the Duke of Ormond, and other great Jacobite lords, who, though they urged the importance of procuring the assistance of an armed force from the French king, thought that the Pretender might venture without it, provided only he brought with him a train of artillery, arms for 20,000 men, 500 officers, and a good sum of money. These plotters recommended that the expedition should be so timed as not to land until the end of September, when parliament would be prorogued, and the Jacobite lords and members of the Commons in the country ready to co-operate; and they promised, as soon as the Pretender should be ready, to give him notice of the place where he ought to land. With this memorial in his hand, and with assurances that the plot was a good plot, and would not fail, Bolingbroke again waited on de Torcy and other French ministers, whom he found ready enough to embroil England, but yet fearful of openly committing themselves and of provoking another war, which France was ill able to bear. De Torcy assured him that his court would grant secret supplies, and had allowed a small armament to be fitted out at Havre for the expedition; but that the sending of troops or the contracting any open engagement with the Chevalier was a thing not to be named to his master. In the mean while Bolingbroke had had long conferences with the Duke of Berwick, who concurred with him in impressing upon the French court "how practicable, how morally certain the enterprise would prove, if it was avowed and supported by Louis and a French army." Bolingbroke was much disconcerted by the constant discovery of some of his secrets, and by the alarm that had begun to spread in England of a design of invasion this summer; but he was apparently still full of hope, when two events occurred to derange everything. The first of these was the flight from England of the Duke of Ormond, who had engaged to keep his ground to the last moment, and then to fly, not out of the island, but into the West, where measures had been concerted for revolutionising Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth. When, instead of doing this, Ormond arrived a helpless fugitive, the French court, who had been taught to consider him as the mightiest champion of the Stuarts, began to perceive that, after all that had been said, the House of Hanover was not to be so easily overthrown. The second event fatal to the plotters was the death of Louis XIV., who died at last, and in a very contemptible manner, on the 1st of September. "He was," says Bolingbroke," the best friend the Chevalier had, and when I engaged in this business my principal dependence was on his personal character..... My hopes sunk as he declined, and died when he expired." The dissolute Duke of Orleans, who obtained the regency of France in spite of the opposition of Madame de Maintenon, Louis's last mistress and left-handed wife, and of the bastards which that old king had left behind him, was more averse even than Louis to a new war, and had far less consideration for the cause

of legitimacy in the abstract, or for the Pretender in person. Orleans had, on the contrary, friends among the present English ministers, who, it should appear, made him offers of money and troops to secure his regency; and he was particularly on a footing of intimacy with the new secretary of state, General Stanhope, whom he had known well in Spain. The regent, moreover, as a matter of course, had entirely changed the French cabinet, and adopted a new line of policy. The Jacobites now hardly knew whom they could apply to without risk of having their propositions and schemes divulged in England. The fugitive Ormond, however, hit upon a scheme that was quite suitable and in character. Mrs. Olivia Trant, the intriguing lady we have mentioned, was very beautiful-the regent the most lascivious of men. Ormond, doing the part of Sir Pandarus of Troy, brought the precious couple together, and Mrs. Olivia became, for a time, the mistress of the regent of France. But the Duke of Orleans was too thoroughly a man of the world to disclose his state secrets to his mistresses, and he changed them too often, and kept too many at a time, to allow any one lady to acquire any great influence over him; so that Ormond's scheme and Mrs. Trant's prostitution were little better than thrown away. Lord Stair, a man of as much address as Bolingbroke himself, was not idle; he got a clue to every mystery, and he positively demanded from the regent, that certain ships at Havre, which he named, and which he correctly alleged were equipped for the Pretender, should be given up to England. As this demand was seconded by the appearance of Admiral Byng off Havre with a stout squadron, the regent, though he would not give up the ships, laid an embargo on them, and seized the arms on board, which were deposited in the king's arsenal. It should appear, however, that the regent was either unable or unwilling to seize all these materials of war; for, on the 21st of September, Bolingbroke writes to the Pretender-"There are at Havre 1300 arms, 4000 weight of powder, and other stores on board another ship which is not yet discovered. I intend to send her, as I write, to Lord Mar.”

Bolingbroke had been all along of opinion that the Scottish Jacobites could do little or nothing without the co-operation of the English, and that they ought to be kept quiet till the insurrection was fully organised south of the Tweed. He despatched a trusty messenger to Lord Mar; but, when that messenger arrived in London, he learned from Erasmus Lewis, a very active member of the conspiracy, that Mar had already gone to the Highlands to raise the standard of the Stuarts. This seemed a strange want of judgment and of concert; but the fact, as stated by the Duke of Berwick, the party most likely to know the truth and least disposed to speak ill of his half-brother, the Pretender, was, that that personage, unknown to Bolingbroke, who fondly believed that nothing was or would be done without his advice, had sent

:

orders to Mar to begin the insurrection at once in Scotland. "The Earl of Mar," says Berwick, "who had been secretary of state for Scotland in the time of Queen Anne, and had been removed from that post by George, received, in the month of September, a secret order from the king, to go immediately into Scotland and take up arms. Neither Bolingbroke nor I knew anything of this, although we were his principal ministers, through whom all the correspondences in England and all the plans passed: this circumstance gave us no favourable opinion of the enterprise, since there could have been nothing concerted without our knowledge." There is another remark which is called for, though Berwick does not make it-it is this that the Pretender must have been as unfeeling as he was foolish, since he could thus urge a few rash men to their inevitable destruction. Mar, however, had set out by sea from London, and taken with him Lieutenant-General Hamilton, who had served with distinction in Holland and Flanders, and who had been second to the Duke of Hamilton in his unfortunate duel, one Colonel Hay, another good officer, and two servants. He landed at Elie, in Fife, on the coast of the Frith of Forth, and immediately repaired to the house of John Bethune, of Balfour, who was called "the honest laird." From this laird's house Lord Mar soon went to the house of the laird of Invercauld: on his road he met several Fifeshire gentlemen, who complained that government was going to deprive them of their arms, and who were advised by this hair-brained revolutionist to gather in a body and rise at once, though nothing was ready, nothing even devised. At Invercauld, where he stayed about eight days, Mar held conferences and concerted something like a plan for future operations; and then he went to Aboyne, where he met Lord Huntley, Lord Tullibardine, the Earl Mareshal, the Earl of Southesk, Glengarry, and others, and received messages from the Earl of Breadalbane and General Gordon. Mar pressed for an immediate rising, and the rest were absurd enough to follow his advice and on the 6th of September (o. s.) Mar, who had collected an insignificant force, not exceeding 500 men, erected the standard of the Stuart at Brae Mar. On the 9th, he issued a declaration, calling upon the people to take arms, and assuming the title of lieutenant-general to King James. But, thanks to the vigilance of Lord Stair and the manifold imprudences of the conspirators at home and abroad, the government was not taken by surprise. By an act of parliament just passed, the king was empowered to summon all the chiefs of the clans to Edinburgh by a certain day. The order had been sent down, and, though many of the Highland chiefs hesitated and eventually joined Mar, others repaired quietly to the capital, where an attempt by the insurgents to surprise the castle failed completely, because the persons employed neglected their business and

*MS. in the possession of Lord Rosslyn, as cited by Lord John Russell, Hist. Europe from Peace of Utrecht.

sat drinking whisky in a public-house till it was too late. As soon as the government received intelligence that Mar was up in the Highlands, other orders were despatched to Edinburgh for apprehending suspected persons; and the Earls of Hume, Wigtoun, and Kinnoul, Lord Deskford, Mr. Lockhart of Carnwath, and Mr. Hume of Whitfield, were soon laid fast in Edinburgh Castle. Major-General Whetham was ordered to march with all the regular troops that could be spared to Stirling, where he was to occupy positions so as to secure the bridge and the passages of the Forth. The Duke of Argyll went down as commander-inchief, and the Earl of Sutherland hastened to his part of the Highlands to raise his clans for the service of the House of Hanover. When the clans of Argyll and Sutherland were firmly united, the struggle, even if confined to the Highlands, was scarcely doubtful; and the followers of Argyll in particular, and every man that bore the name of Campbell, entertained an implacable hatred to the Stuarts.

the

But at this moment the attention of the government was distracted and its anxiety greatly increased by the discovery of a dangerous conspiracy in England, and by intelligence that the Duke of Ormond was expected on the coast of Devonshire to head a formidable insurrection. Ormond, it appears, was betrayed by one of his most active agents, by a certain Maclean, whom Bolingbroke sets down as a villain.* Forthwith the titular Duke of Powis, a Roman Catholic, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Duplin were arrested, and a warrant was issued for the apprehension of the Earl of Jersey. At the same time a royal message was sent down to the Commons, informing them that his majesty, having just cause to suspect that Sir William Wyndham, Sir John Packington, Mr. Edward Hervey, senior, Mr. Thomas Forster, junior, Mr. John Anstice, and Mr. Corbet Kynaston, were engaged in a design to support invasion of the kingdom, had given orders for apprehending them. The messengers sent to appre hend Sir William Wyndham at his house in Somersetshire, not far from the place where Ormond had appointed to land, found him in bed: upon the baronet's coming out in his dressinggown he was arrested, but, craving permission to return and take leave of his lady, he escaped by a secret door. Some important papers, however, were secured, and a few days after Wyndham, finding it impossible to escape, repaired to the house of his father-in-law, the Duke of Somerset, and surrendered himself. The duke offered to be his bail, but his offer was refused, and, for the violence of his language, and probably for other reasons, his grace was deprived of his high court office of master of the horse. Sir John Packington was taken, examined, and then discharged. Mr. Hervey and Mr. Anstice were secured in prison; but Mr. Forster rose in rebellion in NorthumExtracts from the Stuart Papers, in Appendix to ¡Lord Mahon, Hist. Eng. from Peace of Utrecht.

berland; and Mr. Kynaston made his escape. Troops were hurried down to the west, Bristol was secured by the Earl of Berkeley, the lord-lieutenant of the county, who discovered and seized their several cases of fire-arms and about 200 horses prepared for the use of the insurgents. Exeter was looked to, and Plymouth well guarded; and Sir Richard Vivian, a stirring Cornish gentleman, was sent up to London in the custody of a king's messenger. Other west-country gentlemen were either watched or made fast; and this occurred also in other parts of the kingdom, where the lately insulted dissenters were active in making discoveries and directing the vengeance of government.

Oxford, the high church and Tory alma mater, had committed itself too deeply to escape suspicion and chastisement. "Here," says an undergraduate, we fear nothing, but drink James's health every day." On the flight and attainder of the Duke of Ormond, the chancellor of the university, that learned body had elected his brother the earl of Arran; and, still further to show their principles and predilections, they reserved all their honorary degrees for non-jurors and high Tories. They also gave shelter to Colonel Owen and several other Jacobite officers who had been turned out of the army; and it soon became known to ministers that Owen was projecting an insurrection to go hand in hand with movements at Bristol, and other places. At this moment it was good to have a secretary of state who had been a soldier. Stanhope sent off General Pepper, a brave and determined officer, who had served under him in Spain; and Pepper, marching all night with a stout squadron of horse, entered the slumbering city of Oxford at day-break, on the 6th of October. As soon as he was there he summoned to his presence the vice-chancellor of the university and the mayor of the town, delivered a letter from Stanhope, and told them that he must seize eighteen suspected persons. It was said figuratively, that the Muses were scared at this sudden apparition of an armed force; but, whatever may have been the case as to the Muses, it appears quite certain that the gowned men were scared completely, particularly when the grim officer with the hot name told them that if any interruption were attempted, or any disturbance happened in the streets, he would order his men to fire.

Pepper then began his search. Colonel Owen, who was lodging at the Grayhound Inn, leaped over a wall in his bed-gown and escaped into Magdalen College, where he was concealed; but ten or twelve of the other marked persons were taken, and the revolutionary aspirations of Oxford were effectually checked.

The Catholics in the north of England were more hardy and far more difficult to deal with. The Mr. Forster, junior, who had escaped from the warrant, began the movement in Northumberland, his native county; and he was soon joined by the young and gallant Earl of Derwentwater, who was descended from an illegitimate daughter of Charles II., and who had been also marked out

VOL. IV.

for arrest. Both Forster and Derwentwater had intended to take up arms, but not so soon. As, however, the king's messengers were hunting for them, they thought there was nothing left for them to do but to fight for it, and they met at the small town of Rothbury, with a joint force not exceeding sixty horse. But proceeding to Warkworth they were joined by Lord Widdrington, another Catholic peer, with about thirty more horse. This Widdrington was the great-grandson of the Lord Widdrington, who was killed fighting for Charles II. in 1651, and who is one of the idols of the partial Clarendon. Forster was appointed general of this army of ninety men, and, in disguise, he proclaimed the Pretender at Warkworth, with sound of trumpet.* From Warkworth the insurgents marched by Alnwick to Morpeth, which they entered with about 300 horse. More, it is said, would have joined them on their march through Northumberland, but Forster and Derwentwater had no arms to give them, and thought it advisable to take up none but such as came mounted and equipped of themselves.

By this time these north-of-England insurgents had opened a correspondence with the Earl of Mar, who remained undecided and inactive on the skirts of the Highlands, and with Lord Kenmure, who had undertaken to head another insurrection in the south-west of Scotland, and who, on the 12th of October, proclaimed the Pretender at Moffat. Forster and Derwentwater had also their friends in Newcastle, and they seem to have expected an easy capture of that important city; but they were cruelly disappointed; the burghers of Newcastle, like those of all the thriving towns in the country, were zealous for the Protestant succession; they flew to arms, repaired their walls, and blocked up their gates; and Forster moved off to Hexham, to wait for reinforcements from the disaffected parts of Lancashire and from Lord Mar, who had promised to send some Scottish foot towards the borders. It appears that the Papists from Lancashire and Cheshire were not very alert in taking the field; but the insurrection continued to grow in the south-west of Scotland, where Kenmure was joined by the Earls of Nithsdale, Winton, and Carnwath, and by other Jacobites of name and influence. Kenmure having failed in an attempt to surprise Dumfries, resolved to unite his army-it amounted to some two hundred horsemen - with that of Mr. Forster, and, passing through Jedburgh, he crossed the borders and effected the junction near Rothbury. The united force, which is differently rated at from 600 to 800 horse, then faced about, crossed the Tweed, and entered the pleasant little town of Kelso, whither Mar had bargained to send Brigadier Mackintosh with two thousand foot. That rash earl, being joined by a considerable force under the Marquess of Tullibardine, was, some weeks before this, at the

Forster was put at the head of the affair, not because he had any military experience or genius, but simply because he was a Protestant, the insurgents thinking it unwise to excite popular animosity, by putting an avowed Papist at their head. 2 s

head of 6000 or 7000 men, nearly all foot, for he had scarcely more than three or four squadrons of horse. This infantry consisted solely of Highlanders, active, indefatigable, and as brave as steel; but sadly deficient in discipline, in arms, and even in gunpowder. One of the chieftains remarked that he feared these Highlanders would desert in three cases. 1. If they were long without being brought to action, they would tire and go home. 2. If they fought and were victorious, they would plunder and go home. 3. If they fought and were beaten, they would run away and go home. As for the squadrons of horse, they were composed of Jacobite gentlemen and their dependents from Perth, Fife, and Angus, of men that were as ignorant of war as they were blind or short-sighted in their politics-and every laird among them considered himself entitled to dictate and command. On the other side, however, the Duke of Argyll and General Whetham could at first scarcely muster 2000 men-the whole regular force in Great Britain at the moment fell short of 8000-and, if Mar had at once led his Highlanders to battle, victory could scarcely have been doubtful. But Mar was an incompetent commander, and, we apprehend, deficient in courage. According to the Duke of Berwick,

MS. in the possession of Lord Rosslyn, cited by Lord John Russell.

who would have made the struggle a far more serious one if he had had the command, Mar amused himself with forming his army, and settling all his affairs, as if he were sure of having all the time he wanted: had he marched forward he certainly could not have met with any opposition, and Argyll would have been obliged to quit Scotland; he might then have been able to put his army in order, to assemble a Scottish parliament, and to march to the borders, either to defend them against King George's troops, or to advance into England and join the friends of King James: but his little skill in military affairs made him lose this opportunity, and he allowed time to the troops that were marching from all quarters to join the Duke of Argyll.* Berwick adds, "A man may have a great deal of understanding, a great deal of personal bravery, and be a very able minister, without having the talents requisite for an enterprise of this nature. It is certain that Mar had them not; and we must not therefore wonder that he did not succeed. After he had drawn the sword, he did not know in what manner to proceed, and by that means missed the most favourable opportunity that had presented itself since the Revolution in 1688." But it should appear that by this time the Pretender had become suspicious and jealous of his able half-brother;

• Memoirs.

and that, having never trusted him fully and frankly, he was now disposed wholly to withdraw his confidence and friendship from him.* At last, when the Covenanters in the Low Country had had good time to recover their spirits and sharpen their broadswords, Mar began to do something he detached General Gordon to seize the Duke of Argyll's town and castle of Inverary, to check and chastise the Campbells, and then turn upon the English force from the west; and he threw two thousand men across the Forth, as promised, under the command of Brigadier Mackintosh of Borlum, a veteran distinguished by bravery, zeal, and military talent. Mackintosh's passage of the Frith of Forth, almost under the guns of three English men-ofwar, was the brilliant episode of this campaign; yet some of the boats, with about forty men, were taken. The Earl of Strathmore, with some three hundred, was obliged to put in at the little island of May; and not above sixteen hundred men landed in the Lothians, at the ports of Aberlady and North Berwick, only a short morning's march from Edinburgh. That capital, unprovided with troops, was thrown into consternation; and, though Mackintosh had no orders to attack it, he was tempted by what he heard and saw, and, instead of pushing southward for Kelso, where Forster and Derwentwater expected him, he marched straight to Edinburgh, and occupied an eminence called Jock's Lodge, within a mile of that city. But he had stopped a night at Haddington to refresh his men; and Sir George Warrender, the provost of Edinburgh, a zealous Whig, and a man of courage and ability, had made good use of the time allowed him in barricading the gates, in arming the citizens, and in sending to the Duke of Argyll for succour. And Argyll, leaving a part of his force to watch the bridge at Stirling, was in full march with the rest upon the capital, and arrived there almost as soon as Mackintosh reached Jock's Lodge. The Jacobite brigadier therefore turned aside to Leith, and took up his quarters in a citadel which had been built in Oliver Cromwell's time, but had been since allowed to fall to ruin. On the following morning the Duke of Argyll appeared before the citadel with 1200 men, consisting of regular troops, the city guard, and volunteers from Edinburgh; and he summoned the Jacobites to surrender, threatening them with a refusal of quarter if they should oblige him to take the place by assault. A fiery Highland laird -the Laird of Kinnachin-answered this summons by a bold defiance. Surrender, he said, was a word they did not understand,-quarter they were determined neither to take nor to give,--and, as for an assault, if his grace were ready for that,

In a letter to Bolingbroke, dated October the 10th, the weak and captious Pretender says:-" Ralph (D. of Berwick) is so incommunicable and incomprehensible, that I have directed D. O (rmond) to say nothing to him of the present resolutions Ralph is now a cipher, and can do me no harm; and, if he withdraws his duty from me, I may well my confidence from him."-Lord Mahon, Appendix.

they were no less prepared to receive him. Argyll dismounted, and examined minutely the half-dismantled citadel:-the ditch was dry; the demibastions were crumbling; but Mackintosh had mounted eight pieces of cannon, which he had taken out of ships in Leith harbour, upon the ramparts, had raised barricades, and had altogether put the place in so formidable an attitude, that it seemed to Argyll, who had no artillery with him, too rash an enterprise to attempt to carry it by storm, particularly as the force within was far superior in number to that which he had without. Argyll therefore marched back to Edinburgh to obtain some artillery; and Mackintosh, instead of taking that capital, was fain to steal out of the citadel of Leith under cover of night, and to direct his march, as originally intended, upon Kelso. He entered Musselburgh before midnight, and early on the following morning-Sunday, the 16th of October he arrived at Seaton Place, the seat of the Catholic and Jacobite Earl of Winton. Here, however, he was only seven or eight miles from Edinburgh, and, fearing that Argyll would give pursuit, he examined the house and grounds, and fixed upon a strong garden wall as a covering for his men. In the mean while Mar had been informed of Mackintosh's movements, and, in order to prevent the pursuit in that direction, he advanced towards Stirling. General Whetham, who remained there with a very inferior force, was presently alarmed by the shrill sound of bagpipes and the appearance of loose columns of Highlanders; and he despatched a messenger with breathless speed to entreat Argyll to return to Stirling as soon as possible. This messenger, late on Sunday night, found Argyll preparing to attack Mackintosh at Seaton House on the following morning; but it was far more essential to prevent the rout of Whetham, and the approach upon Edinburgh of Mar, than to crush Mackintosh; and the duke quitted the capital between night and morning, and, with the whole force he had brought thence and a considerable number of volunteers, made a forced march back to Stirling. If Mar had been a Montrose or a Dundee he would have annihilated Whetham some hours before Argyll could come up; and with troops elate with victory he would have met the duke on his march, defeated him, and then taken possession of the capital. But, though this course was pointed out to him, Mar stayed deliberating and see-sawing at Dunblane, six miles from the English camp, till Argyll arrived at it; and then he called in his advanced divisions, wheeled round, and retreated upon Perth without striking a blow. On this retreat there was such a total want of discipline and military conduct, particularly on the part of the lairds and wadsetters that called themselves the cavalry, that, if they had been pursued, the army must inevitably have been scattered and destroyed. For nearly a month Mar lay at Perth, and Argyll at Stirling. In the mean while Mackintosh, after staying two days at Seaton House, marched across the hills of Lam