Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

property, and cast upon the world in a worse position than when he first set foot in America, His native resolution at this juncture stood him in splendid stead. He refused to be crushed, and resolved again to visit Britain, and lay his case before the Lords of Trade. When he was nearing our shores he was captured in the Bristol Channel by a French privateer. An English frigate coming in sight, the Frenchman abandoned his prize, but not until he had plundered her of everything he could carry away. Amongst the other things stolen were Livingston's records and papers. This threw a tremendous difficulty in the way of establishing his complaints. After, however, a prolonged examination, in 1705 Livingston succeeded in getting all his claims acknowledged, and an order for reinstatement in his estates. Again he beguiled the tedium of waiting on the law by pressing on the Government the necessity of attacking Canada. When he returned to America his position was too strong to be further resisted, and he soon found himself in the midst of his manor exercising a princely hospitality. In 1715 he became a member of the Colonial Assembly, and four years later he was elevated to the distinguished position of Speaker to that body. He filled the chair of the House with great credit to himself and much advantage to the colony till the infirmities of increasing years compelled him, in 1725, to tender his resignation. He had now become, as it were, a part of the State, and on his vacating the Speakership the Assembly paid to his character and labours a touching tribute. more to him than life itself. really to him inability to live. the Speakership, his life, so full of startling incident and adventure, came to a quiet close. His wife bore him

But the duties of life were

Inability to work meant Two years after resigning

nine children, and he named his eldest son John after his own Covenanting father, who had played by the Garrel, chased butterflies on the High Craigends, and bird nested in the Barrwood.

CHAPTER V.

LADY LIVINGSTON'S EPITAPH; VISCOUNT DUNDEE-His Life a Biographical Problem-His Avariciousness-From Cornet to Peer-Birth-College Life-In the Army of William-Joins Royalists-Sent to Scotland-Drumclog--John King's Invita tion-Dundee's Marriage--Jean Cochrane's Beauty and Con. stancy-The Cases of John Brown and Andrew HislopAttends the Convention-Rallies the Clans-Killiecrankie.

IN the churchyard of Kilsyth there is a mural tablet bearing the following inscription :

"Beneath this stone are deposited the remains of Jean Cochrane, Viscountess of Dundee, wife of the Hon. William Livingston of Kilsyth, and their infant son. Their deaths were caused by the falling in of the roof, composed of turf, of a house in Holland. Mr. Livingston was with difficulty extricated. The lady, her child, and nurse were killed. This occurred in the month of October, 1695. In 1795 the vault over which the church at that time stood having been accidentally opened, the bodies of Lady Dundee and her son, which had been embalmed and sent from Holland, were found in a remarkable state of preservation. After being for some time exposed to view, the vault was closed. The lady was the daughter of William, Lord Cochrane, who predeceased his father, William, first Earl of Dundonald. She married first John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount of Dundee, who was killed at the battle of Killiecrankie,

1689; and, secondly, the Honourable William Livingston, who succeeded his brother as third Viscount of Kilsyth in 1706. Lord Kilsyth married secondly, Barbara, daughter of Macdougall of Makerston, but dying under attainder at Rome in 1733, without surviving issue, the whole family became extinct."

Such is the epitaph, and every line of it is suggestive. What a story it contains of plottings and conspiracies, of banishments and providential visitations, of bereavements and broken affections, of political revolution and tumult, of love and war, of estrangement and strife, and of the extinction of a noble and lordly line. How suggestive are its brief clauses to the mind of the Scottish patriot. It is a witness, a reminder, of "those ages of darkness and blood, when the minister's home was the mountain and wood."

Although over two hundred years have elapsed since the death of Dundee, and although every event in his career has been fully expiscated, his life must still be regarded as an unsolved biographical exercise and problem. And it is so, not because there is anything specially intricate or peculiarly difficult of apprehension in the life itself, but it has invariably been approached and estimated in the interests of a bitter, envenomed, and uncompromising partisanship. Dundee's biographers have either been his sworn friends or his open foes. And so far as the literary portrait is concerned, the results are what might have been expected. The one class have loaded his memory with execration, the other have spoken of him in the language of the loftiest panegyric. The one have represented him as almost a fiend in human form— a man from whose body the leaden bullets of the Covenanters rebounded harmless; the other have placed him

on the pedestal of the idol, and poured out before his shrine those oblations only rendered to the demi-gods. The interest excited by his name is still extraordinary. To one class of men to this hour he is the "Bloody Claver'se," to another he is still "Bonnie Dundee."

This extraordinary partisanship is not without its excuse, for surely there never was human character that presented a finer field for the operations of the special pleader than that of Claverhouse. If it is wanted to brand his memory, there is lying ready to hand the cases of Andrew Hislop and John Brown, "The Christian Carrier." If it is wanted to prove him an incompetent general, there is the defeat at Drumclog. And if evidence is wanting of his tyranny, there is his whole grinding policy towards the men of the West. On the other hand, if it is wanted to champion his character there is his life of singular moral purity, and his incorruptible integrity of purpose.

If it

is desired to vindicate his humanity and clemency, there are the pardons he granted to all those poor wretches lying in Dundee prison under sentence of death for petty offences. Again, if it is desired to prove his statesmanship and generalship, there are the rallying of the clans, and the battle of Killiecrankie.

This debating-society method of looking at the character of Dundee is not the right one. This is a case where a conjunct view is imperatively called for, and where such a view has been delayed to the detriment of the truth. Character is never found in its purely elemental forms. There is invariably a mingling of purer and baser ingredients, and if we look on Claverhouse without prejudice, he is very far indeed from being any exception to this rule. He is neither so black as his enemies have painted him, nor so great as such panegyrists as Scott, Aytoun, and Napier would lead us to sup

« AnteriorContinuar »