Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/120

68 was impossible, with only fourteen ships ready for action, to encounter the opposite eighteen, should the latter be joined by the twenty line-of-battle ships whose arrival was hourly expected. But a sensation was to be produced, and hope excited, and therefore the chilling paragraph was fraudulently withheld. And when no victory ensued, the perpetrators of this deed endeavoured to conceal their blunder, and avert the public wrath by a condemnation that ought to have fallen, not upon Calder, but upon themselves.

Although the sentence of the court-martial was expected to soothe the popular disappointment, and for a short time succeeded, yet let no statesman venture upon such experiments with the British public. John Bull is reckoned indeed the very type of gullibility, and with good reason; but the honesty of heart in which this weakness originates is sure to recover the ascendancy, and examine the trial anew, in which case, the false witness and unrighteous judge have equally cause to tremble. Thus it was in the case of Sir Robert Calder. The public began to suspect that he had been unjustly dealt with, and further inquiry only strengthened the suspicion. The same feeling, although more tardily, at length obtained an entrance into head-quarters; and, in 1810, Mr. Yorke, then first lord of the Admiralty, ventured to express his conviction that Sir Robert had deserved very different treatment. In parliament, also, the same sentiment was expressed by the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Romney. The result of this return to a proper feeling upon the subject, was the offer to Sir Robert, on the part of Mr. Yorke, of the important command of Plymouth, which the former accepted as a full testimony of his acquittal and recognition of his public services and worth. After Sir Robert Calder had held the appointment for three years, he died at Holt, near Bishop's Waltham, in Hants, on the 31st of August, 1818, in the 74th year of his age.

, of Lochiel—This gallant Highland chief, who united such amiable manners and attractive accomplishments to the proverbial hardihood and valour of his race, that his name has descended to us under the title of "the gentle Lochiel," occupies the most conspicuous place in the history of the unfortunate rebellion of 1745, and may be considered as the fairest type of those chivalrous men by whom such a romantic lustre has been thrown over Jacobite loyalty and devotedness. He was grandson of that Sir Ewan Cameron, chief of Lochiel, of whom so many remarkable stories have been told, that he passes among Lowlanders as the Amadis de Gaul, or Guy of Warwick of the Highlands. Not the least remembered of these was his supreme contempt for Saxon effeminacy, so that in a night bivouac among the snow, he kicked a snowball from under his son's head, exclaiming, "What! are you become so luxurious that you cannot sleep without a pillow?" John Cameron, of Lochiel, the father of Donald, for the share he had taken in the rebellion of 1715, was obliged to escape to France, and in consequence of his attainder, the subject of this notice succeeded to the estates of his ancestors, and chieftainship of the clan. On account of his father being still alive, he was commonly called by the Highlanders "young Lochiel," although he was of mature age when he entered the field; but the precise year of his birth we are unable to discover.

As the grandfather and father of Donald had been steadfast adherents to the cause of the Stuarts, and as the clan Cameron was both numerous and powerful, the Chevalier de St. George opened a correspondence with the present chief, and invested him with full powers to negotiate in Scotland for the restoration of the exiled dynasty. Such was the state of affairs when the young Pretender,