Читать книгу Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight - John Willcock - Страница 6

Table of Contents

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]