found it necessary to apply to the Commission of General Assembly in order to make his peace with the ecclesiastical power. Accordingly, on the 22nd of June, 1650, he appeared in Edinburgh before this body, and presented his "supplicatioun" for pardon for the guilt of taking part in the Northern insurrection, and of assaulting and razing the walls of Inverness.

The Commission met, doubtless, in that "little roome of [off] the East Church" of St Giles, which Baillie describes as having been "verie handsomelie dressed for our Assemblies in all time coming,"[111] and from which, three years later, the English officers, under Cromwell's order, ejected the members of the General Assembly. The Commission on that day, when our author appeared before them, consisted of twenty-four members—the most distinguished divines and politicians in Scotland of the Covenanting party. The moderator, or chairman, was Robert Douglas,[112] "a great State preacher," who had been chaplain to the Scots troops in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, and had won the esteem of that monarch, and who in little more than six months' time would officiate at the coronation of Charles II., for whom Sir Thomas Urquhart had prematurely drawn the sword. Beside him was Samuel Rutherford, the Principal of St Andrews, whose fervid piety has found no lack of admirers in every generation since his time. Robert Baillie, the writer of the Letters which contain so many vivid pictures of events in that stirring period; David Dickson, Professor of Divinity in Glasgow, whose name we have heard as one of the deputation to persuade the people of Aberdeen to take the Covenant; and James Guthrie, who died as a martyr, the year after the Restoration, were present there that day. The contrast between these grave, dignified, saintly Covenanting leaders, and the brilliant Cavalier, Sir Thomas Urquhart, is one which, by its picturesqueness, strongly impresses the imagination.

The Commission, after hearing the petitioner's statements, did not, apparently; treat the matter as of very serious moment. The dangerous crisis was over, and they could afford to be merciful. They seem to have condoned the political offence, but referred Sir Thomas to Mr John Annand, minister of Inverness, one of their number, "that he might confer with him concerning some dangerous opinions which, as was informed, he had sometimes vented." If these could be explained away, and no further complicity in disloyal schemes were brought home to him, Mr Annand was empowered, acting at all times under the advice of the Presbytery of Inverness, to receive his public "satisfaction" in the church of that city. How the matter ended we do not know. But there is very little doubt that Sir Thomas's nebulous heterodoxy proved no bar to his being freed from ecclesiastical censure, and that, in due course, according to the custom of that time, he stood, as a penitent, before the congregation of the Parish Church, in that city the walls of which he had assisted to assault and overthrow.

A fortnight after Sir Thomas Urquhart's appearance before the Commission of the General Assembly, Charles II. landed in Scotland, and was accepted, though at first not without deep misgivings, as "covenanted King." The party to which our author belonged was for a time excluded from all share in public life; and even the army, which was to defend the sovereign against the English sectaries, was carefully sifted, to remove those whose presence might bring a curse upon it. So that, though the land resounded with war and the rumour of war, Sir Thomas remained in an enforced quietude in his castle at Cromartie. The effect of the battle of Dunbar (3rd September) was to depress the faction which had excluded the Royalist partisans from the army, and kept the King himself in something very like bondage. Charles II., indeed, is said to have given thanks to God for the victory of Cromwell over the Covenanting forces at this battle, and the only difficulty in the way of believing this statement lies in the fact that he so seldom gave thanks for anything.

The Royalist party now began to rally about their sovereign. Charles II. was crowned at Scone on the 1st January, 1651, and in due time an army, which included many of the so-called Malignants, was ready for trying conclusions once again with the terrible English General. And now for the third time our author took up arms on behalf of the Stuarts. After some months of endless marchings and counter-marchings, in which Cromwell evidently endeavoured to provoke his enemies into a repetition of the blunder by which they had lost the battle of Dunbar, the Scottish forces found an opportunity of marching into England.

The latter, under David Lesley, had taken up a strong position on the height of the Tor Wood, between Stirling and Falkirk, from which they refused to be drawn out to battle; and Cromwell resolved to take up his post on the other side of the Royalist army. Accordingly, he crossed the Forth at Queensferry, and, after defeating an attempt to intercept him at Inverkeithing, reached and occupied Perth. The way to England was now open, and the Scottish army swiftly and silently entered upon it, resolved to stake everything upon a great battle.

Sir Thomas Urquhart left his castle of Cromartie, and took part in this expedition, though apparently he held no position of command in the army, and was very much out of sympathy with many of those who journeyed with him. Indeed, his unfortunate prejudices against the Presbyterian and Covenanting party come out in the statement he makes, that many of those who started out to smite "the Midianites and Philistines," when it came to the push, managed to make their way home, "being loth to hazard their precious persons, lest they should seem to trust to the arm of flesh."[113] The mass of those, however, who formed the Scottish army were of very different mettle, and the battle in which they staked and lost everything was one of the fiercest in the whole of the great Civil War.

The course of their journey southward was through Biggar and Carlisle, and then through Lancashire. To their disappointment, they received no great accession of Royalists, nor of any others who were inclined to join them in the attempt to overthrow the Commonwealth. "They marched," says the historian, "under rigorous discipline, weary and uncheered, south through Lancashire; had to dispute ... the Bridge of Warrington with Lambert and Harrison, who attended them with horse-troops on the left; Cromwell with the main army steadily advancing behind. They carried the Bridge at Warrington; they summoned various Towns, but none yielded; proclaimed their King, with all force of lungs and heraldry, but none cried, God bless him. Summoning Shrewsbury, with the usual negative response, they quitted the London road; bent southward towards Worcester, a City of slight Garrison and loyal Mayor; there to entrench themselves, and repose a little."[114] Yet but slight opportunity for this was given them. The course taken by Cromwell was through York, Nottingham, Coventry, and Stratford-on-Avon, and when he arrived at Worcester with his army from Scotland, and with the county militias, who had risen at his summons, his forces numbered over thirty thousand men as against the enemy's sixteen thousand.

Meantime Sir Thomas Urquhart had taken up his quarters in Worcester, in the house of a Mr Spilsbury, "a very honest sort of man, who had an exceeding good woman to his wife." His luggage, which was stored in an attic, consisted, besides "scarlet cloaks, buff suits, and arms of all sorts," of seven large "portmantles," three of which were filled with unpublished works in manuscript, and other valuable documents—the amount of which he gives us in quires and quinternions, but which need not be repeated here. "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war," sang Milton in his sonnet to the Lord General Cromwell; and perhaps Sir Thomas Urquhart hoped, after achieving victory in war, to win a second set of laurels by means of the contents of the three "portmantles."

On the evening of the 3rd September, the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar, and afterwards to be the date of Cromwell's own death, the battle of Worcester was fought, and the Royalist cause utterly shattered. "The fighting of the Scots," says Carlyle, "was fierce and desperate. 'My Lord General did exceedingly hazard himself, riding up and down in the midst of the fire; riding, himself in person, to the Enemy's foot to offer them quarter, whereto they returned no answer but shot.' The small Scotch Army, begirdled with overpowering force, and cut off from help or reasonable hope, storms forth in fiery pulses, horse and foot; charges now on this side of the River, now on that;—can on no side prevail. Cromwell recoils a little, but only to rally and return irresistible. The small Scotch Army is, on every side, driven in again. Its fiery pulsings are but the struggles of death: agonies as of a lion coiled in the folds of a boa. 'As stiff a contest,' says Cromwell, 'for four or five hours as ever I have seen.'"[115]

The conquered lost six thousand men, and all their baggage and artillery; and Charles only with difficulty, and after many romantic adventures, succeeded in escaping to the Continent when the fight was over. Ten thousand prisoners, including eleven of the Scottish nobility, were taken. The sufferings of many of these brave men were severe in the extreme. Some perished from want of food and from gaol diseases, and large numbers of the survivors were shipped for the plantations, and sold as slaves.

Sir Thomas Urquhart, and, apparently, more than one of his brothers, were among the prisoners, but appeared to have fared better than many of their companions in arms. The greatest of the misfortunes that fell upon him was, in his estimation, the sad fate that overtook his precious manuscripts. The whole story, related in his own inimitable style, may be read in Chapter VI. It is enough to say here that a party of marauders broke into his quarters in search of valuables, that they forced open the "portmantles" and turned their contents out upon the floor, and afterwards carried off the papers to use them for wrapping up articles of plunder, and for lighting their pipes. Fortunately some bundles of these papers were afterwards picked up in the streets and brought back to him, and in due time found their way to the printer's.

After the battle of Worcester, Sir Thomas Urquhart and some of the other Scottish gentlemen who had been taken prisoners there were confined in the Tower of London. He seems to have speedily gained the favour of his captors, and to have been treated with remarkable leniency. Indeed, he speaks in terms of affectionate respect of various officers of the Parliamentary army from whom he had received kindness, and acknowledges courtesies extended towards him by the Lord General himself. Thus he places on record his indebtedness to a "most generous gentleman, Captain Gladmon," for speaking in his favour to the Protector. And of another, whom he calls the Marshal-General, in whose charge he had been placed, he has set down the praise in the following elaborate sentence:—"The kindly usage of the Marshal-General, Captain Alsop, whilst I was in his custody, I am bound in duty so to acknowledge, that I may without dissimulation avouch, for courtesies conferred on such as were within the verge of his authority, and fidelity to those by whom he was intrusted with their tuition [oversight of them] in that restraint, that never any could by his faithfulness to the one and loving carriage to the other bespeak himself more a gentleman, nor in the discharge of that military place acquit himself with a more universally-deserved applause and commendation."[116]

The severity of his imprisonment was soon abated; and he was removed from the Tower to Windsor Castle,[117] and not long after, by the orders of Cromwell, was paroled de die in diem.[118] The comparative liberty he now enjoyed enabled him to repair the loss of his manuscripts after the battle of Worcester, and he set himself to make the best of the fragments he had recovered, and to prepare them for publication, as well as to compose new material. A paragraph in the Epilogue of one of his works, in which he describes his warm appreciation of the measure of freedom he now enjoyed, is worth quoting. "That I, whilst a prisoner," he says, "was able to digest and write this Treatise, is an effect meerly proceeding from the courtesie of my Lord General Cromwel, by whose recommendation to the Councel of State my parole being taken for my true imprisonment, I was by their favour enlarged to the extent of the lines of London's communication; for had I continued as before, coopt up within walls, or yet been attended still by a guard, as for a while I was, should the house of my confinement have never been so pleasant, or my keepers a very paragon of discretion, and that the conversation of the best wits in the world, with affluence of all manner of books, should have been allowed me for the diversion of my minde, yet such all antipathie I have to any kinde of restraint wherein myself is not entrusted, that notwithstanding these advantages, which to some spirits would make a jayl seem more delicious then [than] freedom without them, it could not in that eclipse of liberty lie in my power to frame myself to the couching of one sillable, or contriving of a fancie worthy the labour of putting pen to paper, no more then [than] a nightingale can warble it in a cage, or linet in a dungeon."[119]

Another friend whom Sir Thomas Urquhart found in the time of need was the celebrated Roger Williams, the apostle of civil and religious liberty, and the founder of the settlement of Providence, Rhode Island, and missionary to the Indians. In the Epilogue to the Logopandecteision he thus acknowledges his obligations to him: "[I cannot] forget my thankfulness to that reverend preacher Mr Roger Williams of Providence, in New England, for the manifold favours wherein I stood obliged to him above a whole month before either of us had so much as seen other, and that by his frequent and earnest solicitation in my behalf of the most especial members both of the Parliament and Councel of State; in doing whereof he appeared so truely generous, that when it was told him how I, having got notice of his so undeserved respect towards me, was desirous to embrace some sudden opportunity whereby to testifie the affection I did owe him, he purposely delayed the occasion of meeting with me till he had, as he said, performed some acceptable office worthy of my acquaintance; in all which, both before and after we had conversed with one another, and by those many worthy books set forth by him, to the advancement of piety and good order, with some whereof he was pleased to present me, he did prove himself a man of such discretion and inimitably-sanctified parts, that an Archangel from heaven could not have shown more goodness with less ostentation."[120]

The years 1652 and 1653 form a period of astonishing literary activity on the part of our author, for no fewer than five separate works were then published by him, two of which were of very considerable bulk. The motive that had led him to bring out his two former works—the Epigrams and The Trissotetras—had been a desire to benefit mankind and to advance the glory of his native land. But now he had to consider his own interests, and to exert himself to promote them. Accordingly, his present aim was to convince his captors of his extraordinary merits and gifts, and of the incomparable glory of that family which he had the honour of representing.

In 1652 he issued his ΠΑΝΤΟΧΡΟΝΟΧΑΝΟΝ; or, a Peculiar Promptuary of Time, of which a detailed description is given in Chapter V. The object of this treatise is to show the Protector and the English Parliament that the family of the Urquharts could be traced back, link by link, to the red earth out of which Adam was made, and to suggest how lamentable it would be, if the ruling power extinguished a race which had successfully resisted the scythe of Time, and was capable of rendering great services to the State.

This small treatise was closely followed by a more important production, upon which Sir Thomas's fame as an author largely rests—his ΕΚΣΚΥΒΑΛΑΥΡΟΝ; or, The Discovery of a most Exquisite Jewel. The title of this work is intended to be an abbreviation of a Greek phrase—"Gold from a dunghill"—and contains an allusion to the fact that the first half of it was, in its manuscript form, one of the bundles of paper which the soldiers treated with such disrespect after the battle of Worcester, and which, indeed, was found next day in a kennel of one of the streets of that city. This book, a fuller account of which we give later on, consists of an introduction to a work on a Universal Language, to which is added a rhapsodical panegyric on the Scottish nation, and an account of his fellow-countrymen who had been famous as scholars or soldiers during the previous fifty years.

In the course of the early part of 1652 Urquhart had in some way excited the suspicions of the Government, and in the month of May his papers were seized by the authorities. Nothing treasonable, however, was found among them, and probably the harmless character of his pursuits, which was thus brought to light, made a favourable impression upon the Council of State. For, a few weeks later, he was allowed, in answer to a petition which he presented to the Council, and which was referred to Cromwell, to return to Scotland to arrange his private affairs, and to be absent for five months.[121] The only condition imposed upon him was that during this time he should do nothing to the prejudice of the Commonwealth.

Sir Thomas Urquhart's creditors had been told that he had been killed at the battle of Worcester, and, as he says in his own characteristic way, "for gladness of the tidings [they] had madified [moistened] their nolls to some purpose with the liquor of the grape,"[122] and had possessed themselves of all his property. When they were assured by letters from himself that he was still alive, they claimed payment for debts which had been long discharged, under the impression that the receipts had perished along with other papers after the battle. They even plotted, we are assured, to arrest our author in London, after he had been liberated upon parole. By the thoughtful discretion of a Captain Goodwin, of Colonel Pride's regiment, the receipts in question had been saved out of the spoil of Worcester, and Sir Thomas Urquhart was able to display them to the unjust creditors. "And when," he says, "they saw that those their acquittances ... were produced before them, they then, looking as if their noses had been ableeding, could not any longer for shame retard my cancelling of the aforesaid bonds."[123]

In the midst of so many complaints of the iniquity of creditors, it is gratifying to find Sir Thomas acknowledging that there was one of that class who treated him with forbearance and even with kindness. His thankfulness at discovering this green oasis in the arid desert in which so much of his life had been passed, is expressed in his own characteristic way. "But may," he says, "William Robertson of Kindeasse, or rather Kindnesse (for so they call this worthy man), for his going contrary to that stream of wickedness which carryeth head-long his fellow-creditors to the black sea of un-christian-like dealing, enjoy a long life in this world, attended with health, wealth, a hopeful posterity, and all the happiness conducible to eternal salvation; and may his children after him, as heires both of his vertues and means, derive [transmit] his lands and riches to their sons, to continue successively in that line from generation to generation, so long as there is a hill in Scotland, or that the sea doth ebbe and flow. This hearty wish of mine, as chief of my kinred [kindred], I bequeath to all that do and are to carry the name of Urquhart, and adjure them, by the respect they owe to the stock whence they are descended, for my father's love and mine to this man, to do all manner of good offices to each one that bears the name of Robertson."[124]

His old enemy, Lesley of Findrassie, endeavoured in vain to persuade the officers of the English garrison, then stationed in Urquhart's house at Cromartie, to arrest him as a prisoner of war, and keep him in confinement "till he [Lesley] were contented in all his demands."[125] An attempt was also made to apprehend him at Elgin; but he escaped all these machinations, and, after travelling in safety through many of the principal towns of Scotland, returned to London within the specified time, and gave himself up to the Council of State.

In the course of the year 1653 Sir Thomas Urquhart published the last of his original works—his Logopandecteision, and the translation of the first two books of Rabelais, in connection with which his name is best known. The object of the former of these was to suggest a wonderful scheme for a universal language, with the idea of being restored by the Government to the full possession of his liberty, and of being reinstated in the position of power and wealth, which he maintained was his by hereditary right, in order to carry out the scheme. His hopes and anticipations of success in this appeal to the English Government were not daunted by the fact that to do what he required would need several legislative changes, a reversal of proceedings in Scottish courts of law, and a substantial grant from the Treasury. This, after all, he considered, was a very small price to pay for the benefits he would thereby confer upon the world. That the appeal was not successful needs scarcely be told. Probably in no country in the world, and at no period in history, could any be found more likely to turn a deaf ear to such requests, than such men as Cromwell, Fleetwood, and Overton. Men like these were too practical, and of too hard a nature, to be impressed by any such visionary schemes as those which their prisoner delighted in constructing.

A veil of obscurity hangs over the closing years of our author's life. His last appearance before the public was in the issuing of the books above mentioned. The only further record of him is in the continuation of the Pedigree of the Urquharts, which is contained in the Edinburgh edition of his Tracts. In this we read that "he was confined for several years in the Tower of London; from whence he made his escape, and went beyond seas, where he died suddenly in a fit of excessive laughter, on being informed by his servant that the King was restored."[126] If this account of matters be true, it would seem that Sir Thomas had forfeited some of those privileges which he had won so soon after he had become a State prisoner. It is quite possible that this was in consequence of having joined in some Royalist plot against the Commonwealth and for the restoration of Charles II.

In the preface to the second book of Rabelais, Sir Thomas promises very speedily to translate the three remaining books of that author, so that the whole "Pentateuch of Rabelais," as he calls it, might be in the hands of English readers. But this design was never completed. The translation of the third book was found among his papers, and was published in 1693 by Pierre Antoine Motteux, but it is probable that the editor himself had some share in the work as issued to the public.

Sir Theodore Martin considers that there is a strong presumption against the truth of the above account of Sir Thomas's death, in his entire silence during the long period which elapsed between the publication of his last work and 1660, the date of the Restoration of Charles II. "Men," he says, "so deeply smitten with the cacoëthes scribendi as Urquhart was, do not thus readily cast the pen aside; nor was the lack of a publisher likely to have stood in the way of his literary career. His writings, if for no other cause but the number of his friends, must always have been a safe speculation for a printer, at a time when printing was cheap and readers numerous. But the imperfect state of his translation of Rabelais is perhaps the best evidence of the inaccuracy of the current belief.... Motteux says that Urquhart's version 'was too kindly received not to encourage him to English the three remaining books, or at least the third, the fourth and fifth being in a manner distinct, as being Pantagruel's voyage. Accordingly he translated the third book, and would have finished the whole, had not death prevented him.' This bears hard against the supposition of that event having occurred upwards of six years after the two first books had been given to the world. It is probable that he died much sooner, a victim in all likelihood to that fiery restlessness of spirit,

'Which o'er-informs its tenement of clay,
And frets the pigmy body to decay.'"[127]

This conjecture is, however, improbable. A petition from our author's brother, Sir Alexander Urquhart, is still in existence, in which he asks for a new commission of hereditary Sheriffship of Cromartie to be made out for him, on the ground of his being the eldest surviving son of the Sir Thomas Urquhart who died in 1642.[128] Though this document is undated, it is assigned by the editor of the volume of State Papers in which it is to be found, to August of 1660. If this date be trustworthy, we may be almost sure that the traditional statement as to the year of our author's death is correct.

The cause of his giving up his literary labours, and of omitting to carry through the work of translation on which he had entered, is, of course, unknown to us. His health, physical or mental, may have become seriously impaired, or his spirits may have been too much depressed by the misfortunes that crowded upon him, to allow him to engage in literary work. Indeed, the alleged cause of death from violent agitation of feeling caused by hearing of the Restoration of Charles II., argues in itself a previous condition of great physical weakness.

There seems at first, a certain grotesqueness in such a fatal exuberance of joy in connexion with such an event as Charles II. regaining the crown which his father had lost, and of which in another generation all of his blood were to be deprived. But we have to keep in mind that Sir Thomas was not alone in his folly, if folly it were; for a great wave of exultation swept over the three kingdoms at that time. Our author had, like many of his fellow-Royalists, staked and lost everything he possessed in the defence of the House of Stuart, and one can have little difficulty in understanding how the announcement of the triumph of the cause, which was so dear to him, should have agitated him profoundly.[129]

Sir Alexander Urquhart failed to recover possession of either the barony or the Sheriffship of Cromartie, and a year after the supposed date of his petition, he is said to have ratified his cousin's rights,[130] and in 1663 he formally "disponed" the estate (i.e. his title to it) to Sir John.[131] The new possessors were, however, as unfortunate as their immediate predecessors, for in no very long time they were overwhelmed by distresses like those which had burdened and embittered the lives of our author and his father. In 1682 the celebrated Sir George Mackenzie, whose name, like that of Queen Mary of England, is usually associated with an unenviable epithet, as that of a cruel persecutor,[132] "apprized" the estate from Sir John's[133] son, Jonathan.[134]

No one who knows what this means[135] will be surprised to hear that it soon afterwards passed into his possession. On his elevation to the peerage (1685) as Viscount Tarbat, first Earl of Cromartie, he put his third-born son, Sir Kenneth, into possession of the estate, with the view of establishing a branch of his family to be known as the Mackenzies of Cromartie. This plan was doomed to be defeated, for Sir Kenneth's son George had no family, and sold the estate to Captain William Urquhart of Meldrum in 1741.[136] The lands were again sold to Patrick, Lord Elibank,[137] in 1763, and by him to George Ross of Pitkerrie, nine years afterwards. Mr Ross had amassed a large fortune in England as an army agent,[138] and part of this he expended in the purchase of the estate, and in the extensive improvements which he effected in it. One wishes he had not thought it desirable to pull down the picturesque old castle, which had stood on the mote-hill of Cromartie for three hundred years, and which had sheltered so many generations of the Urquhart family. Let us now, however, return to our author.

In telling the story of Sir Thomas Urquhart's life, some of his most striking peculiarities have been displayed and illustrated, so that no one who has read the foregoing pages is altogether dependent upon what may now be said for forming an estimate of his character. His vanity is perhaps the most striking trait in it; but only a very hard-hearted moralist would call it a vice in his case, for it is as artless as it is boundless, and is combined with so much kindness of heart and generosity of feeling, that we are more entertained by it than indignant at it. No one who looks into his works can doubt the intensity of his patriotism. Indeed, his passionate longing after personal fame is in all cases combined with the wish to confer additional glory upon the land of his birth. His devotion to the Royalist cause[139] is of the purest and most heroic type, and the general tone of his character, as revealed to us in his books, is elevated and noble. At the same time there is an element of the grotesque in it, so that in his disinterested and chivalrous disposition he reminds us of Don Quixote,[140] while in his frequent allusions to struggles with pecuniary difficulties, as well as in his use of magniloquent language, he distinctly recalls Wilkins Micawber. A lively fancy, a strain of genuine erudition beneath his pedantry, and some sparks of insanity, are other elements in his fantastical character. Only a mind like his own could trace the maze of its windings and turnings, and fathom the depths of its eccentricity. In his thoughts "truth is constantly becoming interfused with fiction, possibility with certainty, and the hyperbolical extravagance of his style only keeps even pace with the prolific shootings of his imagination."[141]

It is perhaps expected that one should, in a measure, apologize for the eccentricities of Urquhart's character and literary style, by explaining that he was a humourist. But, unfortunately, humour is a quality in which Urquhart was lacking, unless we understand by the word mere fantastical quaintness of thought and speech. In one passage of his works he speaks with contempt of "shallow-brained humourists,"[142] and we should wrong his ghost by putting him among those whom he abhorred. Not a single trace of that subtle, graceful play of fancy and of feeling which enters into our conception of humour is to be found in his works.[143] His readers may smile as they turn over his pages, but he is always in deadly earnest. The quality of wit he occasionally manifests in the form of keen sarcasm, when he gives full vent to his feelings of scorn and contempt; as when, for example, he describes those who went out to fight, "but did not hazard their precious persons, lest they should seem to trust to the arm of flesh."[144]

He can never give a simple statement of matters of fact. Thus in his account of the Admirable Crichton, instead of saying that the rector of the university addressed a few complimentary sentences to Crichton, and that the latter replied in the same vein, he says: "In complements after this manner, ultro citroque habitis, tossed to and again, retorted, contrerisposted, backreverted, and now and then graced with a quip or a clinch for the better relish of the ear, being unwilling in this kind of straining curtesie to yeeld to other, they spent a full half-hour and more."[145] Everything must be dressed up "with divers quaint and pertinent similes" before it is fit to be introduced to the reader's notice. To quote again from the most accomplished literary critic who has written upon him: "History, philosophy, science, literature are ransacked for illustrations of the commonest subject. His fancy is ever on the alert, and you are constantly surprised by some incongruous image, begotten in its wanton dalliance with knowledge the most heterogeneous. He has always an eye to effect. His own learning must be brought into play, rhetorical tropes must flourish through his periods, 'suggesting to our minds two several things at once,' and, of course, as diverse as possible, that 'the spirits of such as are studious in learning may be filled with a most wonderful delight.'"[146] His style reacts upon and controls his thoughts, and often carries him, as Ariosto's Hippogriff carried Astolfo, up into the skies, whither those are unable to follow him who are mounted on humbler animals, or have no other means than those with which they were born for plodding along the dusty roads of earth.

If we can trust the two engraved portraits of Sir Thomas Urquhart which have come down to us, he was a man of handsome presence, and accustomed to deck himself in all the splendour of costume to which so many of his brother-cavaliers were addicted. George Glover, the famous engraver, drew both the portraits of him which are extant. One of these appears as a frontispiece to the Epigrams and to the Trissotetras. It is a small whole-length, and represents Sir Thomas in rich dress,[147] holding out his hand to receive from some allegorical personage a laurel wreath "for Armes and Artes."[148] On a table beside him are his hat and embroidered cloak. In the vacant spaces on each side of the upper part of the figure are his name and titles: "S^r Thomas Urchard, Knight, of Bray and Udol, etc., Baron of Ficherie and Clohorby, etc., Laird Baron of Cromartie and Heritable Sheriff thereof, etc." The portrait is described as taken from the life, and engraved in 1641;[149] and beneath it is a couplet by W. S., as follows:

"Of him whose shape this Picture hath design'd,
Vertue and learning represent the Mind."

Who W. S. was we do not know. The date forbids our identifying him with the Bard of Avon. He was probably one of those mysterious personages, who were always at hand to write epistles of commendation to works by Sir Thomas, and to testify on their "book-oath" to his gifts and graces.