Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/54

 Edinburgh, and in 1638 published the last of his works issued in his lifetime, ‘A Pastorall Elegie’ on the death of Sir Anthony Alexander, son of his friend Alexander, earl of Stirling. In 1638, too, Drummond rebuilt his house at Hawthornden, and stayed with Scot of Scotstarvet while the work was in operation.

In the political turmoil that preceded the civil wars in Scotland Drummond played as small a part as possible. Although a conservative he resented the persecution of Lord Balmerino, who had openly protested against Charles I's ecclesiastical policy (Letter to Robert Kerr, Earl of Ancrum, 2 March 1635). He amused himself by privately distributing political squibs among his intimate friends, and there he handled all parties with equal severity. An appeal for peace addressed to king, priests, and people, entitled ‘Irene, or a Remonstrance for Concord, Amity and Love,’ had a wide circulation in manuscript in 1638. The rise of the covenanters in arms was a heavy blow, but the importunity of his neighbours, the Earl of Lothian of Newbattle Abbey and Porteous the parson of Lasswade, seems to have led him to sign the covenant, although he was no friend to the cause. Similarly he was compelled to contribute to the support of the army raised in 1639 to invade England, but in his manuscript tracts he earnestly dissuaded his countrymen from venturing on active hostilities (cf. The Magical Mirror, or a Declaration upon the Rising of the Noblemen, Barons, Gentlemen, Burgesses in Arms, 1 April 1639; Queries of State; The Idea; and Load Star). In ‘A Speech to the Noblemen,’ &c., dated 2 May 1639, he emphatically warned them that civil war could only end in a military dictatorship. In ‘Considerations to the Parliament,’ dated September 1639, he sarcastically recommended fifty-eight new laws, one of which was to allow the provost of Edinburgh to pray in the cathedral to the accompaniment of pistol-shots instead of the organ, and another to authorise schoolboys to expel their masters every seventh year and choose their own teachers. During the first outbreak (the first bishops' war) the Marquis of Douglas invited Drummond to stay with him, and took his advice about a projected publication of a family history. The Earl of Perth entreated the poet to visit him during the second outbreak in 1640, but Drummond declined to leave home in both instances, and was entrusted in the second war with some slight military duties, which he performed with great reluctance. In February 1639–40 he lost his friend Stirling, and among the Drummond papers are notes for a poem to his memory, which was to be entitled ‘Alphander,’ but there is no further trace of it. When Charles I came to Scotland at the end of the war in 1641, Drummond wrote a ‘Speech for Edinburgh to the King,’ in which he plainly declared himself opposed to the covenanters, and later in 1642, when Scotland was distracted by the conflicting appeals of Charles I and his parliament, Drummond circulated a tract entitled ‘Skiamachia,’ in which he defended the royalists for petitioning the privy council in the king's favour. He protested against the solemn league and covenant in ‘Remoras for the National League between Scotland and England’ in 1643. But he apparently signed the new covenant soon afterwards, and compounded with his conscience by composing severely sarcastic verses on the presbyterians and their English allies. The circulation of these pieces in manuscript was wide enough to give Drummond a bad reputation, and he was more than once summoned before ‘the circular tables’ (i.e. covenanting committees) to account for his conduct. He defended himself by elaborate arguments in favour of the liberty of opinion and the press, and the charges were not pressed. In 1643 Drummond helped to secure the election of an ex-bishop, James Fairly, to the vacant parish of Lasswade.

Drummond strongly sympathised with Montrose. On 28 Aug. 1645 Montrose—at the head of the royalist army—issued orders that Drummond was not to be molested by his men, and that the Hawthornden property was to be specially protected. Drummond wrote to Montrose offering to place his ‘Irene’ at his disposal, and Montrose replied by inviting Drummond to bring the paper to him at Bothwell. After Montrose's defeat, and just before his escape to Norway in 1646, he addressed (19 Aug.) a letter of thanks to Drummond for his ‘good affection’ and ‘all his friendly favours.’ In ‘Objections against the Scots answered’ (1646) Drummond supported a proposal to negotiate with Charles I. When in 1648 the Scots resolved to resort again to arms in the king's behalf, Drummond vehemently pleaded for the appointment of the royalist Duke of Hamilton as leader of the Scottish army, and wrote a ‘Vindication of the Hamiltons’ in reply to a pamphlet which affected to deprecate the appointment from a royalist point of view. The execution of the king is said to have hastened Drummond's death. The poetry he wrote in his late years chiefly consisted of sonnets on the death of friends, or religious verses. All indicated a settled gloom. In April 1649 he was revising his genealogy of