Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/259

Rh estates in Cromarty. As may be readily conceived, however, it had no such effect; and it will be at once understood why it should not, when it is mentioned that Cromwell was then protector of England. The "Jewel," its author boasts, was written in fourteen days; there being a struggle between him and the printer, which should get on fastest: a contest which sometimes bore so hard upon him, that he was, as he tells us, obliged to tear off fragments from the sheet he was writing, in order to keep the press going. The "Jewel" contains, amongst other piquant matters, the adventures of the Admirable Crichton, and a pedigree of the author's family, in which he traces the male line, with great precision and accuracy, from Adam to himself; and on the female side, from Eve to his mother; regulating, as he goes along, the great events in the history of the world, by the births and deaths of the Urquharts; to which important events, he, with a proper sense of the respectability and dignity of his progenitors, makes them quite subordinate.

This multifarious and elaborate work, although the most important of the learned knight's productions, was not the first in point of time. In 1645, he published, in London, a treatise on Trigonometry, dedicated, in very flowery language, to "the right honourable, and most noble lady, my dear and loving mother, the lady dowager of Cromartie." This work, though disfigured by all the faults of manner and style peculiar to its author, yet discovers a knowledge of mathematics, which, when associated with his other attainments, leaves no doubt of his having been a man of very superior natural endowments.

WALLACE,, the celebrated asserter of the national independence, was born probably about the middle of the reign of Alexander III., or the year 1270. Part of the circumstances which called forth this hero from obscurity are already detailed under the life of Baliol; the remainder must here be briefly noticed.

After the deposition of that unfortunate sovereign in 1296, king Edward I. overran Scotland with his troops, and united it, as he thought, for ever, to his native dominions. Many of the nobility who had taken part in the resistance of king John, fell into his hands, and were sent prisoners to England, whither Baliol himself, along with his eldest son, had also been sent. He destroyed or took away all the public records; and endeavoured to obliterate every monument of the former independence of Scotland. He displaced those who had held important offices under Baliol, and bestowed them on Englishmen. Warenne, earl of Surrey, was appointed governor, Hugh de Cressingham treasurer, and William Ormesby justiciary of Scotland; and having thus settled all things in a state of seeming ranquillity, he departed with the conviction that he had made a final conquest of the country.

Scotland was now fated to experience the most flagrant oppression and tyranny. The unlimited exactions of Cressingham, the treasurer, a volup- tuous and selfish ecclesiastic, and the rigour of Ormesby, the justiciary, in taking the oath of fealty, soon rendered them odious to the nobles; while the rapacity and barbarism of the soldiers laid the wretched inhabitants open to