Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 6.djvu/113

Rh his destination, but found, instead of the premiership which he expected, an appointment provided for him in the army of Spain, with which he was obliged to be content. Inverness had been nominally superseded by Sir John Graham, who proposed the most flattering terms to Lockhart; but the former was still first in the Pretender's affection, and, along with Dunbar, held the entire management of his counsels, which were, and had long been, very far from what the latter gentleman wished. By their advice, and in pursuance of his own feelings, the Pretender no sooner heard of the death of George I. than he left Bologna for Lorrain in the greatest haste, intending to put himself at the head of the Highlanders, and with their assistance, conquer and secure the throne of the three kingdoms; a similar project to that which his son attempted in the year 1745. A messenger was sent to consult Lockhart, who, astonished at the folly of the proposal, assured the Pretender that it would prove the ruin of himself and all his friends, and would deprive him of the power of ever again renewing the attempt. More wise than his son upon a like occasion, he accepted the advice, and returned to Avignon. Lockhart tendered him, afterwards, some long letters, containing very good advices, with which he probably had little hope that he would comply, and learning, in the month of April, 1728, that his friends the duke of Argyle, lord Hay, and Duncan Forbes, then lord advocate for Scotland, had procured him liberty to return and to live at home unmolested, he embraced the opportunity of doing so, nothing being required of him but his simple promise that he would live in peace. He was, however, required to go by the way of London, and to return thanks personally to George II., who was now in possession of the throne. "This," he says, "did not go well down with me, and was what I would most gladly have avoided; but there was no eviting of it; and as others, whose sincere attachment to the king was never doubted, had often preceded me on such like occasions, I was under the necessity of bowing my knee to Baal, now that I was in the house of Rimmon." Having performed this piece of unwilling submission, he returned to his family in 1728, evidently in despair of furthering the cause in which he had so long exerted himself, and determined to resign all connexion with politics. Of his after history, we have been unable to learn more than that he was slain in a duel on December 17, 1731, having entered the fifty-ninth year of his age.

He was married on the 13th of April, 1697, to Euphemia Montgomery, third daughter of Alexander, ninth earl of Eglinton, by his first wife, Margaret, daughter of William, lord (Jochrane, son of the earl of Dundonald. He had seven sons and eight daughters. His eldest son George, possessing somewhat of the prudent foresight of his father, delivered himself up in the year 1746, to Sir John Cope, the day after the battle of Gladsmuir, and was for a considerable time a prisoner at large in England. His grandson George, continued with Charles till after the fatal battle of Culloden, after which he escaped to the continent, and died an exile at Paris some few months before his father, in the year 1761.

As an author, Mr Lockhart is entitled to very considerable praise. His Memoirs concerning the Affairs of Scotland, and his commentaries, though neither so clear nor so impartial as could be wished, are yet valuable materials for history, and throw very considerable light both upon the individual characters and transactions of those times. And his register of letters is still more interesting, as giving us not only an account of the proceedings, but the acts themselves, of the Jacobites of the period. His memoirs were surreptitiously published during his lifetime, by a friend to whom he had lent them, and a key to the names (given in the published volume in initials) was afterwards circulated. He left