Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/77

Rh by Dublin to Bourdeaux, whore we find he was on the 15th of November. He now resumed his surgical character, and passed under the name of Dr Peter Wallace. Early in 1686, he appears to have proceeded by Geneva to Holland, where his family joined him, and they resided together at Utrecht for three years. The picture of this distressed, but pious and cheerful family, is very affectingly given by lady Murray, in the well-known memoirs of her mother, lady Gruel Baillie. They were reduced to such straits through the absence of all regular income, that lady Hume could not keep a servant, and Sir Patrick was obliged but this must have been a labour of love to teach his own children. They were frequently compelled to pawn their plate, to provide the necessaries of life until a fresh supply reached them. Yet, even in this distress, their house was ever open to the numerous refugees who shared in their unhappy fate. Not forgetting political objects, Sir Patrick, in 1688, Avrote a letter powerful in style and arguments, to put the presbyterian clergy in Scotland on their guard against the insidious toleration which king James proposed for the purpose of effecting the ascendancy of popery. In this document, which has been printed among the Marchmont papers by Sir G. H. Rose, we find him giving an animated picture of the prince of Orange, whom he already contemplated as the future deliverer of his country, and no doubt wished to point in that character to the attention of Scotsmen ; "one," says he, " bred a Calvinist^ who, for religious practice, excels most men so high in quality, and is equal to the most part of whatever rank of the sincere and serious in that communion ; for virtue and good morals beyond many ; those infirmities natural to poor mankind, and consistent with seriousness in religion, breaking out as little, either for degree or frequency, from him, as from most part of good men, and not one habitual to him : one of a mild and courteous temper ; of a plain, ingenuous, and honest nature ; of a humane, gay, and affable carriage, without any token of pride or disdain ; one educated and brought up in a republic as free as any in the world, and inured to the freedom allowed by and possessed in it. His greatest enemy, if he know him, or my greatest enemy, if he read this, must find his own conscience witnessing to his face, that what I have said is truth, and that I am one of more worth than to sully my argument with a flaunting hyperbole even in favour of a prince." The modern reader, who is acquainted with the picture usually drawn of the same personage by the English historians, will probably be startled at the gayety and affability here attributed to the prince ; but, besides the unavoidable prepossession of Sir Patrick for a person who, it would appear, had treated him kindly, and stood in the most endearing relation to all his favourite objects in religion and politics, it must be allowed that, at an age which might be called youth (thirty-eight), and previous to his undertaking the heavy and ungrateful burden of royalty in Britain, William might have been better entitled to such a description than he was in the latter part of his life.

Before this time, the eldest son of Sir Patrick Hume, and his future son-in-law Baillie, had obtained commissions in the horse-guards of the prince of Orange, in whose expedition to England all three soon after took a part. These gentlemen were among those who suffered in the storm by which a part of the prince's fleet was disabled; they had to return to port with the loss of all their luggage, which, in the existing state of their affairs, was a very severe misfortune. The little party appears to have speedily refitted and accompanied the prince at his landing in Devonshire, as we find Sir Patrick writing a diary of the progress to London, in which he seems to have been near the prince all the way from Exeter. In the deliberations held at London respecting the settlement of the new government, Sir Patrick bore a conspicuous part; but it was in Scotland that his zeal and judgment found a proper field of display. In the convention parliament,