Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series - 1819.djvu/163

Rh personal courage, and better calculated to manage an intrigue of state, than to controul the tribes of hostile mountaineers; yet the numbers of his clan, and the spirit of the gallant gentlemen by whom it was led, might, it was supposed, atone for the personal deficiences of their chief; and as the Campbells had already severely humbled several of the neighbouring tribes, it was supposed these would not readily again provoke an encounter with a body so powerful.

Thus having at their own command the whole west and south of Scotland, indisputably the richest part of the kingdom; Fife-shire being in a peculiar manner their own, and possessing many and powerful friends even north of the Forth and Tay, the Scottish Convention of Estates saw no danger sufficient to induce them to alter the line of policy they had adopted, or to recall from the assistance of heir brethren of the English Parliament that auxiliary army of twenty thousand men, by means of which