Volume III Part 30 (1/2)

[Footnote 281: Creichton's Memoirs.]

[Footnote 282: Mackay's Memoirs.]

[Footnote 283: Memoirs of the Lindsays.]

[Footnote 284: About the early relation between William and Dundee, some Jacobite, many years after they were both dead, invented a story which by successive embellishments was at last improved into a romance which it seems strange that even a child should believe to be true. The last edition runs thus. William's horse was killed under him at Seneff, and his life was in imminent danger. Dundee, then Captain Graham, mounted His Highness again. William promised to reward this service with promotion but broke his word and gave to another the commission which Graham had been led to expect. The injured hero went to Loo. There he met his successful compet.i.tor, and gave him a box on the ear. The punishment for striking in the palace was the loss of the offending right hand; but this punishment the Prince of Orange ungraciously remitted. ”You,” he said, ”saved my life; I spare your right hand: and now we are quits.”]

Those who down to our own time, have repeated this nonsense seem to have thought, first, that the Act of Henry the Eighth ”for punishment of murder and malicious bloodshed within the King's Court” (Stat 33 Hen.

VIII. c. 2.) was law in Guelders; and, secondly, that, in 1674, William was a King, and his house a King's Court. They were also not aware that he did not purchase Loo till long after Dundee had left the Netherlands.

See Harris's Description of Loo, 1699.]

This legend, of which I have not been able to discover the slightest trace in the voluminous Jacobite literature of William's reign, seems to have originated about a quarter of a century after Dundee's death, and to have attained its full absurdity in another quarter of a century.]

[Footnote 285: Memoirs of the Lindsays.]

[Footnote 286: Ibid.]

[Footnote 287: Burnet, ii. 22.; Memoirs of the Lindsays.]

[Footnote 288: Balcarras's Memoirs.]

[Footnote 289: Act. Parl. Scot., Mar. 14. 1689; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690; An Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, fol. Lond. 1689.]

[Footnote 290: Balcarras's narrative exhibits both Hamilton and Athol in a most unfavourable light. See also the Life of James, ii. 338, 339.]

[Footnote 291: Act. Parl. Scot., March 14. 1688/9; Balcarras's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution in Scotland; Life of James, ii. 342.]

[Footnote 292: Balcarras's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690.]

[Footnote 293: Act. Parl. Scot., March 14. and 15. 1689; Balcarras's Memoirs; London Gazette, March 25.; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690; Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, 1689.]

[Footnote 294: See Cleland's Poems, and the commendatory poems contained in the same volume, Edinburgh, 1697. It has been repeatedly a.s.serted that this William Cleland was the father of William Cleland, the Commissioner of Taxes, who was well known twenty year later in the literary society of London, who rendered some not very reputable services to Pope, and whose son John was the author of an infamous book but too widely celebrated. This is an entire mistake. William Cleland, who fought at Bothwell Bridge, was not twenty-eight when he was killed in August, 1689; and William Cleland, the Commissioner of Taxes, died at sixty-seven in September, 1741. The former therefore cannot have been the father of the latter. See the Exact Narrative of the Battle of Dunkeld; the Gentleman's Magazine for 1740; and Warburton's note on the Letter to the Publisher of the Dunciad, a letter signed W. Cleland, but really written by Pope. In a paper drawn up by Sir Robert Hamilton, the oracle of the extreme Covenanters, and a bloodthirsty ruffian, Cleland is mentioned as having been once leagued with those fanatics, but afterwards a great opposer of their testimony. Cleland probably did not agree with Hamilton in thinking it a sacred duty to cut the throats of prisoners of war who had been received to quarter. See Hamilton's Letter to the Societies, Dec 7. 1685.]

[Footnote 295: Balcarras's Memoirs.]

[Footnote 296: Balcarras's Memoirs. But the fullest account of these proceedings is furnished by some ma.n.u.script notes which are in the library of the Faculty of Advocates. Balcarras's dates are not quite exact. He probably trusted to his memory for them. I have corrected them from the Parliamentary Records.]

[Footnote 297: Act. Parl. Scot., Mar. 16. 1688/9; Balcarras's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690; Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, 1689; London Gaz., Mar. 25.

1689; Life of James, ii. 342. Burnet blunders strangely about these transactions.]

[Footnote 298: Balcarras's Memoirs; MS. in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates.]

[Footnote 299: Act. Parl. Scot., Mar. 19. 1688/9; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690.]

[Footnote 300: Balcarras.]

[Footnote 301: Ibid.]

[Footnote 302: Act. Parl. Scot.; History of the late Revolution, 1690; Memoirs of North Britain, 1715.]

[Footnote 303: Balcarras.]