Ere the ten years, however, had elapsed, his necessities compelled him to sell, for a mess of pottage, even this small compensation for his birthright; and, at the close of those ten years, I find him addressing the following affecting memorial to the last of the royal Stuarts that filled the throne of her ancestors, the good Queen Anne,-Belisarius never begged his obol with more dignity 66 : "Since the beginning of our little family, my forefathers and I have constantly been in the interest of the royal family, have served our kings in prosperity, and followed their fortunes in adversity, nor have we ever thought of making any other estate but their favour. On the other side, they were ever so kind, gracious, and bountiful to us, that, either with royal donatives or good employments, they kept us in condition, though with a small estate, to live up with any of our rank they had been pleased to advance us to. My father waited on your royal uncle in all his misfortunes, and died the year of his happy restoration, just when in view of reaping the fruits of all his labours; but his Majesty was so gracious as to provide for his widow and children, and settled one thousand pounds a-year on her and the longest liver of her two sons, which I enjoyed until the Revolution. I do not complain at its being stopped all the reign of King William, since, by following an interest which in gratitude I thought I was bound to do, I put myself out of capacity of having any favour from him; but, since your Majesty's happy accession to the Crown, all your servants will do me the justice to let you know I never failed in going along with them in everything was judged for your interest. I have likewise tasted of your royal bounty, but now, my two sons being men, and their employment bearing no proportion to their expense, and having two daughters unprovided for, makes my circumstances very hard; which obliges me to beg of your Majesty that you will be pleased to continue this pension I have for life, or any part of it your goodness will be pleased to bestow; that I may pay my debts, provide for my children, and taste in my old age a little ease and quiet; which will oblige me more, if possible, so long as I live, to pray for your long life and prosperity. "BALCARRES." -I know not what success attended his suit. He was appointed a Privy Councillor by Queen Anne,* and in 1705 was talked of as Justice-General,† but he held no public office subsequently to the Revolution. William Earl of Crawford had in the mean while died, in 1698, leaving a large family, of whom the eldest son, John, succeeded him as nineteenth Earl of Crawford. "He hath neither genius nor talents for business," says Macky; yet he had a seat in the Privy Council, and a curious letter by him yet extant seems to imply a taste for genealogy and antiquities.§ As a soldier he rose high in the army, and died a Colonel of the Horse Guards and a Lieutenant-General, in 1713, leaving one son, Earl John, surnamed the Gallant Earl of Crawford, and two daughters, Lady Catherine Wemyss and Lady Mary Campbell, wife of Dugald Campbell of Glensaddell, and ancestress of the Campbells of Newfield, heirs of line of the family. John Viscount Garnock had died four years earlier, in 1709,|| leaving an eldest son, Patrick, the second Viscount,¶ and four others, who all died without issue, and also a daughter, Margaret Crawford, wife of MacNeal of Ugadale, in Argyleshire, a remarkable woman, whose memory and virtues are still recorded traditionally in the district.** Scotland, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, was politically divided between the Whigs, Jacobites, and Country party-which professed indifference as to the succession to the Crown after Queen Anne's decease, provided the independence and interests of their country were secured. The next heirs were * He was a Privy Councillor in April, 1705. Jerviswood Correspondence, p. 74. + Ibid., p. 131. Memoirs, p. 249. § In the Errol Charter-room. For a minute description by William Dobie, Esq., of Grangevale, of the Garnock or Crawford gallery and pulpit in the kirk of Kilbirnie, the former of oak, the latter of Norway pine, erected by John Viscount Garnock, and richly decorated with carvings of foliage, coats of arms, mottoes, and other devices, see the Scottish Journal, tom. ii. pp. 33 sqq., 51 sqq., 68 sqq. For Viscount Patrick and his posterity, see Section II. of Chapter XVII. of these Lives. ** Many of her letters have proved of signal service as evidence in the Crawford Peerage claim, through the kindness of her present representative, the Laird of Ugadale. VOL. II. the Prince of Wales and the Elector of Hanover, the nearest Protestant relation of Queen Anne. The Jacobites, believing that the Queen was favourable to her brother's claims, were willing to submit to her for the present and "bide their time." The union of the sister kingdoms took place in 1707, a measure of which the experience of a century has proved the wisdom, though nothing could be bitterer than the opposition offered against it at the time from every quarter of the country. It was long indeed before the advantages that accrued from this treaty to both kingdoms were felt and acknowledged. Earl James, though his father-like his kinsmen Crawford and Garnock-had approved of and supported the measure, could never, to his death, think or speak of it without indignation.* * In a poetical epistle to his wife, written forty-four years after the Union, and in which he represents himself sitting "As whilom miserable Jews Upon Euphrates' banks," vainly lamenting Zion lost, this feeling bursts out in a few rough and nervous lines of indignation at the Squadrone "Surely condemned in everlasting flames To howl their penitence and country's praise !" and lamentation over his country, "Bound and delivered to her worst of foes By traitor sons, And ravished under wedlock's sacred name !" "The song," he proceeds (alluding to the well-known scoff of Findlater), -It is yet remembered, I may add-with reference to the epithet "sold," and the suspicions entertained that the Union had been carried by bribery, that when A question of precedency, which had long been debated between the Earls of Crawford and Sutherland, was revived and discussed Lindsay of Glenquiech, a gentleman of Angus, was asked at a banquet by one of the suspected betrayers whether he would have any English cheese, his feelings broke forth in the bitter retort, "Had every person here present liked English gold as ill as I like English cheese, there would have been more honest men among us!" And a similar feeling to that which animated Lord Balcarres-the result of the depressing influence that for a long time weighed down the spirit of Scotlandinspired the following touching lines, printed by Hogg in his 'Jacobite Relics:'"Shall thy name, O my country! no longer be heard, Once the boast of the hero, the theme of the bard? Alas! how the days of thy greatness are gone, For the name of proud England is echoed alone! What a pang to my heart, how my soul is on flame, To hear that vain rival in arrogance claim, As the meed of her sons, what thy children have won, And their deeds pass for deeds which the English have done! I sooner would see thee, my dear native land, As barren, as bare as the rocks on thy strand, after Grief and Wisdom had left -I know not who wrote them, but in after years their shadow on his brow-the poet would, I think, have cancelled, or at least modified them; he would have rejoiced rather, if now alive, in the thought that the Scottish and English nations have become One, even in name-each doing justice to the other, and both uniting in the furtherance of those great designs which Providence has intrusted to the execution of Imperial Britain; while in that union of interests and affections, once so unlikely to have been accomplished, he might have recognized a pledge, a type of that Universal Union-Man's cherished expectation since Abraham's heart first leapt at its annunciation on the willowy banks of the Euphrates that Universal Union of nations, in the bonds and obedience of Christianity, to which the step of Providence is visibly leading us, and to which the sublime words of De Lamartine-only partially as yet applicable-refer in their full significance:— "L'Esprit des Temps rejoint ce que la mer sépare, Le titre de famille est écrit en tout lieu; L'homme n'est plus Français, Anglais, Romain, Barbare, Il est concitoyen de l'Empire de Dieu ! Les murs des nations s'écroulent en poussière, some needy dependants; but that they themselves, men of distinguished rank, fortune, and honour, and who had shrunk from no sacrifice of ease or fortune in maintaining their principles, should have been influenced by the sordid motives imputed to them, always appeared to me utterly incredible." Preface to the Jerviswood Correspondence, &c. among the subordinate details of the treaty of union. It was settled, or rather re-affirmed, after long and learned investigations, in favour of the Earls of Crawford, who rank accordingly as the premier Scottish Earls on the Union Roll.* Colin Master of Balcarres died, as I have already mentioned, in 1708. Of Alexander, the second son, afterwards Earl of Balcarres, I shall speak more hereafter. James, his only surviving brother, preferring the naval to the military service, went to sea at the age of thirteen. "He got the Queen's letter," says he of himself," on board the Ipswich, commanded by Captain Robert Kirktoun, who owed his preferment to Sir George Rook, the ablest marine admiral of his time; and he appeared to have deserved his power by many brave and successful actions, which acquired him a great fortune, which he generously and genteelly used. He had been riotous in his youth, but was become sober, studious, and regular; although without education, his excellent judgment and memory acquired him an universal knowledge in what was most valuable among men; his zeal for liberty, his virtue and capacity, and the beauty of his manners, made him loved and esteemed by all who had merit. James was so happy as to get into favour with this excellent man, who treated him as a kind father during the five years he passed with him; the last * If date of creation were the sole criterion (as I think, abstractly, it ought to be), there is no doubt but that the Earldom of Marr would take precedence of all other existing British Earldoms, and that of Sutherland would, in Scotland, assume the second place. But precedence did not depend in Scotland exclusively on the date of creation; the will of the sovereign and other collateral circumstances controlled it. For example,-the Earls of Argyle, of later creation by sixty years, took precedence of those of Crawford, in virtue of the hereditary High-Justiciarship of Scotland, bestowed upon the family in the sixteenth century. The Earls of Angus similarly had received a grant of perpetual precedency over all other Earls in Scotland, and they were accordingly ranked first, before those of Argyle, though much more recent than either Sutherland or Marr. Crawford can assert no such grant, nor were there any great public offices hereditary in the family such as that possessed by Argyle, and yet, whether through the non-appearance of the Earls of Sutherland in parliament previously to the year 1477, whether through the honours having lapsed to female heirs, or through whatever cause, it was a fact that the Earldoms of Sutherland and Marr had lost the precedence, and that Crawford possessed it; and on this immemorial usage and prescription the family lawyers rested their defence on the two great occasions when the question was mooted,-in 1606, when the "Ranking of the Nobility" took place at the command of James I., with a view to settle the feuds then existing regarding precedence, and now at the Union, in 1707; at both which times the sentence was given in favour of the Earl of Crawford. |