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Hume  five weeks in the highlands to no purpose,' Argyll crossed the Leven with a view, it was supposed, of marching to Glasgow. Polwarth did his utmost to urge expedition, but ultimately discovered that Argyll had really no definite plan in view. After Argyll's ignominious `flight towards his own country,' Polwarth, with Sir John Cochrane and others, crossed the Clyde in a boat, were joined by about a hundred of their followers, and successfully resisted until nightfall a sustained attack made upon them by the enemy at Muir Dykes. During the night they marched off unperceived, and before the morning came to a safe hiding-place, where they remained all day. On learning late the next night that Argyll was taken, they resolved to separate. On 26 Jan. 1685 Polwarth had been prosecuted for complicity in the Rye House plot, and, failing to appear, had been denounced a rebel and put to the horn (, iv. 227). A reward was now on 21 June offered for the apprehension of him and others (ib. p. 312). At first he found refuge in the house of the laird of Langshaw, Ayrshire, but afterwards Eleonore Dunbar, aunt to the Earl of Eglinton, invited him to Kilwinning, where she sheltered him for several weeks. A report of his death was spread to lull suspicion, and he escaped from the west coast of Scotland to Ireland, whence he sailed to Bordeaux, and thence journeyed by Geneva to Utrecht. Here he was joined by his wife and children, and lived under the name of Dr. Wallace, professing to be a Scotch surgeon. His estate had been forfeited to the Earl of Seaford in 1686 (Marchmont Papers, iii. 67), and he was reduced to severe straits. He was unable to keep a servant, and pawned portions of the family plate in order to meet current expenses. From Utrecht he on 15 June 1688 addressed, through Sir William Denholm, of West Shiel, a long letter to the presbyterian ministers of Scotland, warning them against `the proposal to petition King James for a toleration which would have included the papists' (ib. pp. 73-98).

In this letter Polwarth eulogised William, prince of Orange. By that date he had formed with his friends an informal privy council, with whom the prince was in consultation, regarding his expedition to England. In November 1688 he came over from Holland with the prince, and accompanied him in the march to London (`Diary of the March from Exeter to London,' ib. pp. 99-102). That the deliberations of the leading Scotsmen in London regarding what should be done in the crisis lasted three days is, according to Macaulay, attributable to the fact 'that Sir Patrick Hume was one of the speakers.' But Macaulay's hypothesis is unjustifiable. There is every reason to suppose that Polwarth expedited rather than hindered a satisfactory settlement. There can be little doubt at least that his influence with the presbyterians helped greatly to facilitate arrangements. At the Convention parliament which met at Edinburgh 14 March 1689 he took his seat as member for Berwickshire. By act of parliament in July of the following year the act of forfeiture against him was formally rescinded. Soon afterwards he became a member of the new privy council, and on 20 Dec. of the same year he was, in recognition of his services in promoting the establishment of William on the throne, created a peer of Scotland by the title of Lord Polwarth, the king granting him in addition to his armorial bearings `an orange proper ensigned, with an imperial crown to be placed in a surtout in his coat of arms in all time coming, as a lasting mark of his majesty's royal favour to the family of Polwarth and in commemoration of his lordship's great affection to his majesty.' Although a steadfast and sincere supporter of William III, Polwarth's earlier experiences led him to jealously guard against any seeming encroachments of royalty on the prerogatives of the parliament. He was a member of the political association known as the Club, one of whose main aims was to carefully protect the rights of parliament. He took a specially prominent part in the debates on the nomination of judges, boldly expressing the opinion that the appointment to such offices ought to be vested, not in the king, but in parliament. When the Cameronian regiment was embodied in 1689, certain stipulations of the men were submitted to Polwarth, who succeeded in persuading them to content themselves with adopting a declaration expressing in general terms a determination to `resist popery, prelacy, and arbitrary powers, and to recover and establish the work of the reformation in Scotland.' In October 1692 Polwarth was appointed sheriff-principal of Berwickshire, and in November of the following year one of the four extraordinary lords of the court of session. On 2 May 1696 he was promoted to the highest office in Scotland, that of lord chancellor, and in that capacity earned in the same year unenviable fame by giving his casting vote for the execution of the young student, Thomas Aikenhead [q.v.], for promulgating what were regarded as blasphemous opinions. In April of the following year he was created Earl of Marchmont. In 1698 he was appointed lord high commissioner to the parliament which met in July of that year. He was also in