Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/179

Rh on to join Montrose. Disappointed in his attempts to gain Huntly, Montrose returned by Braemar into Athol, and thence to Lennox, where he quartered for some time on the lands of the Buchanans, and hovered about Glasgow till the execution of his three friends, Sir William Rollock, Sir Philip Nisbet, and Alexander Ogilvy, younger of Inverquharity, gave him warning to withdraw to a safer neighbourhood. He accordingly once more withdrew to Athol. In the month of December he laid siege to Inverness, before which he lay for several weeks, till Middleton came upon him with a small force, when he fled into Ross-shire. The spring of 1646 he spent in marching and countermarching, constantly endeavouring to excite a simultaneous rising among the Highland septs, but constantly unsuccessful. On the last day of May he was informed of the king's surrender to the Scottish army, and, at the same time, received his majesty's order to disband his forces and withdraw from the kingdom. Through the influence of the duke of Hamilton, whose personal enemy he had been, he procured an indemnity for his followers, with liberty for himself to remain one month at his own house for settling his affairs, and afterwards to retire to the continent. He embarked in a small vessel for Norway on the 3d of September, 1646, taking his chaplain, Dr Wishart, along with him, for whose servant he passed during the voyage, being afraid of his enemies capturing him on the passage.

From Norway, he proceeded to Paris, where he endeavoured to cultivate the acquaintance of Henrietta Maria, the queen, and to instigate various expeditions to Britain in favour of his now captive sovereign. It was not, however, thought expedient by either Charles or his consort, to employ him again in behalf of the royal cause, on account of the invincible hatred with which he was regarded by all classes of his countrymen. In consequence of this he went into Germany, and offered his services to the emperor, who honoured him with the rank of mareschal, and gave him a commission to raise a regiment. He was busied in levying this corps, when he received the news of the king's death, which deeply affected him. He was cheered, however, by a message soon after to repair to the son of the late king, afterwards Charles II., at the Hague, for the purpose of receiving a commission for a new invasion of his native country. With a view to this expedition, he undertook a tour through several of the northern states of Europe, under the character of ambassador for the king of Great Britain, and so ardently did he advocate the cause of depressed loyalty, that he received a considerable sum of money from the king of Denmark, fifteen hundred stand of aims from the queen of Sweden, five large vessels from the duke of Holstein, and from the state of Holstein and Hamburg between six and seven hundred men. Having selected the remote islands of Orkney as the safest point of rendezvous, he despatched a part of his troops thither so early as September, 1649; but of twelve hundred whom he embarked, only two hundred landed in Orkney, the rest perishing by shipwreck.

It was about this time, that in an overflowing fit of loyalty, he is alleged to have superintended the disgraceful assassination of Dorislaus, the envoy of the English parliament at the Hague; on which account young Charles was under the necessity of leaving the estates. When Montrose arrived in the Orkneys in the month of March, 1650, with the small remainder of his forces, he found that from a difference between the earls of Morton and Kinnoul, to the latter of whom he had himself granted a commission to be commander, but the former of whom claimed the right to command in virtue of his being lord of the islands, there had been no progress made in the business. He brought along only five hundred foreigners, officered by Scotsmen, which, with the two hundred formerly sent, gave him only seven hundred men. To these, by the aid