Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/420

 cation of the ‘Institutions’ as a proof ‘that no man did so much to make the law known and constant as I have done.’ He closes with a technical argument against the accusation of accepting the presidency from Charles without a vote of the judges. Shortly after the issue of the apology Stair was created, on 1 May 1690, Viscount of Stair, Lord Glenluce and Stranraer. He had now reached the summit of his prosperity. His closing years were clouded with private and public cares. In 1692 he lost his wife, the faithful partner of the vicissitudes of his life during all but fifty years. The part she played in the advancement of her family from comparative obscurity to the highest offices in the state turned against her the jealousy of the vulgar, which resents the sudden rise of others as a personal injury. Her support of the presbyterian preachers made her odious to the Roman catholics and Jacobites, and she shared with her husband the enmity of the bitter partisans of the Club. In the satires of the time she was described as ‘the witch of Endor,’ ‘Aunty,’ and ‘Dame Maggie Ross,’ and charged with making a paction with the evil one, who enabled her to assume various shapes at will. The misfortunes as well as the fortune of her family were laid at her door: It's not Staire's bairnes alone Nick doth infest; His children's children likewise are possest. One daughter had been the victim or the cause of the tragedy of the ‘Bride of Lammermoor,’ another was a witch like herself; her grandson had killed his brother. Her own ‘long wished for and tymely death’ was celebrated in a coarse epitaph which prophesied the fall of her husband and family. This prophecy was not fulfilled, and her true character appears to have been that of a woman of strong purpose and much spirit, well able to bear either good or evil fortune.

The massacre of Glencoe in 1692 has left an indelible stain on the memory of William of Orange and the Master of Stair, his principal adviser in the affairs of the Scottish highlands. The commission reluctantly granted in 1695 to avoid a parliamentary inquiry directly implicated the master by finding ‘that it appears to have been known at London, and particularly to the Master of Stair, in the month of January 1692, that Glencoe had taken the oath of allegiance, though after the day prefixed, and that there was nothing in the king's instructions to warrant the committing of the foresaid slaughter, even as to the thing itself, and far less as to the manner of it.’ His own letters contain damning proof of the merciless spirit with which he regarded the Macdonalds. The only extenuating circumstances which can be pleaded on his behalf are that he was personally ignorant of the peculiar treachery which accompanied the execution of the massacre, and that the feelings with which he regarded the Celtic clans were in part due to the recollection of the conduct of the highland host in the western shires, and the view which a law-abiding lowlander of those days took of their freebooting habits. Stair himself is not mentioned in the report of the commission, and the only charge that bears directly against him is that he was a member of the privy council which advised that Glencoe's oath should not be taken after the time fixed for its reception had passed. But some share of the odium which attached to his son could not fail to be reflected, and the opportunity was too good a one to be lost by his bitter opponents, who renewed their charges against the president for his judicial conduct. In the parliament of 1693 the first public attack was made upon him by a disappointed suitor, who brought in a bill complaining of injustice done to him in a suit before the court. It was remitted by a narrow majority to a committee, which after full inquiry exculpated Stair. Two retrospective bills were also introduced, one declaring that no peer should enjoy the office of lord of session, and the other that the crown might appoint one of the lords for a time president, any law or custom to the contrary notwithstanding. These bills were so evidently aimed at Stair that he printed an information, addressed to the commission and parliament, which contained a convincing argument against their passage as unconstitutional in respect of their interfering with the independence of the judges who hold office for life under the Claim of Right as contrary to the act of institution of the court, and as an infringement under the pretence of being an enlargement of the royal prerogative. His argument succeeded, and neither of the bills became law. Other charges made against him, of using undue influence in obtaining the nomination of judges subservient to him, and favouring his sons, three of whom were advocates, had no foundation, though his defence of the latter charge—‘When my sons came to the house, I did most strictly prohibit them to solicit me in any case, which they did exactly observe’—is a proof of the prevalence of an evil custom. His zeal for the administration of justice was shown by a series of acts of sederunt of the court, passed during his presidency, to correct this as well as other abuses, and by the report, issued shortly after his death, of a parliamentary commission on which he served, appointed ‘to take a full and exact tryall of