Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/384

 , had great influence in the surrounding district, but it was taken after much hesitation. ‘I thought,’ he says, ‘I weighed, and I weighed again. If there was any enthusiasm in it, it was of the coldest kind; and there was as little remorse when the affair miscarried as there was eagerness at the beginning.’ He raised a regiment of well-appointed cavalry, numbering about a hundred, and composed chiefly of Aberdeenshire gentlemen and their tenants. When they were drawn up ready to set out, he moved to the front, lifted his hat, and said, ‘O Lord, Thou knowest that our cause is just;’ then added the signal, ‘March, gentlemen.’ He arrived at Edinburgh 8 Oct. 1745, a few days after the victory at Prestonpans. After the disaster at Culloden he remained in hiding near Pitsligo, protected by the general regard in which he was held in the district. His principal place of concealment was a cave constructed in the arch of a bridge at a remote spot in the moors of Pitsligo. He adopted the disguise of a mendicant, and on one occasion actually received a small coin from one of the soldiers sent in search of him. Occasionally he took refuge in the neighbouring bogs. His estates were seized in 1748, but in the act of attainder he was named Lord Pitsligo, a misnomer for Lord Forbes of Pitsligo. On this account he endeavoured to obtain a reversal of the attainder, but though the court of session gave judgment in his favour 10 Nov. 1749, this decision was reversed on appeal to the House of Lords 1 Feb. 1750. After this the search for him relaxed, and he resided for the most part with his son at Auchiries, under the name of Mr. Brown. In March 1756 a party was sent to search for him, but he was hid in a small recess behind a wainscot, which was concealed by a bed in which a lady slept. He died 21 Dec. 1762. He was twice married: first, to Rebecca, daughter of John Norton, merchant, London, by whom he had one son, John, master of Pitsligo; and secondly, to Elizabeth Allen, who had been companion to his first wife, but by this marriage there was no issue. He wrote ‘Thoughts concerning Man's Condition’ in 1732, and it was published in 1763, and again in 1835, with memoir by his kinsman Lord Medwyn.



FORBES, ALEXANDER PENROSE (1817–1875), bishop of Brechin, second son of, lord Medwyn [q. v.], by his wife Louisa, daughter of Sir Alexander Cumming Gordon, bart., of Altyre, Elgin, was born at Edinburgh 6 June 1817. He was sent to the Edinburgh Academy, and to a school kept by Canon Dale at Beckenham, Kent. In 1833 he matriculated at Glasgow University. After studying for one session there he obtained a nomination to Haileybury, where he took prizes and medals for classics, mathematics, political economy, law, history, Arabic, and Sanskrit, showing special aptitude for oriental languages. In September 1836 Forbes sailed for Madras, and a year after his arrival was appointed assistant to the collector and magistrate of Rajahmundry. In 1839 he was acting head assistant to the Sudder and Foujdarry Adawlut, when his health broke down. After nine months' leave of absence at the Cape of Good Hope, he returned to India and resumed his post at Rajahmundry but was again attacked by fever, and sent back to England for two years. He never returned to India, though he had no idea of throwing up his appointment when he matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, 23 May 1840. During his residence, however, he came strongly under the influence of the prevailing ‘Oxford movement,’ and determined to take orders. As an undergraduate he won the Boden Sanskrit scholarship. He took the B.A. degree 29 Feb. 1844, and resigned his Indian appointment 5 June following. He proceeded M.A. 19 Nov. 1846, and received the honorary D.C.L. on his appointment as bishop of Brechin in May 1848. He was ordained at Trinity 1844, and was curate at Aston Rowant, a village near Oxford, till the following January, when he transferred his services to St. Thomas's, Oxford. A year later Forbes became incumbent of Stonehaven, Kincardine, having expressed to Moir, bishop of Brechin, his wish to serve the Scotch episcopal church. He remained there till May 1847, when, on the nomination of Dr. Pusey, who had become his intimate friend at Oxford, he was appointed to the vicarage of St. Saviour's, Leeds, a church built for the purpose of giving practical illustration to ‘Tractarian’ doctrine. In the following August Moir, bishop of Brechin, died. Mr. Gladstone, in conversation with Bishop Wilberforce, suggested that Forbes might fit the post. His name was presented to the electors at the diocesan synod, and he was elected by a large majority over the Rev. W. Henderson. The headquarters of the bishopric he changed from Brechin to Dundee, becoming vicar of St. Paul's, Dundee, and prosecuting parochial together with episcopal duties. On 5 Aug. 1857, at a meeting of the diocesan synod at Brechin, Forbes delivered his primary charge, which took the form of a manifesto on the Eucharist,