Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/419

 ing the activity of mind of the exiled lawyer, now approaching old age, resuming the speculations of his youth as a student of philosophy, and moved by the new birth of natural science which distinguished the close of the seventeenth century. But Stair had not emancipated himself from the old Aristotelian formulæ, or caught the light which in the very year of the publication Newton revealed to the learned world by his ‘Principia.’ From a contract with the printer Anderson of Edinburgh, which has been preserved, we learn that Stair had projected a more comprehensive treatise, embracing inquiries concerning human knowledge, natural theology, morality, and physiology. The ‘Physiologia’ is all that remains of the ambitious scheme, unless the posthumous tract ‘On the Divine Perfections’ may be deemed a sketch of his intended work on natural theology. Not even in Leyden was Stair left undisturbed by the relentless persecutors who then misgoverned Scotland. The States of Holland were asked but refused to expel him from their dominions. Spies were sent to watch his movements, but he eluded them, shifting from one town to another, but still keeping Leyden as his headquarters. On 2 Dec. 1684 Mackenzie as lord advocate was ordered to charge Stair, Lord Melville, Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree, and several other persons with treason, for accession to the rebellion in 1679, the Rye House plot, and the expedition of Argyll. Sentence was pronounced against several persons involved in the same charges; but the proceedings against Stair were continued by successive adjournments till 1687, when they were dropped. The cause of their abandonment was the appointment in January of that year of his son, the Master of Stair, who had made peace with James II, to the office of lord advocate, of which Mackenzie had been deprived for refusing to relax the penal laws against Roman catholics. On 28 March a remission was recorded in favour of Stair and his family, to which was oddly tacked a pardon to the young son of the master, afterwards Field-marshal Stair, for accidentally killing his brother. The master only held the office of lord advocate for a single year, when he was, according to the anonymous author of the ‘Impartial Narrative,’ printed in ‘Somers Tracts,’ ‘degraded to the office of justice clerk,’ James II and his advisers finding him not a fit tool for their purposes. Stair refused to accept the remission, and remained in Holland until the following year, 1688, when he accompanied William of Orange in his own ship, the Brill, in the memorable voyage from Helvoetsluys to Torbay. He had made the acquaintance of William through the pensionary Fagel, and according to a reliable tradition, his horse having been lost on the voyage, William supplied him with one from his own stud. When they left Holland, Stair is said to have taken off his wig, and, pointing to his bare head, said: ‘Though I be now in the seventieth year of my age, I am willing to venture that my own and my children's fortunes in such an undertaking.’ William, who was as constant in his friendship as the Stuarts were fickle, was ever afterwards a steadfast supporter of the Dalrymple family. The Master of Stair was reappointed lord advocate, and on the murder of President Lockhart by Chiesly of Dalry, Stair himself was again placed at the head of the court of session.

An unscrupulous opposition called the Club, which sprang up in the Scottish parliament, led by Montgomery of Skelmorlie, who coveted the office of secretary for Scotland, and Lord Ross,who aimed at the presidency of the court of session, now attacked the courtiers or king's party, of which the Master of Stair was the representative, with a virulence worthy of the worst days of party. An anonymous pamphlet, variously attributed to Montgomery and to Fergusson the plotter, appeared in Glasgow towards the end of 1689, entitled ‘The late Proceedings of the Parliament of Scotland stated and vindicated,’ which contained a fierce personal invective against Stair. It charged him with illegally assuming the office of president in the nomination of Charles II, without the choice of the judges, contrary to the act of 1579, c. 93, and asserted that he had been ‘the principal minister in all Lauderdale's arbitrariness and all Charles I's usurpations. Nor was there a rapine or murder in the kingdom under the countenance of the royal authority of which he was not either the author or the assister in, or ready to justify.’ It was not a time when libels could be safely left unanswered, and Stair published a small quarto pamphlet, styled ‘An Apology for Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, President of the Session, by himself.’ To refute the charge of being a time-server, he appeals to his refusal of Cromwell's tender in 1657, the declaration of 1663, and the test of 1681. ‘Let my enemies,’ he urges, ‘show how many they can instance in this nation that did thrice forsake their station, though both honourable and lucrative, rather than comply with the corruption of the time.’ The charge of subserviency to Lauderdale he met with the reply that he joined in the representations which led Lauderdale to make several acts of council correcting abuses. The alleged obscurity of his decisions with which he had been reproached was due to the libeller's ignorance of law, and he appeals with just confidence to the publi-