Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 | Page 7

land in the Lothians, there expecting to be joined by friends on the borders and from England. In the west, a rising of the south-country Scots, under the command of Lord Kenmure, was projected; whilst in Northumberland the English Jacobites, headed by Mr. Forster, with a commission of General from Lord Mar, and aided by the Earl of Derwentwater, was to give the signal and incentive to the adherents of James in the sister Kingdom, as well as to co-operate with the Scottish forces under the commands of Brigadier Mackintosh and Viscount Kenmure. An attack upon Edinburgh was also concerted.
Such is the outline of a plan of an insurrection to the effect of which the Earl of Mar declared the Jacobites had been looking for six and twenty years. How immature it was in its conception--how deficient in energy and union was its execution--how unworthy was its chief instrument--how fatal to the good and great were its results--and, by a singular fortune, how those who least merited their safety escaped, whilst the gallant and honest champions of the cause suffered, will be fully detailed in the following pages. Let it be remembered that the task of compiling these Memoirs has been undertaken with no party spirit, nor with any wish to detract from the deep obligations which we owe to those who preserved us from inroads on our constitution, and oppression in our religious opinions. It has been, however, begun with a sincere wish to do justice to the disinterested and the good; and, as the task has proceeded, and increased information on the subject has been gained, it has been continued with a conviction that, whatever may be the nature or merits of the abstract principles on which it was undertaken, the Insurrection of 1715 forms an episode in the history of our country as creditable to many of the ill-fated actors in its tragic scenes, as any that have been detailed in the pages of that history.
LONDON, October 28, 1845.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Dalrymple.
[2] Rapin. Dissertation on the Origin and Government of England, vol. xiv. p. 423.
[3] See Introduction to the Memoirs of Cameron of Lochiel, p. 22.
[4] Lockhart, vol. i. p. 239.
[5] Lockhart, vol. i. p. 324.
[6] Reay, p. 187.

CONTENTS
TO
THE FIRST VOLUME.
PAGE JOHN ERSKINE, EARL OF MAR (with a Portrait) 1
JAMES RADCLIFFE, EARL OF DERWENTWATER (with a Portrait) 224
THE MASTER OF SINCLAIR 282
CAMERON OF LOCHIEL 313

MEMOIRS OF THE JACOBITES.

JOHN ERSKINE, EARL OF MAR.
"The title of Mar," observes Lord Hailes, "is one of the Earldoms whose origin is lost in its antiquity." It existed before our records, and before the era of general history: hence, the Earls of Mar claimed always to be called first in the Scottish Parliament in the roll of Earls, as having no rival in the antiquity of their honours.
From the time of Malcolm Canmore, in the year 1065, until the fourteenth century, the family of De Mar enjoyed this Earldom; but on the death of Thomas, the thirteenth Earl of Mar, in 1377, the direct male line of this race ended. The Earldom then devolved upon the female representatives of the house of De Mar; and thence, as in most similar instances in Scotland, it became the subject of contention, fraud, and violence.
Isabel, Countess of Mar and Garioch, the last of the De Mar family, was won in marriage by a singular and determined species of courtship, formerly common in Scotland; the influence of terror. The heiress of the castle of Kildrummie, and a widow, her first husband, Sir Malcolm Drummond, having died in 1403, her wealth and rank attracted the regards of Alexander Stewart, the natural son of Robert Earl of Buchan, of royal blood. Without waiting for the ordinary mode of persuasion to establish an interest in his favour, this wild, rapacious man appeared in the Highlands at the head of a band of plunderers, and planting himself before the castle of Kildrummie, stormed it, and effected a marriage between himself and the Countess of Mar. Alexander Stewart, in cooler moments, however, perceived the danger of this bold measure, and resolved to establish his right to the Countess and to her estates by another process. One morning, during the month of September 1404, he presented himself at the Castle gate of Kildrummie, and formally surrendered to the Countess the castle, its furniture, and the title-deeds kept within its chests; thus returning them to her to do with them as she pleased. The Countess, on the other hand, holding the keys in her hand, and declaring herself to be of "mature advice," chose the said Alexander for her husband, and gave him the castle, the Earldom of Mar, with all the other family estates in her possession. She afterwards conferred these gifts by a charter, signed and sealed in the open fields, in the presence