Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/181

Rh Montrose, who fled from the field upon his friend the young viscount Frendraught's horse, his own being killed in the battle, rode for some space with a friend or two that made their escape along with him; but the ground becoming bad, he abandoned in succession his horse, his friends, and his cloak, star, and sword, and exchanging clothes with a Highland rustic, toiled along the valley on foot. Ignorant of the locality of the country, he knew not so much as where he was going, except that he believed he was leaving his enemies behind him, in which he was fatally mistaken. His pursuers had found in succession, his horse, his cloak, and his sword, by which they conjectured that he had fled into Assynt; and accordingly the proprietor, Neil Macleod, was enjoined to apprehend any stranger he might find upon his ground. Parties were immediately sent out, and by one of them he was apprehended, along with an officer of the name of Sinclair. The laird of Assynt had served under Montrose; but was now alike regardless of the promises and the threatenings of his old commander. The fugitive was unrelentingly delivered up to general Leslie, and by Strachan and Halket conducted in the same mean habit in which he was taken, towards Edinburgh. At the house of the laird of Grange, near Dundee, he had a change of raiment, and by the assistance of an old lady had very nearly effected his escape. He had been excommunicated by the church and forfeited by the parliament so far back as 1644, and now sentence was pronounced against him before he was brought to Edinburgh. His reception in the capital was that of a condemned traitor, and many barbarous indignities were heaped upon him; in braving which he became, what he could never otherwise have been, in some degree an object of popular sympathy. He was executed on Tuesday the 21st of May, 1650, in a dress the most splendid that he could command, and with the history of his achievements tied round his neck; defending with his latest breath his exertions in behalf of distressed royalty, and declaring that his conscience was completely at rest. His limbs were afterwards exposed with useless barbarity at the gates of the principal towns in Scotland.

Montrose appeared to cardinal du Retz as a hero fit for the pages of Plutarch, being inspired by all the ideas and sentiments which animated the classic personages whom that writer has commemorated. He certainly is entitled to the praise of great military genius, of uncompromising ardour of purpose, and of a boldness both in the conception and execution of great designs, such as are rarely found in any class of men. It is not to be denied, however, that ambition was nearly his highest principle of action, and that the attainment of his objects was too often sought at the expense of humanity. As might be expected, his memory was too much cherished by his own party, and unreasonably detested by the other; but historical truth now dictates that he had both his glorious and his dark features, all of which were alike the characteristics of a great and pregnant mind, soaring beyond the sphere assigned to it, but hardly knowing how to pursue greatness with virtue.

GRAHAM,, viscount of Dundee, was the elder son of Sir William Graham of Claverhouse, an estate with an old castle attached near Dundee. The family of Claverhouse was a branch of that of Montrose, and the mother of the subject of this memoir was lady Jean Carnegie, third daughter of John, first earl of Northesk. Young Graham was educated between 1660 and 1670, at St Andrews university, where he distinguished himself by a proficiency in mathematics, by an enthusiastic passion for Highland poetry, and tho zeal inherited from his family in behalf of the then established order of things in church and state. His abilities recommended him to the attention of archbishop Sharpe, whose death he afterwards revenged by so many severities. He com-