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I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains, The lullings and the relishes of it; The propositions of hot blood and brains; What mirth and music mean; what love and wit Have done these twenty hundred years and more; I know the projects of unbridled store: My stuff is flesh, not brass; my senses live.

George Herbert.

The Highland Line in the Scottish mainland, though variously determined at times by political needs, has been clearly fixed by nature. The main battlement of the hills runs with a north-easterly slant from Argyll through the Lennox, and then turns northward so as to enclose the wide carselands of Tay. Beyond lie the tangled wildernesses stretching with scarcely a break to Cape Wrath; east and south are the Lowlands proper—on the east around Don and Dee and the Forfarshire Esks: on the south around Forth and Clyde, and embracing the hills of Tweed and Galloway. Scotland had thus two Borderlands—the famous line of march with England, and the line, historically less notable but geographically clearer, which separated plain from hill, family from clan, and for centuries some semblance of civilization from its stark opposite. The northern Border may be defined in its more essential part as the southern portion of Dumbarton and Lennox, the shire of Stirling, and the haughs of the lower Tay. There for centuries the Lowlander looked out from his towns and castles to the blue mountains where lived his ancestral foes. Dwelling on a frontier makes a hardy race, and from this northern Border came famous men and sounding deeds. Drummonds, Murrays, Erskines, and Grahams were its chief families, but most notably the last. What the name of Scott was in the glens of Teviot, the name of Graham was in the valleys of Forth and Earn. Since the thirteenth century they had been the unofficial wardens of the northern marches.

The ancient nobility of Scotland does not show well on the page of history. The records of the great earldoms—Angus, Mar, Moray, Buchan—tell too often an unedifying tale of blood and treason, and, after the day of the Good Lord James, St. Bride of Douglas might have wept for her children. But the family of Graham kept tolerably clean hands, and played an honourable part in the national history. Sir John the Graham was the trusted friend of Wallace, and fell gloriously at Falkirk. His successors fought in the later wars of independence, thrice intermarried with the royal blood, and gave Scotland her first primate. In 1451 the family attained the peerage. The third Lord Graham was made Earl of Montrose, when the short-lived Lindsay dukedom lapsed, and the new earl died with his king in the steel circle at Flodden. A successor fell at Pinkie; another became Chancellor and then Viceroy of Scotland when James the Sixth mounted the English throne. The Viceroy's son, the fourth earl, apart from a famous brawl in the High Street of Edinburgh, lived the quiet life of a county laird till, shortly before his death he, too, was appointed Chancellor. He was a noted sportsman, a great golfer, and a devotee of tobacco. His wife was Lady Margaret Ruthven, a daughter of the tragically-fated house of Gowrie, who bore him six children, and died when her only son was in his sixth year. The family was reasonably rich as the times went, for the home-keeping Earl John had conserved his estate. They owned broad lands in Stirling, Perth, and Angus, and wielded the influence which the chief of a house possesses over its numerous cadets. They had three principal dwellings—the tower of Mugdock in Strathblane; the fine castle of Kincardine in Perthshire, where the Ochils slope to the Earn; and the house of Old Montrose, which Robert Bruce had given to a Graham as the price of Cardross on Clyde.

1612-24

James Graham, the only son of the fourth earl and Margaret Ruthven, was born in the year 1612, probably in the month of October[21]—according to tradition, in the town of Montrose. The piety of opponents has surrounded his birth with omens; his mother is said, with the hereditary Ruthven love of necromancy, to have consulted witches, and his father to have observed to a neighbour that this child would trouble all Scotland.[22] Like Cromwell, he was the only boy in a family of girls. Of his five sisters, the two eldest were married young—Lilias to Sir John Colquhoun of Luss, and Margaret to a wise man of forty, the first Lord Napier of Merchiston. Their houses were open to him when he tired of catching trout in the little water of Ruthven, or wearing out horseshoes on the Ochils, an occupation to which the extant bills of the Aberuthven blacksmith testify. There was much in the way of adventure to be had at Rossdhu, Lady Lilias's new dwelling, and there the boy may have learned, from practising on the roebuck and wild goats of Lochlomondside, the skill which made him in after years a noted marksman.

1624-26

At the age of twelve Lord Graham was entrusted to a certain William Forrett, master of arts, to be prepared for the college of Glasgow. Thither he journeyed with a valet, two pages in scarlet, a quantity of linen and plate, a selection from his father's library, and his favourite white pony. He lived in the house of Sir George Elphinstone of Blythswood, the Lord Justice Clerk; it stood near the Townhead, and may have been one of the old manses of the canons of the Cathedral. The avenues to learning must have been gently graded, for he retained a happy memory of those Glasgow days and of Master Forrett, who in later years became the tutor of his sons. He seems to have read in Xenophon and Seneca, and an English translation of Tasso; but his favourite book, then and long afterwards, was Raleigh's History of the World, the splendid folio of the first edition.

In the second year of Glasgow study the old earl died, and Lord Graham posted back to Kincardine, arriving two days before the end. Thither came the whole race of Grahams for the funeral ceremonies, which lasted the better part of three weeks. Prodigious quantities of meat and drink were consumed, for each neighbour and kinsman brought his contribution in kind—partridges and plovers from Lord Stormont, moorfowl from Lawers, a great hind from Glenorchy—the details are still extant, with the values of woodcock and wild geese, capercailzie and ptarmigan, meticulously set down. If such mourning had its drawbacks, at any rate it introduced the new head of the family to those of his name and race. He did not return to Glasgow (though five years later he showed his affection for the place by making a donation to the building of the new college library), and presently was entered at St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, of which one of his forbears had been a founder. Master Forrett brought his possessions from Glasgow, and the laird of Inchbrakie bestowed these valuable items, the books, in a proper cabinet.

1626-28

We have ample documents to illustrate his St. Andrews' days.[23] The university, the oldest and then the most famous in Scotland, had among its alumni in the first half of the seventeenth century men so diverse as Montrose and Argyll and Rothes, Mr. Donald Cargill and Sir George Mackenzie. His secretary was a Mr. John Lambie, and Mr. Lambie's accounts reveal the academic life in those days of a gentleman-commoner. In sport his tastes were catholic. He golfed, like James Melville a century before, and paid five shillings Scots for each golf ball. His rooms at St. Salvator's were hung round with bows, and in his second year he won the silver medal for archery, which to the end of his college course he held against all comers. Argyll, who was some years his senior, had carried off the same trophy. He was an admirable horseman, and he seems to have hunted regularly; it is recorded in the accounts that after a day with hounds his horse was given a pint of ale. He was fond of hawking, and he went regularly to Cupar races, handing over, according to the excellent statute of 1621, his winnings beyond one hundred marks to the local kirk session for the relief of the poor. His chief friends of his own order seem to have been Wigton, Lindsay of the Byres, Kinghorn, Sinclair, Sutherland, and Colville, and he varied his residence at St. Andrews with visits to his brother-in-law (the hills of Rossdhu, complains his steward, wore the boots off his feet), the cadet gentry of his name, and Cumbernauld, Glamis, Kinnaird, Balcarres, and the other country-houses of his friends. In October 1628 he gave a great house-warming at Kincardine, which lasted for three days. In the March following he visited Edinburgh, where he appeared in gilt spurs and a new sword, and was lent the Chancellor's carriage. The picture which has come down to us of the undergraduate is that of a boy happy and well-dowered, popular with all, eager to squeeze the juice from the many fruits of life. Nor was he above youthful disasters. When his sister Dorothea married Sir James Rollo, there was huge feasting in Edinburgh and Fife, and the young earl returned to college only to fall sick. Two doctors were summoned, who charged enormous fees, and prescribed a rest cure—strict diet, and no amusements but cards and chess. The barber shore away his long brown curls, and "James Pett's dochter" attended to the invalid's food. The régime seems high feeding for what was probably an attack of indigestion—trout, pigeons, capons, "drapped eggs," calf's-foot jelly, grouse (out of season), washed down by "liquorice, whey, possets, aleberry, and claret."

From the accounts preserved we can trace something of his progress in learning. He began to study Greek, and continued his reading in the Latin classics, his favourites now being Cæsar and Lucan, in his copies of which he made notes. He can never have been an exact scholar, and it is probable that the wide knowledge of classical literature which he showed later was largely acquired from translations. For it was the day of great translators, and at St. Andrews he had at his service North's Plutarch, Philemon Holland's Livy and Suetonius, Thomas Heywood's Sallust, and the Tacitus of Sir Henry Savile and Richard Grenewey. Nor did he neglect romances, and he made his first essays in poetry. To this stage may belong the lines ascribed to him by family tradition, in which the ambitious boy writes his own version of a popular contemporary conceit; but he does not end, like the other versions, on a note of pious quietism:

"I would be high; but that the cedar tree Is blustered down whilst smaller shrubs go free. I would be low; but that the lowly grass Is trampled down by each unworthy ass. For to be high, my means they will not doe; And to be low my mind it will not bow. O Heavens! O Fate! when will you once agree To reconcile my means, my mind, and me?"[24]

He had a touch of the bibliophile, for he had his copies of Buchanan and Barclay's Argenis specially bound. To poor authors he was a modest Mæcenas. The accounts show a payment of fifty-eight shillings Scots to "ane Hungarian poet, who made some verses to my lord." He subscribed for the travels of the fantastical William Lithgow, and was good-humoured enough to read and advise upon a poem in manuscript by the same hand which bore the unsavoury title of "The Gushing Tears of Godly Sorrow."[25]

1629

In those days the business of life crowded fast upon boyhood. After the university came marriage as the next step in a gentleman's education. Not far from Old Montrose stood the castle of Kinnaird, where Lord Carnegie[26] dwelt with six pretty daughters. There Montrose had often visited, and there he fell in love with Magdalen, the youngest girl. The match was too desirable for opposition either from the Carnegies or from the young lord's guardians, and the children—Montrose was only seventeen—were married in the parish church of Kinnaird on November 10, 1629. In the marriage contract Lord Carnegie bound himself "to entertain and sustain in house with himself, the said noble earl and Mistress Magdalene Carnegie, his promised spouse, during the space of three years next after the said marriage."[27] Accordingly the young couple remained at Kinnaird for a little over three years, until Montrose came of age, and there two of their four sons were born.[28] They were years of quiet study, the leisurely preparation which is all too rare in youth for the necessities of manhood; and they were the only season of peaceful domestic life which Montrose was fated to enjoy. The famous Jameson portrait, given by Graham of Morphie as a wedding gift to the young countess, shows him in those years of meditation, when he was scribbling his ambitions in his copy of Quintus Curtius. It is a charming head of a boy, with its wide, curious, grey eyes, the arched, almost fantastic, eyebrows, the delicate mobile lips. Life was to crush out the daintiness and gaiety, armour was to take the place of lace collar and silken doublet; but one thing the face of Montrose never lost—it had always an air of hope, as of one seeking for a far country.

1633-36 [40]

In June 1633 Charles came to Scotland to be crowned. Such an occasion was well suited for the introduction of a young nobleman to the court, for in that year Montrose attained his majority, his father-in-law was high in the royal favour, and his brother-in-law Napier was one of the four peers chosen to hold the canopy over the king's head. That the world expected his presence is shown by his friend William Lithgow's recommendation of his merits in the preposterous poem, "Scotland's Welcome to her Native Son and Sovereign Lord, King Charles." But when midsummer came he was on a foreign shore. The reason may be traced in the scandal connected with his sister's husband, Sir John Colquhoun, which in the beginning of that year was the talk of Scotland. The laird of Luss, in company with a German necromancer of the name of Carlippis, had fled from his lawful wife, carrying with him his sister-in-law, the little Lady Katherine, who had for a time been Montrose's companion in his Glasgow lodgings. The malefactor was outlawed and excommunicated, returning fourteen years later to be received into grace by Church and State; the unhappy girl disappears from history. With such a family horror on his mind, Montrose sought the anodyne of new scenes and fresh faces.

We know little of his travels. He started probably in the beginning of 1633, accompanied by his secretary of St. Andrews days, John Lambie, and young Graham of Morphie. According to Burnet, his travelling companion was Basil Fielding, Denbigh's son and Hamilton's brother-in-law, who flung in his fortunes later with the Puritan party. He financed his journey by drawing bills on William Dick of Braid through the latter's "factors" in Paris. The winter of 1633-34 was spent at Angers, where he no doubt was a pupil of the famous school of arms. In the old library at Innerpeffray there is still preserved a French Bible which he bought on his travels, scribbled throughout with mottoes which had caught his fancy, such as "Honor mihi vita potior" and "Non crescunt sine spinis." In Rome he met Lord Angus, the future Marquis of Douglas, and others of the Scots nobility, and dined with them at the English College there. He studied all the while—"as much of the mathematics as is required of a soldier," wrote his faithful adherent Thomas Saintserf, "but his great study was to read men and the actions of great men." It is a phrase which aptly describes the attitude of high dedication in which the young man passed his youth. He went gravely about the business of life, and already had made certain of renown, though careless enough of happiness. Long afterwards, to foreign observers like the Cardinal de Retz, he seemed like one of the heroes of Plutarch, and there was something even in his boyish outlook of the high Roman manner. It was at this time that his interests began to move strongly towards the military art. Europe was in the throes of the Thirty Years' War, half its gentry were in arms, the great Gustavus was but two years dead, and in court and college the talk was all of leaguers and campaigns.

The descriptions of his person and habits at this date are familiar; of middle stature and gracefully built, chestnut hair, a clear fresh colour, a high-bridged nose, keen grey eyes; an accomplished horseman, and an adept at every sport which needed a lithe body and a cool head.[29] On his manner all accounts are agreed, and most accounts are critical. He was very stately and ceremonious, even as a young man, in no way prepared to forget that he was a great noble, except among his intimates. To servants and inferiors he was kindly and thoughtful, to equals and superiors a little stiff and hard. Burnet says of him that he was "a young man well learned, who had travelled, but had taken upon him the port of a hero too much."[30] "He was exceedingly constant and loving," a friend wrote, "to those who did adhere to him, and very affable to such as he knew; though his carriage, which indeed was not ordinary, made him seem proud." One is reminded of Sir Walter Raleigh, whose "næve," says Aubrey, "was that he was damnable proud." Adventurous and imaginative youth is rarely free from the fault; its sensitive haughtiness is both defensive armour and a defiance; it believes itself destined for great deeds, and a boyish stateliness is its advertisement to the world of the part it has set itself to play.

1636

Montrose returned home in 1636, in his twenty-fourth year—a figure of intense interest to the Scottish faction-leaders, and of some moment to the king's court. He was altogether too remarkable to please the Marquis of Hamilton, who was the interpreter of Scottish business to the royal ear, and for the first time he came into conflict with one with whom he was to fight many battles. James, third Marquis, and soon to be first Duke, of Hamilton, was not the least futile of the many schemers of his day. A vain, secret being, a diligent tramper of backstairs, and a master of incompetent intrigue, he is throughout his career the sheep in wolf's clothing. He looks at us from the canvas of Vandyck, a martial figure, grasping a baton, but in his face we can detect what Sir Philip Warwick noted—"such a cloud on his countenance that Nature seems to have impressed aliquid insigne"—something crack-brained, uncertain and tortuous, a warning that this was no man to ride the ford with. The royal blood in his veins gave him high ambitions, and his fierce old mother, Ann Cunningham of Glencairn, strongly coloured these ambitions, so that he was for ever halting between King and Covenant, dreaming now of winning Scotland for his master, and now of reigning himself in some theocratic millennium. His life was one long pose, but the poses were many and contradictory, and the world came to regard as a knave one who was principally a fool. Burnet, the Hamilton champion, has done his best for his memory, but the verdict of history has been written by Clarendon, who was no ill-wisher to his house. "His natural darkness and reservation in his discourse made him to be thought a wise man, and his having been in command under the King of Sweden, as his continual discourse of battles and fortifications, made him to be thought a soldier. And both these mistakes were the cause that made him to be looked upon as a worse and a more dangerous man than in truth he deserved to be."[31]

When Montrose reached London he appeared at court, and naturally asked Hamilton to be his sponsor, announcing his wish "to put himself into the king's service." Hamilton did his best to dissuade him by representing Charles as the foe of Scottish rights, and then promptly sought out the king to tell him that Montrose, by reason of his royal descent, was a danger to the royal interests, and should be discouraged. The upshot was that the traveller was received by Charles with marked coldness. The king spoke a few chilly words, gave him his hand to kiss, and turned away. It was enough to discourage the most ardent loyalist, and the rebuff made it certain that personal affection for his monarch would play no part in determining the young man's conduct on his return to his own country.