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Tradition still points to a building in the town of Montrose as the birthplace of James Graham, fifth Earl and first Marquis of the line—a building also fondly cherished by the antiquary as the last to shelter the Old Chevalier on Scottish soil. Both traditions are of course disputed, and both are easy to dispute. The title of Montrose was taken, not from the town of that name but, from the estate of Old Montrose on the opposite side of the bay, which a Graham had acquired from Robert Bruce in exchange for the lands of Cardross in Dumbartonshire. The name is said to be of Gaelic origin, Alt or Ald Moineros, the Burn of the Mossy Point; but the prefix must have been understood in its Saxon significance at least as early as the twelfth century, for in a charter of that time the place is styled Vetus Monros. The old castle has long since disappeared. The Covenanters naturally let slip no chance of despoiling the man they most feared and hated in Scotland; and of the three stately homes owned by the chief of the Grahams at the beginning of the seventeenth century—Kincardine in Perthshire, Mugdock in Stirlingshire, and Old Montrose in Forfarshire—all went down in the storm of civil war. Montrose's parents seem to have resided at all three impartially, and at the last their son may have been born. If this were so, it is easy to understand how tradition, anxious for some visible memorial of a famous man in the town bearing his name, should have transferred the honour of his birth there across the few miles of water that separated it from the old home of his family. But in fact nothing is certainly known of the place or time of Montrose's birth, except that he was fourteen years old when his father died in 1626, and must consequently have been born some time in the year 1612.

The Grahams had long been conspicuous figures in Scottish history. In 1298 Sir John Graham, the chosen comrade of Wallace, had fallen, more fortunate than his friend, at the battle of Falkirk, in the churchyard of which town his tomb may still be seen. In 1304, at the capitulation which seemed for the moment to have closed the Scots' struggle for independence, Sir David, the first proprietor of Old Montrose, had been specially marked by the English king as a dangerous man. Through the wars of Bruce and his immediate successors the Grahams had stood stoutly by the national cause. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had three times intermarried with the royal blood of Scotland. A son of Sir William Graham and the Princess Mary, daughter of Robert the Third, was the first Primate of Scotland; and as a Graham of a later generation had held the see of Dunblane, the indifference expressed for bishops by their illustrious descendant should at least not have been hereditary. One of Sir William's grandsons, Patrick, was raised to the peerage as Lord Graham in 1451, and in 1505 his grandson William was made Earl of Montrose by James the Fourth, only to fall a few years later by his sovereign's side at Flodden, where he commanded a division of the Scottish van. His grandson fell with equal glory at Pinkie, a field only less disastrous to his country than the field of Flodden. But the most conspicuous of the ancestors of the Great Marquis was his grandfather John, who held in succession the offices of Treasurer, Chancellor, and Viceroy of Scotland. He seems to have possessed his full share of the turbulent spirit which marked the Scottish aristocracy then and for long after an era of milder manners had dawned upon the South. When nearly fifty years old he was engaged in a memorable brawl on the High Street of Edinburgh between a party of his own men and the followers of Sir John Sandilands, by whom one of his clan had been murdered three years previously. In this affair Lord Graham fought by his father's side, and according to one account had been the first to begin the fray. But the general tenor of his life seems to have been unusually peaceful. He bore the part expected of a young Scottish nobleman in the State ceremonies and pageants of the time, and after his succession to the title performed such duties as his position imposed on him with credit if with no particular ability. But his tastes evidently led him rather to the life of a country gentleman than of a man of affairs, and after his wife's death he seems to have devoted himself almost entirely to the care of his children and his estates. His letters show him to have been an affectionate and indulgent father, and the precision of his accounts proves him an exact but not illiberal manager. His stables were well stocked and well used, and, next to riding, archery and golf were his favourite pastimes. In these his son followed him. His skill at the targets and on the links is one of the few memorials of Montrose's youth that time has spared for us; the grace and dexterity of his horsemanship were famous even in an age and a country where all men and most women rode, and were first learned, as such accomplishments can only be learned, in boyhood, as he cantered on his white pony at his father's side over the fair heritage of his sires. But another of his father's tastes he did not share. The smell of tobacco is said to have been peculiarly disagreeable to him, and sums for tobacco and pipes are frequent in the old Earl's accounts.[1]

Montrose was the only son of six children. Their mother was Lady Margaret Ruthven, daughter of the first Earl of Gowrie. It was whispered that, like her brother, she dabbled in magic, and had learned from a witch that her son was destined to be a firebrand to his country. If the report be true—and the Black Art found credence in Scotland long after Lady Margaret's day—she may well have sighed to think that the wild fate which had befallen so many of her family was to be the portion of her son. For the Ruthvens had both done and suffered much evil in their time. Her grandfather, who had died in exile, a fugitive from justice, was that grim lord who had risen from a sick-bed to lead the murderers of Rizzio into their queen's presence. Her father, who had perished on the scaffold, one of the many victims of Arran's intrigues, had been concerned in the violent attempt on the young king's liberty popularly known as the Raid of Ruthven. Her two brothers had perished by the sword before their sovereign's face, a fate which there is too good reason to believe that they had destined for him. Of her own life nothing more is known than that she bore her husband six children and died in 1618 when the youngest was but three years old. Her two eldest daughters, Lilias and Margaret, were married soon after her death: Lilias to Sir John Colquhoun of Luss, a union destined to an abrupt and shameful end by his flight with her sister Katherine, who had been received into the family after her father's death and was then little more than a child; but Margaret, though she did not live long to enjoy it, was more fortunate in her marriage with Archibald, first Lord Napier of Merchiston, a wise and good man who had been particularly recommended by King James to his son as the most judicious and disinterested of all Scottish statesmen. Of the others, Dorothea became the wife of Sir James, afterwards Lord Rollo, and Beatrix, the youngest and apparently her brother's favourite, the wife of the Master of Maderty, one of the first to join Montrose under the standard of their king. Both Margaret and Dorothea died young, the first probably about 1630, the latter in 1638; the deaths of Lilias and Beatrix are unrecorded; of Katherine all traces seem to have been lost after her disappearance from her sister's house in 1631.

In his twelfth year Lord Graham was sent to study at Glasgow under the charge of a tutor, William Forrett. Master Forrett was most scrupulous in keeping account of his pupil's expenses, and to these we owe all our knowledge of this time. It is not much, and, as may be supposed, is rather sumptuary than intellectual. There is mention of certain books bought for the young student, and there is evidence that the tutor borrowed them for his own reading. A Latin version of Xenophon's Hellenics, the works of Seneca with Lipsius' commentary, and Fairfax's translation of the Gerusalemme Liberata are among them; but the lad's favourite book at this time would seem to have been Raleigh's History of the World. Our information as to the domestic establishment is more precise. It was abundant and costly, as was then considered becoming the heir of an ancient and wealthy house. He had a valet and two pages, plate, furniture, and linen of the best quality, nor was the favourite white pony forgotten. His wardrobe was handsomely stocked with suits of English cloth and embroidered cloaks, and his pages wore scarlet liveries. He was lodged in a large house belonging to Sir George Elphinstone of Blythswood, who had succeeded Napier as Lord Justice-Clerk, and for part of the time little Lady Katherine seems to have lived here with her brother. One pleasant fact at least stands out clear from these dim memories; there was a warm affection and regard between tutor and pupil. Years afterwards, when Montrose had burned his boats by the victory of Tippermuir, one of his first acts was to send for Master Forrett, to resume his part of purse-bearer to his old pupil and to be tutor to his sons.

The sudden death of the father in November, 1626, broke up the establishment at Glasgow, and in the following January Montrose, then only in his fifteenth year, was entered at the University of St. Andrews, as was then the general custom of the young Scottish aristocracy. The funeral ceremonies of the dead Earl give a curious picture of the age. They lasted for one month and nineteen days, during which time all the kinsmen and friends of the family were entertained in the castle of Kincardine. There were Sir William Graham of Braco, the only brother, and the Earl of Wigton, the nephew of the deceased, with the sons-in-law Lord Napier and Sir John Colquhoun. All the branches of the clan were represented; Grahams of Claverhouse and Fintrie, of Inchbrakie, Morphie, Orchill, and Balgowan, with many neighbouring nobles and lairds, some of them destined in no long time to be the bitter foes of the House they were now assembled to honour. Many of the guests brought with them contributions to the funeral feast as though to a solemn picnic; and other provisions of all kinds were purchased in quantities sufficient to have stocked the Black Douglas's terrible larder many times over, while the wine and ale were reckoned by puncheons and buckets.

Montrose's life at college seems to have been much the same as that of any young man of rank and fortune to-day at Christ Church or Trinity. He mixed freely in all the diversions of the place and time, hunted, hawked, and shot, played golf on the links of St. Andrews and tennis in the court at Leith. At archery he was especially skilful. In the second year of his residence he won the prize annually shot for by the students, a silver arrow with a medal bearing the name of the winner, and this he held against all competitors while he remained at the University. His walls were hung with his bows, just as to-day the successful cricketers and oarsmen of Oxford and Cambridge arrange round their rooms the instruments of their triumphs. Eminent in those accomplishments which always secure the admiration of the young, profuse in hospitality to his friends, liberal to the poor, and especially to those needy professors of the fine arts who were never slow in those days to scent out a generous patron, he evidently began even in these early years to engage the attention of his contemporaries. His own estates and tenants were not neglected; but his vacations were mostly passed in visits to the houses of his brothers-in-law and of the heads of the various branches of his clan, each of whom, according to the custom of the time, was considered as in some sort the guardian of his young chief, though Lord Napier, Sir William Graham of Claverhouse, and Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie seem to have had the largest share in an office which with a young gentleman of such cheerful tastes and dispositions can have been no sinecure.

This merry life was not, however, without a check. In April, 1628, his sister Dorothea was married from Napier's house in Edinburgh to young James Rollo, and both then and afterwards at Carnock in Fife, where the honeymoon was spent, there had been high festival. The result of all this gaiety, alternated with days of hard exercise in the saddle and on the links, was that the lad fell sick on his return to college. For some days he was seriously ill. Two doctors were called in, and to judge by their fees must have been assiduous in their visits. They ordered their patient's long curls to be ruthlessly shorn, and they ordered also a diet which strikes our modern notions as curiously generous for a young fellow who, to speak plainly, had probably been only over-eating himself. However, nature and the doctors together triumphed—or, it may be, nature in spite of the doctors; and after a few weeks' confinement, cheered by chess and cards and the gift of a valuable hawk from his kinsman of Fintrie, Montrose was once more about at his old occupations—one of the first recorded acts of his convalescence being a breakfast-party given to some of his young friends who had been most attentive to him in his sickness.

Of his studies we know much less than of his amusements. Sums for the purchase and binding of books appear in his accounts, which were kept as scrupulously by his new tutor, Master John Lambye, as by Master Forrett at Glasgow, and from the same source we learn that he had begun the study of Greek. Plutarch's Lives, Cæsar's Commentaries, Lucan, and Quintus Curtius were now added to his library, though the verses found written in some of them must belong to a later date. Undergraduates, more happy than their descendants, were not in those days pestered with examinations; but that Montrose at least attended lectures after a fashion is clear from an entry in his tutor's accounts of the sum of twenty-nine shillings paid to "a scholar who writes my lord's notes in the school." But we may suppose that his studies were directed more by his own tastes and dispositions than by the curriculum of the place, which, as was the case not so long ago in our English Universities, was not likely to be very sternly enforced on the young aristocrats who then frequented St. Andrews. It is, however, certain that he cannot have passed his time only in play. More fortunate in some respects than another famous member of his House, Montrose has never been called a block-head because he spelled no better than the rest of his world. Among his contemporaries his reputation stood high. "He was of very good parts," says Clarendon, "which were improved by a good education;" and posterity has accepted the verdict. His intellect was indeed quick and eager rather than solid. His classical knowledge was that rather of a poet than a scholar, and his poetical fame must be content to rest upon a few stanzas which have taken their place among English lyrics; but it will be seen that he had read and thought much on those problems of government which the inhabitants of this kingdom were then seriously addressing themselves to solve. A book published after his death by Thomas Saintserf (son of the Bishop of Galloway), who had been his secretary during the stormiest years of his life, bears witness, in a dedication to his son, to the polished and scholarly tone of the conversation he loved to encourage among his associates. We are told, and may believe, that the few and enforced pauses in his short tumultuous career were relieved by study; but no man turns to that solace in his hours of disappointment who has not felt at least some touch of its enchantment in his youth. We may therefore conclude that he found some time amid the gaieties of St. Andrews to read the books that had been bought for him.

Among the houses that Montrose visited was Kinnaird Castle, the seat of Lord Carnegie, his nearest neighbour in Forfarshire. The families were already connected by the marriage of Eupheme, Lord Carnegie's youngest sister, to Robert Graham of Morphie. The tie was now to be drawn closer.[2] There were six daughters at Kinnaird Castle, and to the youngest of these, Magdalene, Montrose began to pay his court. The wooing was not long. His guardians were well pleased to see their young chief in a fair way to carry on the line; and that chief, in youth as in manhood, was not wont to linger over anything he undertook. He was married in the private chapel of the castle on November 10th, 1629. The bride's age is not known, but as the bridegroom can only just have completed his seventeenth year, they may be fairly allowed the conventional title of the young couple. There is a tradition that she had been previously courted by the Master of Ogilvy, which, if true, might suggest that she had some advantage of Montrose in years. But nothing is certainly known of her—of her appearance, tastes, or temper, of the course of her married life or her relations with her husband. She bore him four sons, the second coming into the world just as his father attained his majority, and died in 1645.

According to the terms of the marriage-contract the next three years were passed at Kinnaird Castle, but no record of them exists. All the bridegroom's books, papers, and furniture were removed from St. Andrews to the castle. We catch a glimpse of him very soon after the marriage on the links at Montrose, and we know that he was made a burgess of Aberdeen shortly before the ceremony. We are also told that after the novelty of his new life had worn off, he applied himself so assiduously to his studies as to become, in the pious old chronicler's words, "not merely a great master, but a critic in the Greek and Latin," of which we may believe so much as we choose. But the only visible memorial of this time is his portrait painted by Jameson, who was then practising his art in his native town of Aberdeen. This was Graham of Morphie's marriage-gift to the bride, and is still to be seen at Kinnaird Castle, where it is said to have remained since it was first hung there more than two centuries and a half ago. Those who have seen it pronounce it to be still in an unusually good state of preservation. Time has dealt tenderly with the long auburn hair, the fresh complexion, and gay clothes of the young bridegroom. The smooth upper lip and arch expression show a mind very different of course from that which had set its seal on the grave and resolute face seen later by Dobson and by Honthorst. But this smiling lad in his slashed doublet, lace collar, and gold chain is clearly father to the stately armoured man who had risked all for his king, and was to lose all.[3]

In the spring of 1633 Montrose left Scotland for the customary period of foreign travel. He was absent three years, but the barest outline of the time alone remains. We know that for some part of it his companion was Basil Fielding, son of the newly-made Earl of Denbigh, that he visited France and Italy, and that in the spring of 1635 he was in Rome with the young Lord Angus and four other Scottish gentlemen. He is said to have continued his studies diligently during this period, and to have particularly affected the society of learned men. "He studied," writes Saintserf, "as much of the mathematics as is required for a soldier; but his great study was to read men and the actions of great men."

Montrose returned to Scotland some time in 1636. He was then in his twenty-fourth year, of the middle height, well and strongly made, of graceful carriage and singularly expert in all bodily exercises, especially in riding. His hair was of the light reddish tinge which darkens with time, and his complexion of that clear fresh colour which is often found with red hair; his nose was aquiline, his eyes gray, bright, and keen. Though not strictly a handsome man, his appearance in later life at least must have been striking, dignified, and noble. Those who knew him only in manhood describe him as being somewhat haughty to strangers, especially if they were his equals or superiors in rank; but to his friends, and always to his inferiors, his manners were singularly courteous and engaging. In his later years of exile he is said to have been somewhat too stately and formal, and inclined, as the saying goes, to take too much upon himself. Burnet, whose friendship for the Hamiltons would not dispose him to think favourably of Montrose—though he does him more justice in the biography of those brothers than in the history of his own time—says contemptuously that he had too much of the hero about him, and that his manner was stately to affectation, insinuating also that his courage was not so certain as his friends pretended. To call Montrose a coward should be enough to put any witness out of court at once; but indeed, as Burnet was only seven years old when the man against whom he vented this silly piece of spite died, and as the society he knew best was unlikely to foster any fervent admiration for the great champion of the Throne, his evidence cannot go for much. From the accounts, however, of men better able to judge than the Bishop of Salisbury, it is clear that there was something in Montrose's manner that did not please all tastes, and perhaps seemed fantastic to some. "He was of most resolute and undaunted spirit," writes one of his friends, "which began to appear in him to the wonder and expectation of all men, even in his childhood." And again: "He was exceeding constant and loving 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." These expressions fall in well with Clarendon's famous character of him, and also with the impression made by him on Cardinal De Retz, when they met in Paris in 1647, as the very ideal of one of Plutarch's heroes. These are witnesses of Montrose's prime; but the carriage that is admitted to be not ordinary in a grown man would probably be still more marked in a young one. The Covenanters, through their great mouthpiece Robert Baillie, declared him to be too proud, headstrong, and wilful for their tastes. Certainly he had little of the tone or temper of the Puritan about him, and of all the young aristocrats who joined them was the least likely to submit himself blindly to their dictation, or become the mere instrument of their factions; and as he also had evidently a strong partiality for his own opinion, which he was neither slow to form nor to declare, it is plain that there can never have been much personal sympathy between him and his early associates. We may think of Montrose, then, at this time as a young man full of high resolves and romantic fancies, ardent, aspiring, impulsive, impatient of delay, and always more eager to lead than willing to follow. But his own verses are after all the clearest reflection of his character, and though probably written in the last year of his life, they describe the Covenanter as truly as the Cavalier.

As Alexander I will reign,

And I will reign alone;

My thoughts did evermore disdain

A rival on my throne:

He either fears his fate too much,

Or his deserts are small,

That dares not put it to the touch,

To gain or lose it all.