Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/48

 house. On 1 Sept. 1813 he was promoted to the charge of Urquhart, Caithness, in the gift of Duncan George Forbes of Culloden. The parish was so well ordered by his predecessor, Charles Caldwell, that he felt he could safely leave it and travel as a missionary in the neighbourhood. From 1813 to 1818 he wandered up and down Ross and Caithness, where most of the ministers performed their duties very perfunctorily and resented his intrusion. On 30 May 1818 a declaration was issued by the general assembly which, without mentioning his name, condemned his practices. In 1822 and 1824 he conducted many services in the island of St. Kilda. Afterwards, by preaching in various parts of Scotland, he raised enough money to keep a minister there, and introduced him to the islanders in 1830. Part of 1823 he passed in London, having been asked to preach for the London Missionary Society. He met Samuel Wilberforce, and in his diary spoke of his visit as a ‘season of religious dissipation.’ In 1824, at the request of Robert Daly [q.v.], rector of Powerscourt and afterwards bishop of Cashel, he visited Ireland, managing to adapt his Gaelic sufficiently for the Irish peasants to understand him. He often went to Edinburgh and Glasgow for the communions, but his influence was greatest in the north. He was created D.D. in 1842 by the university of New York. In the disruption he joined the secession party, and was declared no longer a minister of the kirk on 24 May 1843. Very many northern ministers followed his example. He died at Urquhart, 16 April 1849. His portrait is in Kay's ‘Edinburgh Portraits.’ He married, first, in 1806 Georgina Ross of Gladfield, who died 18 Aug. 1814; secondly, 11 May 1818, Janet, eldest daughter of Kenneth Mackenzie of Millbank. He had three children by his first wife, and seven by his second, one of whom, Duncan George Forbes, is separately noticed. Macdonald's diary of his visits to St. Kilda was published, Edinburgh, 1830, with sermons preached before the Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He wrote verses in Gaelic, and published a volume of them in 1848. In 1837 he corrected an edition in Gaelic of ‘Human Nature in its Fourfold Estate,’ by Thomas Boston the elder [q. v.]  MACDONALD, JOHN (d. 1850), adjutant-general at the horse guards, a connection of Flora Macdonald [q. v.], the Jacobite heroine, entered the army 15 April 1795, as ensign 89th foot, and. became lieutenant the regiment 2 Feb. 1796, and captain 22 Oct. 1H03. He was made a major-unattached 28 Feb. 1805, lieutenant-colonel on half-pay of the 1st garrison battalion 17 March 1808, brevet colonel 4 June 1814, major-general 1825, and lieutenant-general 1838. He served with the 89th in the Irish rebellion in 1798, and afterwards in Minorca, Heasina, and at the blockade of Malts and capture of Valetta in 1799-1800, and throughout the campaign in Egypt in 1801. His qualifications for the staff were early recognised, and in the strict and temper-trying-school of Lord Cathcatt [see ] he acquired the tact and accuracy that made him one of the best military secretaries of his day. He was brigade-major to Lord Cathcart in the home district in 1805, and military secretary when Cathcart was in command of the king's German legion as a separate army, in Swedish Pomerania (isle of Rugen), in 1806-7 ; and subsequently during the expedition to Copenhagenin in 1807. He was deputy adjutant-general to Sir John Hope [see, fourth ] at Wolcheren ; and held the same post with Lieutenant-general Thomas Graham [see ] at Codii and at the battle of Barossa (gold medal). He was military secretary to his intimate friend Sir John Hope (Lord Hopetoun) when commander-in-chief at Ireland in 1812, embarked with him at Cork for the Peninsula, and was his assistant: adjutant-general with the left wing of Wellington's army in the South of France during the campaigns of 1813-14, including the battles on the Nive, 9-13 Nov. 1813. and the against Bayonne in 1814. When Hope was wounded and taken prisoner by the French sortie of 14 Aprd 1814. Macdonald obtained leave to enter Bayonne to nurse his wounded friend.

Macdonald (whose name is spelled M'Donald in earlier army lists) was deputy adjutant-general at the horse guards under the Dukes of York and Wellington from 1820 to 1830. He was appointed adjutant-general 27 July 1830, and held the post until his death. 'He did not exercise power— and at one time it was almost unlimited over the army — as a mere machine. . . His official demeanour was courteous and kind, and his sincerity and candour were seldom found to border on abruptness or roughness, and never on rudeness or insult' (Nav. and Mil. Gazette, 30 March 1850, p. 200). Macdonald was an excellent minute 