Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight
by John Willcock · English · Gutenberg #38604 · 469,928 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight
Author: John Willcock
Release date: January 18, 2012 [eBook #38604]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIR THOMAS URQUHART OF CROMARTIE, KNIGHT ***
Produced by Charlene Taylor, Hunter Monroe and the Online
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SIR THOMAS URQUHART
OF CROMARTIE
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS URQUHART.]
[Illustration]
SIR THOMAS
URQUHART
OF CROMARTIE
KNIGHT.
BY
JOHN WILLCOCK
M.A.B.D.
LERWICK.
1899
EDINBURGH & LONDON
OLIPHANT
ANDERSON & FERRIER
[Illustration: SIGNATURE OF SIR THOMAS URQUHART, SLIGHTLY ENLARGED.]
[_All Rights Reserved_]
PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH
TO
A. B. W.
WHOSE PRAISE, SO FREELY GIVEN,
IS THE AUTHOR'S MOST COVETED
REWARD.
PREFACE
Few persons who take an interest in general literature are wholly
unacquainted with the name of Sir Thomas Urquhart, as that of the
translator of a great French classic. Only the more erudite can tell how
the name of another literary man, Pierre Antoine Motteux, comes to be
associated with his in connexion with the translation in question, and
are aware that the Scottish knight is the author of original
compositions in such diverse departments as poetry, trigonometry,
genealogy, and biography, and that he played a prominent part in the
public life of his time.
It has been my object to bring together in the following volume all the
materials which are available for giving a vivid picture of the
personality of Sir Thomas Urquhart, and of the circumstances in which
his life was passed, as I think it would be a pity if his romantic,
fantastical figure were to pass into oblivion. The materials for his
life are fairly abundant, though they have to be sought for in many
out-of-the-way corners. The slight but fairly accurate sketch prefixed
to his _Works_ in the Maitland Club edition, and the carefully written
articles in Dr Irving's _Scottish Writers_, and the _Dictionary of
National Biography_, contain the only previous attempts which have been
made to give his history. The limits within which the authors of these
notices had to work, have, however, prevented their giving more than a
bare outline of his career. I have attempted, with what success it is
for my readers to say, to clothe the skeleton with sinews and flesh, and
to impart to the figure some measure of animation.
As I have had to do my work at a great distance from public libraries, I
have been obliged to enlist the services of friends, more fortunately
situated, in the task of looking up multitudinous references and
allusions, which bore upon the history of the person in whom I was
interested, or of the time in which he lived. Miss Kemp, James Walter,
Esq., and Alexander Middlemass, Esq., Edinburgh, have been extremely
serviceable to me in this way.
A variety of details of historical and biographical interest has been
furnished me by Dr. Milne, King-Edward; Garden A. Duff, Esq., Hatton
Castle, Turriff; Capt. Douglas Wimberley, Inverness; J. L. Anderson,
Esq., Edinburgh; and P. J. Anderson, Esq., of Aberdeen University
Library.
Professors Crum Brown, Saintsbury, Butcher, and Eggeling of my own _Alma
Mater_ have been very willing to give the information I have sought from
them; and through Professor Grierson of Aberdeen I have had the loan of
many books containing material of value for my purpose. Sheriff
Mackenzie, Wick, and Sheriff Shennan, Lerwick, have aided me in
questions of literary taste and of legal information; and from W. F.
Smith, Esq., Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, I have received
valuable help in writing the chapter on the translation of Rabelais.
From the latter's scholarly volumes upon the great Frenchman I have
borrowed some notes, which appear with his initials attached to them. To
Professor Ferguson of Glasgow I am indebted for the photograph of
Urquhart's handwriting.
In the work of correcting proofs--a somewhat laborious task in the
present case--I have had kindly assistance from Dr Milne, above
mentioned, and also from A. J. Tedder, Esq., London, Rev. T. Mathewson,
Rev. D. Houston, M.A. and J. M. Goudie, Esq., Lerwick.
If I have omitted the name of any helper, or if by frivolous comment I
have done wrong to the shade of Sir Thomas, I would adopt the language
of Mr Collins in _Pride and Prejudice_. "We are all liable to err," he
says. "I have certainly meant well through the whole affair; ... and if
my manner has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to apologize."
JOHN WILLCOCK.
UNITED PRES. MANSE, LERWICK,
SHETLAND.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE xi
CHAPTER I
The Urquharts and their Predecessors in Cromartie--Sir
Thomas Urquhart, senior--Birth of our Author--School
and University Days--Pecuniary and other Troubles at
Home--The Castle of Cromartie--Our Author's Studious
Bent--Foreign Travel--The Englishman Abroad--The Scot
Abroad 1
CHAPTER II
Recalled Home--The Covenanting Movement--The Trot of
Turriff--Our Author escapes to England--Is
Knighted--Publishes his _Epigrams_--His Father's
Embarrassments increase--Lesley of Findrassie--Death
of Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior--Our Author struggles
in vain to keep his Creditors at bay--Other Wrongs and
Losses--On bad Terms with the Church 30
CHAPTER III
Unsuccessful Rising in the North--Sir Thomas makes his
Peace with the Church--Return of Charles II. to
Scotland--Invasion of England--Battle of
Worcester--Sir Thomas a Prisoner in the Tower--Makes
Friends--Is liberated on Parole--Great Literary
Activity--Revisits Scotland--Dies--Later History of
the Urquharts of Cromartie--Characteristics of our
Author--Glover's Portraits of him 69
CHAPTER IV
EPIGRAMS: DIVINE AND MORAL--THE TRISSOTETRAS 111
CHAPTER V
PANTOCHRONOCHANON, OR THE PEDIGREE
128
CHAPTER VI
EKSKYBALAURON, OR THE JEWEL,--LOGOPANDECTEISION OR THE
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE 148
CHAPTER VII
TRANSLATION OF RABELAIS 184
APPENDICES 209
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. PORTRAIT OF SIR THOMAS URQUHART _Frontispiece_
2. SIGNATURE OF SIR THOMAS URQUHART _Page_ vii
3. THE POET SURROUNDED BY THE MUSES _Facing page_ 109
4. FAC-SIMILE OF HIS HANDWRITING " 116
5. SCULPTURED STONE AT KINBEAKIE HOUSE " 137
SIR THOMAS URQUHART
CHAPTER I
The Urquharts and their Predecessors in Cromartie--Sir Thomas Urquhart,
senior--Birth of our Author--School and University Days--Pecuniary
and other Troubles at Home--The Castle of Cromartie--Our Author's
Studious Bent--Foreign Travel--The Englishman Abroad--The Scot
Abroad.
The right of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie to be included in the
list of famous Scots will scarcely be granted by many of his
fellow-countrymen without some inquiry into the grounds upon which it is
based. He himself, undoubtedly, would not have been backward in
asserting his claim to such honourable distinction, though he would have
entered a protest against the presence of some of those in whose company
he would find himself. In the ecclesiastical and political controversies
of the first half of the seventeenth century, he was, as an Episcopalian
and a Cavalier, connected with the losing side, and, consequently, it
is not to be expected that posterity should be so impartial as to
cherish his name along with those of the victors in the conflict. It is
to his literary, and not to his martial achievements, that he owes his
fame. His translation of Rabelais is probably the most brilliant feat of
the kind ever accomplished, and casts all his own original writings into
the shade. The fantastical character of his own compositions, indeed,
both in regard to their subject-matter and the diction in which they are
clothed, forbids their ever having a large circle of readers. An author
whose phraseology is like a combination of that used by Ancient Pistol
with that of Sir Thomas Browne may have enthusiastic admirers, but they
are almost certain to be few in number. Yet his works contain much
interesting matter, and to them we are indebted for many details of the
life of their author.
Though it is hard to believe Sir Thomas Urquhart's assertion that the
connexion of the Urquharts with the north-west of Scotland dates as far
back as the year B.C. 554, when an ancestor of his named Beltistos
crossed over from Ireland, and built a castle near Inverness, the family
was of considerable antiquity, and for many generations was one of the
most distinguished in that part of the country. Nisbet, the great
authority on heraldry, says that "they enjoyed not only the honourable
office of hereditary Sheriff-Principal of the Shire of Cromartie, but
the far greater part, if not the whole of the said shire did belong to
them, either in property or superiority, and they possessed a
considerable estate besides in the Shire of Aberdeen."[1] The admiralty
of the seas from Caithness to Inverness also belonged to them.
The Urquharts were not, however, the earliest to bear rule in the part
of Scotland with which their name is connected. Cromartie was originally
the Crwmbawchty (or Crumbathy) of which Macbeth was reputed thane,
before he became king. Wyntown in his _Cronykil_ relates Macbeth's dream
that he was first Thane of Cromartie, then Thane of Moray, and then King
of Scotland.[2] After the first and second titles had been conferred
upon him, he took steps to secure the third. Probably the mote-hill of
Cromartie was the site of his official residence as thane of the
district when he was at the beginning of his ambitious career.
In the thirteenth century the family of Mouat (then _de Monte Alto_)
were in possession,[3] but early in the following century the estate had
accrued to King Robert the Bruce, probably because the Mounts had
submitted to the English king, Edward I. King Robert granted Cromartie
to Sir Hugh Ross, eldest son of William, Earl of Ross, in 1315, and by
him it was afterwards, in the reign of King David Bruce (1329-70), given
to an Adam of Urquhart ("de Vrquhartt"),[4] with whose descendants it
remained for many generations. In 1357 he got from the Crown the
hereditary sheriffdom of Cromartie, and eight years later the same Hugh
Ross gave him the estate of Fisherie, in King-Edward, Aberdeenshire.
This Adam is the first of the family to emerge from the darkness of
antiquity into the light of history, and probably his name, as the
founder of the Urquhart fortunes, suggested the still more famous
progenitor to whom our Sir Thomas traced back his pedigree link by link,
as our readers will afterwards hear.
Our author's father, also a Thomas, and the first of his line who was a
Protestant in religion, was born in 1585. He succeeded to the property
in 1603, and in 1617 was knighted by James VI. in Edinburgh. As he was
left an orphan at an early age, he was brought up under the care of his
grand-uncle, John Urquhart of Craigfintray, who has been commonly called
from this circumstance "the Tutor of Cromartie."[5] His
great-grandnephew, our Sir Thomas, has celebrated his praise in very
high terms. "He was," he says, "over all Britain renowned for his deep
reach of natural wit, and great dexterity in acquiring of many lands and
great possessions, with all men's applause."[6]
From all accounts, it seems that the "Tutor" was faithful in the
discharge of all the duties belonging to his office,[7] though he did
not succeed in imparting to his pupil the secret of acquiring landed
property, either with or without applause.
Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, received his estates, we are informed,
"without any burthen of debt, how little soever, or provision of
brother, sister, or any other of his kindred or allyance wherewith to
affect it."[8] He married Christian, the fourth daughter of Alexander,
fourth Lord Elphinstone (1552-1638), and received with her a dowry of
nine thousand merks Scots (_i.e._ £500 Sterling). The date of our
author's birth is given by Maitland as 1605, but it is now certain that
this is an error, and that the true date is 1611.[9] Sir Thomas was the
eldest of the family, and he tells us that he was born five years after
the marriage of his parents. He also informs us that his mother's
father, Lord Elphinstone, held the office of High Treasurer in Scotland
at the time of the marriage. As that nobleman was High Treasurer only
from just before 19th April, 1599, till 22nd September, 1601, it would
not have been unreasonable to fix the date of the marriage as probably
some time in 1600, if we had no other information on the subject. But it
so happens that the marriage-contract is in existence,[10] and is dated
the 9th of July, 1606, and consequently Sir Thomas's birth would fall in
the year 1611. Our author must therefore have been in error in
describing his grandfather as being High Treasurer at the time of his
daughter's marriage. He had, indeed, occupied this office some years
before. Sir Thomas should have said "had been," instead of "was," but
his lordly disposition of mind would probably make him contemptuous of
such trifles.
In 1611, James VI. was drawing near to the end of the first period of
his reign, during which he had been under the influence of the
traditions of the days of Elizabeth and Burghley, and had not yet passed
into his own keeping, and the hands of profligate favourites. Bacon was
still in the shade of distrust, from which, however, he was soon to
emerge: he was now, indeed, Solicitor-General, but his ambition was not
satisfied by this post. The heir-apparent to the throne was Prince
Henry, who died in the following year. Charles, his brother, was now
eleven years of age. Shakespeare brought out this year his play of _The
Winter's Tale_, and Ben Jonson his _Catiline_. Sir Walter Raleigh was a
prisoner in the Tower, and was busily engaged in writing his _History of
the World_, which he completed in the following year, though it was not
published until 1614. The Authorised Version of the English Bible
appeared this year. Milton was now a child of scarcely three years old,
and Cromwell a boy of twelve.
The birthplace of our author is unknown; for though the castle of
Cromartie was the official residence of the sheriffs, Sir Thomas
Urquhart, senior, is known to have had several other manor-houses, one
of which was Fisherie,[11] in the parish of King-Edward, Aberdeenshire,
in which he resided from time to time. It is probable that the future
translator of Rabelais laid the foundation of the erudition by which in
after years he was distinguished, in Banff,[12] which then possessed a
grammar-school, rather than in the more northern town which is
associated with his name.
Sir Thomas was only eleven years old when, in 1622, he entered the
University of Aberdeen,[13] but there is no reason to believe that the
average age of the "men" of his year would be in excess of his own.
Donne was the same age as Urquhart when he entered Oxford. The famous
Crichton went up to St Andrews at the age of ten, though up to that time
he had not given evidence of any extraordinary precocity. A generation
before, Montaigne had already completed his collegiate course when he
attained his thirteenth year. It seems strange to us that boys of such
tender age should have been found able to pass through a university
curriculum; and we are forced to conclude either that the boys of those
days were intellectually superior to those with whom we are familiar, or
that the studies which occupied them were less deep and severe than
those which are now pursued in seats of learning. The latter is probably
the true explanation of the matter. University education in Scotland
had been remodelled, and adapted to the requirements of the time and of
a Protestant society in the previous generation, and in this work Andrew
Melville had a very notable part. In 1583 a new constitution had been
drawn up for the University of Aberdeen, and the arrangements prescribed
by it may have existed there when our author was a student. The
Principal, according to this constitution, was Professor of Theology, as
well as incumbent of the parish of Old Machar, and was responsible for
the government and discipline of the college.[14] Under him were four
Regents, one of whom was Sub-Principal, and to them was assigned the
duty of training students in various departments of learning. Thus
physiology, geography, astrology, history, and Hebrew were assigned to
the Sub-Principal. Another Regent explained "the principles of reasoning
from the best Greek and Latin authors, with practice in writing and
speaking"; while a third lectured upon Greek, and read the more
elementary Latin and Greek authors. The fourth Regent taught arithmetic
and geometry, and, along with them, a portion of Aristotle's _Organon,
Ethics, and Politics_, and Cicero's _De Officiis_. This attempt to
assign special departments to the various regents respectively, was a
marked improvement upon the older system, under which they were each
responsible for teaching all the subjects included in the curriculum.
The students paid fees, which varied in amount according to their
social standing. On entering the university they were required to take
an oath of loyalty to the Reformed religion. None were allowed to carry
arms, or to converse in any other tongue than Greek or Latin. Perhaps,
however, this latter rule was merely an attempt to restrain the
measureless tide of human speech. And in order that nothing might
interfere with the progress of the students, the _Nova Fundatio_, or new
constitution of Aberdeen University, abolished all holidays ("omnes
consuetas olim a studiis vacationes aboleri penitus").[15]
Sir Thomas Urquhart's name does not appear in the list of graduates in
1626, so that there are no means of determining from the records of
King's College how many years he spent there. For the city in which he
had received his education he ever afterwards had a high regard. Thus he
says of it: "For honesty, good fashions, and learning, Aberdeen
surpasseth as far all other cities and towns in Scotland, as London doth
for greatness, wealth, and magnificence, the smallest hamlet or village
in England."[16]
He gives unmeasured praise to some of those eminent men who were
associated with the fame of Aberdeen University in what has been called
its "Augustan age"--the first four or five decades of the seventeenth
century. Thus, according to him, William Lesley, D.D.,[17] was "one of
the most profound and universal scholars then living"--like Socrates in
having published no works, but, unfortunately, unlike that philosopher
in not having among his disciples a Plato and an Aristotle to receive
their master's knowledge and transmit it to future generations.[18] Of
his successor in the principalship, Dr William Guild, he says: "He
deserveth by himself to be remembered, both for that he hath committed
to the press many good books, tending to the edification of the soul,
and bettering of the minde; and that of all the divines that have lived
in Scotland these hundred yeers, he hath been the most charitable, and
who bestowed most of his own to publike uses."[19] At the time when he
wrote these estimates of the sages at whose feet he had sat as a
student, some of his old friends were under a cloud, and he had to be
careful not to compromise them by his praise. And so he says of "Master
William [?] Seaton," who had been his tutor, "[he was] a very able
preacher truly, and good scholar, and [one] whom I would extoll yet
higher, but that being under the consistorian lash, some critick
Presbyters may do him injury, by pretending his dislike of them, for
being praised by him who idolizeth not their authority."[20]
At the time of the marriage of Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, Lord
Elphinstone, who was fully acquainted with the prosperous condition of
his son-in-law's affairs, made him pledge himself to manage his property
so that it might descend to his heir as he had himself received it.
Unfortunately this pledge was not fulfilled. Through mismanagement and
neglect his affairs got into disorder, and the later years of his life
were troubled by pecuniary difficulties.[21] His son says of him: "Of
all men living [he was] the justest, equallest, and most honest in his
dealings, [and] his humour was, rather than to break his word, to lose
all he had, and stand to his most undeliberate promises, what ever they
might cost; which too strict adherence to the austerest principles of
veracity, proved oftentimes dammageable to him in his negotiations with
many cunning sharks, who knew with what profitable odds they could scrue
themselves in upon the windings of so good a nature.... By the
unfaithfulnes, on the one side, of some of his menial servants, in
filching from him much of his personal estate, and falsehood of several
chamberlains and bayliffs to whom he had intrusted the managing of his
rents, in the unconscionable discharge of their receits, by giving up
one account thrice, and of such accounts many; and, on the other part,
by the frequency of disadvantagious bargains, which the slieness of the
subtil merchant did involve him in, his loss came unawares upon him, and
irresistibly, like an armed man; too great trust to the one, and
facility in behalf of the other, occasioning so grievous a misfortune,
which nevertheless did not proceed from want of knowledge or abilitie in
natural parts, for in the business of other men he would have given a
very sound advice, and was surpassing dextrous in arbitrements, upon
any reference submitted to him, but that hee thought it did derogate
from the nobility of his house and reputation of his person, to look to
petty things in matter of his own affairs."[22]
One of the ways in which the elder Sir Thomas succeeded in impoverishing
himself and his family was in becoming bail for people who absconded;
so, at least, we would infer from an entry in the Court-book of the
Burgh of Banff under date of 21st April, 1629, in which we find that
"Sir Thomas Urquhurt of Cromarty, having become caution for the
appearance of Alexander Forbes, merchant in Balvenye, alleged
forestaller, and the said Alexander not having appeared, Sir Thomas is
decerned to pay £40 Scots (£3, 6s. 8d. Sterling)."[23]
In 1637 we find that he was obliged to appeal to his sovereign against
the urgency of his creditors, and a Letter of Protection was issued in
his favour. It ran as follows: "Letter of Protection granted by King
Charles the First, under his great seal, to Sir Thomas Urquhart of
Cromarty, from all dilligence at the instance of his creditors, for the
space of one year, thereby giving him a _persona standi in judicio_,
notwithstanding he may be at the horn, and taking him under his royal
protection during the time. Dated at St James's, 20th March, 1637."[24]
A somewhat humorous situation is suggested by this document. The
creditors might "put him to the horn," _i.e._, according to the usual
legal form, order him in the king's name to pay his debts on penalty of
being outlawed as a traitor, while the king himself authorised him to
take no notice of the proceedings.
In the same year we have intimation of the elder Sir Thomas's pecuniary
misfortunes being aggravated by domestic strife, for we find him
instructing a high legal functionary to raise an action against his
sons, Thomas and Alexander, for their unfilial conduct. The charge was
that of "putting violent hands on the persone of the said Sir Thomas
Urquhart of Cromartie, Knycht, their father, taking him captive and
prissoner, and detening him in sure firmance within ane upper chalmer,
callit the Inner Dortour, within his place of Cromertie, _tanquam in
privato carcere_, fra the Mononday to the Fryday in the efter none
therefter, committit in the moneth of December last, 1636." The case
came up for trial before the Court of Justiciary on the 19th of July,
and was postponed for a week, when it was abandoned. The Lords of
Council had appointed a commission to settle all differences between the
father and sons and on receiving their report the Court dismissed the
case.[25] We have no particulars as to the causes of disagreement which
led to such all unhappy state of affairs, but we are not likely to be
far wrong in assuming that the sons wished to prevent their father's
taking some legal step which they considered would be detrimental to his
and their interests. The affectionate terms in which our author
describes his father's character ten years after his death, in the words
above quoted, make us sure that he sincerely regretted any wrong towards
him of which he may have been guilty at this time.
The old castle of Cromartie has now long disappeared, the stones of
which it was built having been used for the erection of a modern house
in 1772, after the estate had passed, by purchase, from the family of
Urquhart to Mr George Ross. It was a building of considerable antiquity.
In 1470 a royal grant was made by James III. to William Urquhart of the
Motehill, or Mount of Cromartie, with permission to erect on this a
tower or fortalice. Advantage was taken of this permission to fortify
the family mansion, and it was converted into a castle of considerable
strength.[26] Sir Thomas says of it: "The stance thereof is stately, and
the house it selfe of a notable good fabrick and contrivance."[27] An
interesting description of the building as it was just before its
demolition is given by Hugh Miller. "Directly behind the site of the old
town," he says, "the ground rises abruptly from the level to the height
of nearly a hundred feet, after which it forms a kind of table-land of
considerable extent, and then sweeps gently to the top of the hill. A
deep ravine, with a little stream running through it, intersects the
rising ground at nearly right angles with the front which it presents to
the houses; and on the eastern angle, towering over the ravine on the
one side, and the edge of the bank on the other, stood the old castle of
Cromarty. It was a massy, time-worn building, rising in some places to
the height of six storeys, battlemented at the top, and roofed with grey
stone. One immense turret jutted out from the corner, which occupied the
extreme point of the angle, and looking down from an altitude of at
least one hundred and sixty feet on the little stream, and the
struggling row of trees which sprung up at its edge, commanded both
sides of the declivity and the town below." Of the interior we are told
by the same writer, on the authority of an old woman who, as a child,
had lived in the castle, that "two threshers could have plied their
flails within the huge chimney of the kitchen; and that, in the great
hall, an immense, dark chamber, lined with oak, a party of a hundred men
had exercised at the pike."[28]
The elder Sir Thomas had also a winter residence in Banff.[29] In the
Court-book of the Burgh of Banff we have the following entry: "1630,
July 21st, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie gave in ane Act of the
Session of Banff, geiveing licence to him to erect ane desk and loft in
the kirk of Banff (seeing he is both a parochiner and resident within
the said toun) for his accomodatione. The brethren gave their
approbatione with express provision that neither the edifice nor lichtes
of the said kirk suld be deteriorat."[30]
Beyond the bare fact of his having been a student in the University of
Aberdeen, we have no information concerning the manner in which the
earlier years of our author's life were passed, or the circumstances in
which he acquired the miscellaneous erudition which his writings
display. The only remark he makes about the education he received is to
the effect that his father laid out but a very insignificant portion of
his income upon this item of family expenses. Yet, however little the
expenditure may have been, Urquhart evidently profited fully by the
education which he had received, and attained to something more than a
gentlemanly acquaintance with some of the abstruser departments of
learning.
The special bent of his mind in early years, and his love for study
rather than sport, are shown in the following reminiscence of his youth,
which he narrates with his characteristic diffuseness. "There
happening," he says, "a gentleman of very good worth to stay awhile at
my house, who, one day amongst many other, was pleased, in the deadst
time of all the winter, with a gun upon his shoulder, to search for a
shot of some wild-fowl; and after he had waded through many waters,
taken excessive pains in quest of his game, and by means thereof had
killed some five or six moor fowls and partridges, which he brought
along with him to my house, he was by some other gentlemen, who chanced
to alight at my gate, as he entered in, very much commended for his love
to sport; and, as the fashion of most of our countrymen is, not to
praise one without dispraising another, I was highly blamed for not
giving my self in that kind to the same exercise, having before my eys
so commendable a pattern to imitate; I answered, though the gentleman
deserved praise for the evident proof he had given that day of his
inclination to thrift and laboriousness, that nevertheless I was not to
blame, seeing whilst he was busied about that sport, I was imployed in a
diversion of another nature, such as optical secrets, mysteries of
natural philosophie, reasons for the variety of colours, the finding out
of the longitude, the squaring of a circle, and wayes to accomplish all
trigonometrical calculations by sines, without tangents, with the same
compendiousness of computation,--which, in the estimation of learned
men, would be accounted worth six hundred thousand partridges, and as
many moor-fowles."
There can be little doubt that Sir Thomas had the best of the argument.
But he was not satisfied with this: for nothing less would content him
than vanquishing his opponent on his own ground, as well as with the
weapons of logic. With the same lordliness of temper which had led him
to re-capitulate the dignified subjects which had occupied his studious
mind--the squaring of the circle being but one of them--he chose the
breaking-in of a horse as a set-off against his friend's achievements of
the day before. The success of the scientific student and the
discomfiture of the mere sportsman are told in the conclusion of the
story. "In the mean while," he says, "that worthy gentleman, being wet
and weary after travel, was not able to eat of what he had so much
toyled for, whilst my braine recreations so sharpened my appetite, that
I supped to very good purpose. That night past, the next morning I gave
six pence to a footman of mine, to try his fortune with the gun, during
the time I should disport my self in the breaking of a young horse; and
it so fell out, that by [the time] I had given my selfe a good heat by
riding, the boy returned with a dozen of wild fouls, half moor foule,
half partridge, whereat being exceeding well pleased, I alighted, gave
him my horse to care for, and forthwith entred in to see my gentlemen,
the most especiall whereof was unable to rise out of his bed, by reason
of the Gout and Sciatick, wherewith he was seized for his former daye's
toyle."[31]
In the early years of his manhood, before our author felt himself
qualified to take part in public life, he spent some time in foreign
travel. The kind of figure cut by a young _English_ gentleman of that
period upon the Continent we know from the testimony of Portia, for it
can scarcely be that much change had taken place in the interval of a
generation, between her time and the end of the first quarter of the
seventeenth century. He was generally unversed in the languages of the
countries he visited, and, from his lack of Latin, French, or Italian,
was apt to fail in understanding the natives, or in making himself
understood by them. He might be handsome in figure, but conversation
with him was reduced to the level of a dumb-show. His dress was often
very odd, and his manners eccentric, as though he had bought his doublet
in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his
behaviour--everywhere. A strong contrast to him in the matter of
language was the young Scotchman of the period, if Sir Thomas Urquhart
is to be taken as at all an average specimen of his nation, and if his
account of himself can be relied upon. He says of himself that when he
travelled through France, Spain, and Italy, he spoke the languages to
such perfection that he might easily have passed himself off as a native
of any one of these countries. Some advised him to do so, but his
patriotic feelings were too strong to allow him to follow such a course:
"he plainly told them (without making bones thereof), that truly he
thought he had as much honour by his own country, which did contrevalue
the riches and fertility of those nations, by the valour, learning, and
honesty, wherein it did parallel, if not surpass them."[32]
It is somewhat difficult for the mind to grasp the idea of a Scotchman
in those days, when so many of the things which we now associate with
the nationality were not in existence--when his Church was Episcopalian
in constitution, the Shorter Catechism not yet written by Englishmen for
his use, Burns unborn, and distilled spirits not extensively used as a
beverage. We could scarcely even know him by his costume. For no
self-respecting representative of that country would assume the Highland
garb which so many Englishmen believe to be generally worn north of the
Tweed, if we are to credit the authoritative statement of Macaulay to
the effect that "before the Union it was considered by nine Scotchmen
out of ten as the dress of a thief."[33] The characteristics by which "a
Scot abroad" in those days was recognised, were, from some accounts,
not shrewdness in making bargains, economical habits, indomitable
perseverance, and unsleeping caution, but the pride and
high-spiritedness which made him keen in detecting and swift in avenging
slights that might be cast upon the country from which he came. So deep
was the impression made by these peculiarities upon foreign nations,
that they became proverbial. "He is a Scot, he has pepper in his
nose!"[34] said they, somewhat familiarly, yet with a touch of fear,
when they noticed the flashing eye, and the hand instinctively seeking
the sword-hilt. "High-spirited as a Scot!"[35] they exclaimed with
admiration, when among themselves some soul was moved to unwonted
courage. Such, at least, is the impression produced upon the mind by
some of those novels in which Scott and his imitators trace the
wanderings of their fellow-countrymen through European lands in those
earlier times. That there is some foundation of truth for the lofty
superstructure is rendered credible by the case of Sir Thomas Urquhart.
"My heart,"[36] he says, "gave me the courage for adventuring in a
forrain climat, thrice to enter the lists against men of three severall
nations, to vindicate my native country[37] from the calumnies wherewith
they had aspersed it; wherein it pleased God so to conduct my fortune,
that, after I had disarmed them, they in such sort acknowledged their
error, and the obligation they did owe me for sparing their lives, which
justly by the law of arms I might have taken, that, in lieu of three
enemies that formerly they were, I acquired three constant friends, both
to my selfe and my compatriots, whereof by severall gallant testimonies
they gave evident proofe, to the improvement of my country's credit in
many occasions."[38]
The fair critic, whose estimate of the young Englishman has been
referred to, gives her opinion also of his Scottish rival; but,
strangely enough, she observes in him qualities of a kind opposite to
those displayed by Sir Thomas Urquhart. She was struck by his
neighbourly charity, "for he borrowed a box of the ear of the
Englishman, and swore he would pay him back again when he was able."[39]
Can it be that the words put into her mouth are merely the ribald wit of
an envious Southron, or are we to understand that the spirit which
triumphed over so many inferiors was yet wise enough to discern when it
stood in the presence of a mightier than itself?
How a young man on his travels should occupy his time, had been laid
down in a little volume which had been published just before Urquhart
set out to see the world abroad. In this he might read a list of the
things which should engage his attention, drawn up in sonorous language
by no less a personage than a late Lord Chancellor of England--a man who
was ready to give advice to all his fellow-creatures in all conceivable
circumstances. "The things," says Lord Bacon, "to be seen and observed
are: the courts of princes, especially when they give audience to
ambassadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear causes; and
so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches and monasteries, with the
monuments which are therein extant; the walls and fortifications of
cities and towns, and so the havens and harbours; antiquities and ruins;
libraries, colleges, disputations and lectures, where any are; shipping
and navies; house and gardens of state and pleasure near great cities;
armories, arsenals, magazines, exchanges, burses, warehouses; exercises
of horsemanship, fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies,
such whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries of
jewels and robes, cabinets and rarities; and, to conclude, whatsoever is
memorable in the places where they go.... As for triumphs, masks,
feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men
need not be put in mind of them; yet they are not to be neglected."[40]
To what extent Urquhart followed a plan of this kind it is impossible to
say; for, though his writings are so discursive that we might expect to
find in them allusions to anything remarkable he had seen or heard, he
has very little to say about his foreign experiences. Dr Johnson spoke
with contempt of an English peer, who had extended his travels as far as
Egypt, but who had brought back only one small contribution to the
general stock of human information--the fact that he had seen "a large
serpent in one of the pyramids of Egypt." Urquhart was not quite so
poverty-stricken as this; for he seems to have observed examples of
mental infirmity, illustrations of which he might doubtless have found
nearer home.
"I saw at Madrid," he says, "a bald-pated fellow who beleeved he was
Julius Cæsar, and therefore went constantly on the streets with a laurel
crown on his head; and another at Toledo, who would not adventure to goe
abroad unlesse it were in a coach, chariot, or sedane, for fear the
heavens should fall down upon him. I likewise saw one in Saragosa, who,
imagining himself to be the lawfull King of Aragon, went no where
without a scepter in his hand; and another in the kingdome of Granada,
who beleeved he was the valiant Cid that conquered the Mores. At
Messina, in Sicilie, I also saw a man that conceived himself to be the
great Alexander of Macedone, and that in a ten years space he should be
master of all the territories which he subdued; but the best is, that
the better to resemble him he always held his neck awry, which naturally
was streight and upright enough; and another at Venice, who imagined he
was Soveraign of the whole Adriatick Sea, and sole owner of all the
ships that came from the Levante. Of men that fancied themselves to be
women, beasts, trees, stones, pitchers, glasse, angels, and of women
whose strained imaginations have falne upon the like extravagancies,
even in the midst of fire and the extremest pains fortune could inflict
upon them, there is such variety of examples, amongst which I have seen
some at Rome, Naples, Florence, Genua, Paris, and other eminent cities,
that to multiply any moe [more] words therein, were to load your ears
with old wives' tales, and the trivial tattle of idly imployed and
shallow braind humorists."[41]
He also tells, though not in the same connexion, of his having been
witness of the honour and admiration lavished upon one of his
fellow-countrymen, Dr Seaton, by the _élite_ of Parisian society. "I
have seen him," he says, "circled about at the Louvre with a ring of
French lords and gentlemen, who hearkned to his discourse with so great
attention, that none of them, so long as he was pleased to speak, would
offer to interrupt him, to the end that the pearles falling from his
mouth might be the more orderly congested in the several treasures of
their judgements."[42]
Part of his time abroad was devoted to the fascinating occupation of
book-hunting, and he had great pleasure in the spoils he had won. When
they were set in order on shelves in the library of the castle of
Cromartie, he looked on them with the joy which only book-collectors
know. "They were," he says, "like to a compleat nosegay of flowers,
which, in my travels, I had gathered out of the gardens of above sixteen
several kingdoms."[43]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _System of Heraldry_, ii, 274.
[2] Wyntown's narrative is as follows (quoted in Sir William Fraser's
_Earls of Cromartie_):--
"A nycht he thowcht in hys dreming,
Dat syttand he wes besyd þe Kyng
At a Sete in hwnting; swà
Intil his Leisch had Grewhundys twà.
He thowcht, quhile he wes swà syttand,
He sawe thre wemen by gangand;
And þai wemen þan thowcht he
Thre werd Systrys mást lyk to be.
De fyrst he hard say gangand by,
'Lo yhondyr þe Thayne of Crwmbawchty.'
De toyir woman sayd agayne,
'Of Morave yhondyre I se þe Thayne.'
De thryd þan sayd, 'I se þe Kyng.'
All þis he herd in hys dreming."
Wyntown's _Cronykil_, i. 225.
Wyntown's date is about A.D. 1395. Macbeth was killed at Lumphanan by
Macduff, 5th December A.D. 1056.
[3] A charter of lands in Cromartie granted by William de Monte Alto,
between 1252 and 1272, is still in existence. The granter of the
charter, having been owner of Cromartie, was claimed by Sir Thomas
Urquhart as one of his Urquhart ancestors, but with no better authority
than the earlier ancestors who figure in our author's _Pedigree_. See
_Earls of Cromartie_, by Sir William Fraser.
[4] It would seem from this that Urquhart was originally a place-name,
probably Gaelic. There were two parishes of Urquhart in the old province
of Moray--one with a priory near Elgin, and the other with a castle in
what is now Inverness-shire.
[5] "Tutor" here simply means "legal guardian"--for boys until fourteen
years of age, and for girls until twelve. After these ages and before
that of twenty-one such wards are in the charge of "Curators." Owing to
our author's having the same Christian name as his father, the mistake
is often made of asserting that John Urquhart was _his_ tutor.
[6] _Works_, p. 172. In a MS. volume of unpublished poems by Sir Thomas,
which is described on p. 116, there is the following:--"Upon the tutor
of Cromarty, my great-grandfather's younger brother, and my father's
tutor:
"The present tyme, the preterit, nor futur
T' ourselves, our fathers, nor posteritie,
Do now, have yet, nor will produce a tutor,
For's Pupils weil of more dexteritie,
For he left free th' estate he had in charge:
And by meer industrie did's own enlarge" (iii. 7).
We are sorry to quote a poem of Sir Thomas's at this early stage, before
the atmosphere has been created which is needed for perceiving and
appreciating its true value. The judicious reader will, however, return
to it with interest when that process has been completed.
[7] John Urquhart, "the Tutor of Cromartie," died in 1631, at the age of
eighty-four, and was buried in the old church of King-Edward,
Aberdeenshire, where there is a marble monument to his memory.
[8] _Works_, p. 340.
[9] Another erroneous date is in the edition of the _Tracts_ of 1774,
where 1613 is given as the year of our author's birth.
[10] This is now amongst the Gardenston papers, having been formerly in
the possession of Mr. Dunbar. All account of its contents is given in
_Antiquarian Notes_, by C. Fraser Mackintosh, p. 195. An independent
corroboration of the above date of the marriage is by a document now in
the Register House in Edinburgh (_Aberdeen Sasines_), in which Sir
Thomas Urquhart, senior, gives sasine of the barony of Fisherie to Lady
Christian Elphinstone. The "precept," or clause in the marriage-contract,
which directs the notary to give sasine of the estate settled on the
bride, is also dated the 9th of July, 1606, and in it she is described
as being _in suâ purâ virginitate_. Probably the marriage took place
either on that day or very soon afterwards. The bridegroom was just of
age, while Lady Christian was under sixteen, the date of her birth being
19th December, 1590 (_The Lords Elphinstone_, Fraser, i. 167).
The issue of this marriage were at least the following sons and
daughters:--(l) THOMAS; (2) Alexander; (3) George; (4) John; (5) [name
unknown]; (6) Henry; and (7) Jane, _m._ Sir Alexander Abercromby of
Birkenbog; (8) Helen, _m._ Sir James Gordon of Lesmoir; (9) Annas, _m._
Alexander Strachan of Glenkindie; (10) Margaret, _m._ John Irving of
Brucklay; (11) [name unknown], _m._ ---- Campbell of Calder.
[11] Fisherie is about six miles from Banff.
[12] It is quite possible, however, that, in the parish school of
King-Edward, our author could have got the rudiments of a classical
education. In 1649 (15th Nov.), Mr James Petrie, who was school-master
there, applied for the school of Banff and, as a test of his power, "was
ordeined to teache the sext satyr of Persius to-morrow in the school of
Banf be nyne hours in presence of the bailyies and others in the toune
who wer scholars." He passed through the test successfully, and was
appointed to the office (_Annals of Banff_, ii. 30, New Spalding Club).
[13] The entry of his name as a student on the roll is in the following
terms: "In Academiam regiam Aberdonensem recepti sunt adolescentes
quorum nomina sequuntur, præceptore Alexandro Lunano, Anno 1622.
. . .
Thomas Urquhardus de Cromartie.
. . .
_Fasti Aberdonenses, 1854._"
[14] _King's College: Officers and Graduates_, by P. J. Anderson, M.A.,
pp. 347, 348.
[15] An "eminent Yorkshire educationist" introduced the same rules into
the establishment under his charge. It is probable, however, that in Mr
Squeers's case the arrangement was the result of independent research
into methods of education, rather than a hint borrowed from Andrew
Melville. "No holidays--none of those ill-judged comings home twice a
year that unsettle children's minds so!" (_Nicholas Nickleby_, chap.
iv.).
It is only fair to say that there are doubts as to how far the
arrangements under the _Nova Fundatio_, as above described, were in
force in Sir Thomas Urquhart's student days. If the older system were
still in operation, the Alexander Lunan, who is mentioned as his
preceptor, would virtually have taught our author all the subjects
contained in the curriculum through which he passed. As there is no
proof that Alexander Lunan was another Admirable Crichton, the fact of
his doing so would strengthen what we have said above as to the
comparative slightness of the erudition imparted in a university
education in those days. Sir Thomas Urquhart speaks of having "learned
the elements of his philosophy" in the University of Aberdeen under
William Seaton (_Works_, p. 263). It has been suggested that it is an
error for John Seaton, and that it indicates that our author, like many
other students of King's College, took a session or two at Marischal
College (see Anderson's _Fasti Acad. Marisc._ ii. 34, 588).
[16] _Works_, p. 395.
[17] Dr Lesley was successively Humanist, Regent, Sub-Principal, and
Principal of King's College. In 1639 he was deprived of his office by
the Covenanting party.
[18] _Works_, p. 262.
[19] _Works_, p. 263. The editor of the _Book of Bon Accord_ gives a
lower estimate of Dr Guild's character: he says that his works are of no
literary merit, and that he got fame by his wealth and ostentatious
liberality. He was minister of King-Edward before he went to Aberdeen;
and his widow, Catharine Rolland, founded a bursary at the university
for young men belonging to that parish.
[20] _Ibid._ p. 263: see p. 11, note.
[21] Lord Elphinstone died 14th January, 1638. During the four preceding
years his son-in-law had "made ducks and drakes" of his ancestral
possessions. His portrait, which is still preserved at Carberry Tower,
is engraved in Sir William Fraser's work, _The Lords Elphinstone_. It
gives one the impression of a grave, melancholy man. He had fourteen
sons and five daughters. It is to be hoped that none of his sons and no
other of his sons-in-law had the faculty for getting into difficulties
which Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, displayed.
[22] _Works_, p. 336.
[23] The offence of _forestalling_ consisted in buying merchandise,
victuals, etc., before they appeared in a fair or market-place for sale,
or in taking steps to raise the prices of such things, or in dissuading
anyone coming to market from carrying his goods thither. The amount of
fine for a first offence was, as above, £40 Scots (or £3, 6s. 8d.
Sterling); for a second offence, 100 merks (or £5, 11s., 1d. Sterling);
while for a third offence it was forfeiture of movable goods.
[24] M'Farlane's _Genealogical Collections_, ii. 283. MS. Advocates'
Library.
[25] Records of the Court of Justiciary.
[26] It was built in the old turreted style, and defended on the south
by a moat and high wall. When it was taken down, in the surrounding
ground were found human skeletons, and urns containing human remains,
both enclosed in graves made of flags (_Old Stat. Account_).
[27] _Works_, p. 312. "The situation appears in every view most
delightful" (Pococke's _Tour_, 1760).
[28] _Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland_, pp. 78, 80.
[29] This was a fortalice-tower, with gardens, orchards, dovecots, etc.,
in the south part of Banff, which afterwards came into the possession of
the Earl of Airlie. The bounds are thus described: "The common vennel at
the north, the loch called the Saltlochs at the east, the lands called
Little Guishauch at the south, and the road to Overak at the west."
Shortly before its demolition it was the headquarters of the Duke of
Cumberland's army on its passage to Culloden. Besides this house and the
castle of Cromartie, the Urquharts occasionally occupied their
mansion-house of Fisherie. This stood a few yards to the south-west of
the present farmhouse of Mains of Fisherie. It was taken down some sixty
years ago. Some old trees still stand near the site of the house and
garden.
[30] _Annals of Banff_ (New Spalding Club), ii. 28. The old church in
which Sir Thomas had a "desk" or pew, and a "loft" or small gallery, is
now in ruins. Only the south transept is standing. In the parish church
of King-Edward, Aberdeenshire, the handsome silver communion cups bear
an inscription to the effect that they were a joint present from Dr
William Guild, the then incumbent of the parish, Sir Thomas Urquhart,
and his uncle John Urquhart of Craigfintray. That the Sir Thomas
Urquhart here named is not our author but his father, is evident from
the date of the incumbency of his fellow-donor, Dr Guild, who was
minister of King-Edward from 1608 to 1631. The cups bear date of 1619.
[31] _Works_, p. 331.
[32] _Works_, p. 272.
[33] _History of England_, chap. xiii.
[34] "_Scotus est, piper in naso_," Mediæval proverb.
[35] "_Fier comme un Ecossais_," French proverb.
[36] It may be as well to warn our readers at this point that Sir Thomas
Urquhart's vanity, or what would be called vanity in any other man, was
unbounded. So calm and unconscious is it, that it often seems to betray
a disordered mind. Those who seek in his estimates of himself for
illustrations of the grace of humility will seek in vain. They may,
however, find other things, which, if not so edifying, are far more
amusing.
[37] The reader who has sufficient curiosity and leisure may compare
with the above the account which his contemporary, Lord Herbert of
Cherbury (1581-1648), gives of his duels in his _Autobiography_. That
nobleman was a kind of Sir Thomas Urquhart in water-colour, and his
single combats are surrounded with a proportionately milder glow of
romance. Indeed, they seem to have been generally undertaken in order to
compel impudent young men to give back pieces of riband to charming
young ladies from whom they had snatched them.
[38] _Works_, p. 311.
[39] _Merchant of Venice_, Act I. Scene ii.
[40] _Essays, Civil and Moral_, xviii.
[41] _Works_, p. 364.
[42] _Ibid._ p. 256.
[43] _Works_, p. 402.
CHAPTER II
Recalled Home--The Covenanting Movement--The Trot of Turriff--Our
Author escapes to England--Is Knighted--Publishes his
_Epigrams_--His Father's Embarrassments increase--Lesley of
Findrassie--Death of Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior--Our Author
struggles in vain to keep his Creditors at bay--Other Wrongs and
Losses--On bad Terms with the Church.
While Urquhart was engaged in foreign travel, the ecclesiastical and
political controversies in Scotland came to such a height, that it was
evident that matters could only be settled by an appeal to the sword,
and, accordingly, he returned home to assist the party to which his
family adhered. He, doubtless, like Milton, considered it disgraceful
that, while his fellow-countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, he
should be travelling abroad for amusement and intellectual culture. His
father, who had been the first of the Urquharts to give up Roman
Catholicism for Protestantism, took the unpopular side in the conflict
that agitated the Church of Scotland. He was a staunch Episcopalian, and
refused to accept the National Covenant, when those who had voluntarily
and enthusiastically entered into it attempted to coerce others into
following their example, and so turned it into an instrument of tyranny.
The determined efforts of Charles I. and his advisers to make the Church
of Scotland in all respects like the Church of England, were fiercely
opposed, and, for a time, the party which was resolved to make them as
dissimilar as possible prevailed. Episcopacy, liturgy, ancient
ecclesiastical customs and rites, and all that savoured of Prelacy or
Popery, were swept away by the rising flood. Yet, without committing
oneself to the doctrine of passive obedience, it may be doubted whether
the course of policy followed by the Covenanters was either wise or
scriptural. For, notwithstanding the vehement protestations of loyalty
expressed in the National Covenant, armed resistance to the royal
authority was not obscurely hinted at in it. "We," said the subscribers,
"promise and swear by the great name of the Lord our God to continue in
the profession and obedience of the said religion; and that we shall
defend the same, and resist all those contrary errors and corruptions,
according to our vocation, and to the utmost of that power which God
hath put into our hands, all the days of our life." It is quite
possible, it may be hoped, for one to be in sympathy with a certain
political party, and yet to regret that the Church should identify
itself with that party; and it certainly was not in the end a good thing
for the cause of religion that it should have been so closely allied as
it was with party politics in the seventeenth century. "My kingdom is
not of this world," said Christ; "if My kingdom were of this world, then
would My servants fight." "Put up again thy sword into his place," He
said to St Peter, "for all they that take the sword, shall perish with
the sword." It is difficult to see how these clear and emphatic
utterances can be made to harmonise with the resolution not only to use
force in the correction of ecclesiastical abuses and religious errors,
but also to coerce those who were not prepared to follow the same course
of policy.[44]
The Covenanting party were successful beyond their hopes. The influence
of the Marquis of Argyle secured the allegiance to the cause of the
Highlanders in the west of Scotland; while, in Inverness and the region
north of the Moray Firth, the movement was enthusiastically welcomed.
Only one district in Scotland held aloof--that of which Aberdeen was the
centre. The community there had probably but little sympathy with the
innovations which Laud was bent upon bringing in, but they had still
less with the Covenant. They were attached to the modified form of
Episcopacy which had now existed in Scotland since the Reformation
(with the exception of the years between 1592 and 1610), in which the
bishops were little more than permanent moderators of Presbyteries, and
were subject to the General Assembly, and in which the ritual was of a
very simple character.
As a University and Cathedral city, and the residence of a large number
of wealthy landed proprietors, Aberdeen occupied a position of great
importance in Scotland, and was by no means under the command of the
capital. The heads of the Covenanting party very speedily found it
necessary to take steps for bringing this corner of the kingdom into
subjection to themselves. They could scarcely hope to succeed in
overcoming the powerful forces at the command of the English Government,
if they were to allow this enemy to remain undisturbed in their rear.
Accordingly, at a very early stage in the proceedings, they attempted to
gain over to their side the great territorial magnate of the district,
the Marquis of Huntly, who, from his rank and wealth and hereditary
loyalty to the throne, was likely to be the leader of the King's party
in the North. Had they succeeded, they would virtually have had the
whole country at their back, for the community of Aberdeen, and the few
neighbouring lairds, who, like Sir Thomas Urquhart, refused to accept
the Covenant, would not have dared to resist the national policy by
force of arms. In the negotiations between the Covenanting leaders and
the Marquis of Huntly, we have an illustration of the very muddy roads
along which religion is dragged, when it forms an alliance with a
political party. It is certainly with somewhat of a shock that one who
is under the impression that all the Covenanters were saints of a very
spiritually-minded type, learns of the grim option which they offered to
their possible opponent. Colonel Robert Munro, who had seen service in
Germany, was appointed to wait upon the Marquis at Strathbogie, and to
acquaint him with the resolutions to which the Covenanters had come.
"The sum of his commission to Huntly was," we are told, "that the
noblemen Covenanters were desirous that he should join with them in the
common cause; that, if he would do so, and take the Covenant, they would
give him the first place, and make him leader of their forces; and,
further, they would make his state and his fortunes greater than ever
they were; and, moreover, they should pay off and discharge all his
debts, which they knew to be about one hundred thousand pounds sterling;
that their forces and associates were a hundred to one [in comparison]
with the king; and, therefore, it was to no purpose to him to take up
arms against them, for if he refused this offer and declared against
them, they should find means to disable him for to help the king; and,
moreover, they knew how to undo him, and bade him to expect that they
will ruinate his family and estates." The hands were, perhaps, the hands
of Christian, the voice was certainly the voice of Mr Worldly Wiseman!
The reply of the Marquis was admirable for the spirit of generosity and
chivalry which it breathed. "To this proposition," we are told, "Huntly
gave a short and resolute repartee, that his family had risen and stood
by the kings of Scotland; and for his part, if the event proved the ruin
of this king, he was resolved to lay his life, honours, and estate under
the rubbish of the king's ruins."[45]
Though Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, was a staunch Episcopalian and a
devoted Royalist, the circumstances in which he was placed forbade his
aiding the ecclesiastical and political causes which were dear to him
with more than good wishes. He was surrounded by neighbours of the
opposite party,[46] and isolated from those with whom he would gladly
have co-operated. Consequently, it remained for his eldest son, our
author, who apparently was residing at that time at Balquholly Castle,
in Aberdeenshire, where the adherents of the Royalist cause were
numerous, to play a more heroic part.
Between the date of the signing of the Covenant and that of the meeting
of the General Assembly in Glasgow in 1638, The Tables, for such was the
name by which the executive government established by the revolutionary
party was designated, decided to subdue the city of Aberdeen and the
neighbouring country, and to compel the people there to accept the
Covenant. Before resorting to force, however, an attempt was made to
persuade. A committee of three eminent clergymen, Henderson, Dickson,
and Cant, with the Earl of Montrose as president, was sent north to deal
with the somewhat unimpressible Aberdonians. The hospitable corporation
of the northern city invited the visitors to a banquet of wine, but
their invitation was scornfully declined. The deputation "would drink
with none till first the Covenant was subscribed." Such incivility was
new in the history of the city, and a very satisfactory rebuke was given
to it by the materials for the proposed banquet being distributed among
the poor. It can be easily imagined that after this unsatisfactory
beginning the sermons delivered by the clerical deputation fell upon
unsympathetic ears, and made but few converts. "The commissioners had
one powerful ally in the town, in the person of Earl Marischal, the son
of the founder of the College, who had died in 1623; and, when they were
refused licence to preach in the city churches, they adjourned to his
residence at the north end of what is now Marischal Street. The mansion
consisted of several buildings with galleries surrounding a courtyard,
and from these galleries the three Covenanting ministers held forth from
eight o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon, trying to
convince the people of the truth of the Covenant. The children of
granite, however, proved absolutely impervious to the 'apostles,' whom
they scornfully pelted with mud."[47]
A paper-war, which attracted considerable notice, sprang up between the
commissioners and six of the Aberdeen clergy--popularly designated in
contemporary literature as "the Aberdeen Doctors."[48] In this warfare
the representatives of the Covenanting party came off rather badly. "The
position taken by the Doctors," says John Hill Burton, "is the
unassailable one of the dry sarcastic negative. Whatever the Covenant
might be--good or bad--and whatever right its approvers had to bind
themselves to it, how were they entitled to force it on those who
desired it not? And when their adversaries became eloquent on its
conformity to Scripture and the privileges of the Christian Church, the
Doctors ever went back to the same negative position--even if it were
so, which we do not admit, yet why force it upon us?"[49]
Early in the following year, 1639, The Tables resolved to suppress the
northern Malignants, as they were called, before preparing to enter on a
campaign against their enemy in the south, and thus save themselves
from the dangers involved in having an enemy in their rear. The Earl of
Montrose went north at the head of a considerable body of troops, and
took possession of Aberdeen. The opponents of the Covenant fled from the
city, and Huntly, the leader of the Royalists, felt unable to offer
effective resistance. In spite of a safe-conduct granted him by Montrose
on his coming in to a conference, he was taken prisoner to Edinburgh and
lodged in the Castle.
This kidnapping of the Royalist chief caused great irritation; and upon
a rumour of the fleet's coming to the Firth of Forth, and of the Royal
army's approach to the Scottish border, the northern Royalists, of whom
our Sir Thomas Urquhart was one, resolved to take arms on the King's
side. The first mention of our author in history is in connexion with
this rising; and the annalist Spalding relates two exciting incidents
that occurred in one week, in both of which he took part.
The first, which happened on Friday, the 10th of May, was an attempt
made by him and some of the other Royalist lairds or "barons," as they
are called,[50] to take the castle of Towie-Barclay,[51] in
Aberdeenshire. It seems that the lairds of Delgatie and Towie-Barclay
had plundered the house of Balquholly,[52] which was occupied by our
author, and carried off a large supply of "muskets, guns, and
carabines." Sir Thomas was not a man to submit quietly to such an
outrage as this; and, doubtless, to his desire for vengeance was added a
strong wish to get possession of the firearms, now that there was a good
cause to be defended and brave men to use the weapons. They had intended
to surprise the castle, but when they came to it they found the gates
shut, and the place strongly guarded. Lord Fraser and the eldest son of
Lord Forbes had already known that an attempt was to be made to recover
the weapons, and had manned the castle so effectually that the idea of
storming it was out of the question. A few shots were exchanged, and
then the attacking party rode away. The only casualty was the death of a
David Prott, who was a servant of the laird of Gight,[53] one of
Urquhart's friends. "This," the historian remarks, "was the first time
that blood was drawn here since the beginning of the Covenant."[54]
Four days after, a more serious encounter took place between the two
forces. The Covenanters of the north had decided to assemble in force,
and fixed upon Turriff, in Aberdeenshire, as their headquarters. The
Royalists drew to a head at Strathbogie, some eleven miles off, and
resolved to disperse their opponents. The Covenanting party was about
twelve hundred strong, and the Royalists about eight hundred, but the
latter had four brass cannon, which very materially strengthened them as
an attacking force. They were under the leadership of skilful officers,
among whom Arthur Forbes of Blacktown [in King-Edward] is specially
mentioned. Sir Thomas himself informs us that, "having obtained, though
with a great deal of pain, a fifteen hundreth [hundred] subscriptions to
a bond conceived and drawn up in opposition of the vulgar [popular]
Covenant, he selected from amongst them so many as he thought fittest
for holding hand to [taking in hand] the dissolving of their committees
and unlawful meetings."[55]
About ten o'clock on the night of Monday, the 13th of May, they started
for Turriff, marching in a "very quiet and sober manner," and by
daybreak managed to steal upon the village by an unguarded path. The
sound of trumpets and of drums aroused the unsuspecting Covenanters to
the fact that they had been fairly surprised. "Some were sleeping,
others drinking, and smoaking tobacco, others walking up and down." A
few volleys of musketry, and a few shots discharged from the cannon,
served to disperse them, and the village was taken possession of by the
attacking force. It was but a slight skirmish,[56] in which three men
were killed, two of the Covenanters, and one of the Royalists; but it
was the first of the battles in the great Civil War, which raged for so
many years, and deluged with blood so many fruitful plains in each of
the three kingdoms. On this account "the Trot of Turriff," as it was
called, should not be forgotten.
After this victory, the Royalists being masters of the village, the
common soldiers, who were hungry after their night's march, plundered
the houses of those they thought were Covenanters, and supplied
themselves with meat and drink. The greatest loss fell upon the
minister, Mr Mitchell, who, however, received very liberal compensation
from Parliament in the following year. They next gathered as many of the
inhabitants of Turriff together as they could find, and made them accept
and subscribe the King's Covenant.[57] This device for securing
adherents was, however, ineffectual, for, a few weeks later, those who
had sworn to the King's Covenant, on a declaration that they had acted
under compulsion, were solemnly absolved by their minister from all
obligation to keep it.
The Royalist leaders now began to think of further projects, as the
number of their followers increased after the victory at Turriff. They
lost no time in marching upon Aberdeen, and in quartering themselves
upon its inhabitants, especially upon those who were known to belong to
the Covenanting party. In a few days, however, they found their position
untenable. A considerable number of their Highland forces disbanded, and
marched away to their homes, plundering as they went--"a thing," the
historian remarks, "verye usuall with them." The others retreated from
Aberdeen, when the Covenanting army under the Earl Marischal entered the
city, on the 23rd of May, 1639.
A small number of prominent Royalists,[58] of whom our Sir Thomas was
one, now resolved to leave Scotland, where the cause to which they were
devoted was at such a low ebb. A ship, belonging to one Andrew Findlay,
had been kept in readiness for an emergency like this, and on it they
embarked hastily, and sailed away to England, to offer their services to
Charles I. "Urquhart," says Dr Irving, "who professes to have launched
forth in the view of six hundred of his enemies, was, within two days,
landed at Berwick, where he found the Marquis of Hamilton, and delivered
to him a letter from the leaders of the northern Royalists. He had
likewise undertaken to be the bearer of despatches to the King,
containing the signatures of the same chieftains; and, having proceeded
to the royal quarters, he obtained an audience of His Majesty, and
explained to him their past exertions and future plans for his service.
He appears to have been satisfied with his own reception, and the
written answer 'gave great contentment to all the gentlemen of the north
that stood for the king.'"[59]
In one of our author's tracts, published in 1652, we have a pedigree of
the family of Urquhart. Under his own name he states that "he was
knighted by King Charles, in Whitehall Gallery, in the yeer 1641, the 7
of April." In the same year he first made his appearance as an author in
the publication of his three books of _Epigrams, Moral and Divine_, of
which a fuller notice will be found in a later chapter. Let us now for a
little leave Sir Thomas, happy in his sovereign's favour, his head
encircled with the ivy-wreath that clothes the brows of learned poets,
and his eye fixed upon a prominent crag of Mount Parnassus as henceforth
specially his own, and turn to his father, whose golden dreams have long
since fled away, and left him but the dreariest and shabbiest prose.
For thirty-six years the elder Sir Thomas had been in possession of the
ample estates of the house of Urquhart, and during nearly the whole of
this time the country had been at peace, so that he had no one but
himself to blame for the impoverished condition in which they were when
his son received them. The latter described the state of matters in the
following terms: "All he bequeathed unto me, his eldest Son, in matter
of worldly means, was twelve or thirteen thousand pounds sterling of
debt, five brethren all men, and two sisters almost mariageable, to
provide for, and lesse to defray all this burden with by six hundred
pounds sterling a year, although [_i.e._ even if] the warres had not
prejudiced me in a farthing, then [than] what for the maintaining of
himself alone in a peaceable age he inherited for nothing."[60]
So exasperated was the old man by the importunity of his creditors, that
at last, we are told, the sound of one of their voices was in his ears
as "the hissing of a basilisk." The great Civil war itself, which
brought calamity and grief to so many homes, was almost welcomed by him
for the relief it brought him from the "hornings" and "apprisings," and
other legal processes, which threatened him in times of peace. "The
disorderly troubles of the land," says his son of him, "being then far
advanced, though otherways he disliked them, were a kind of refreshment
to him, and intermitting relaxation from a more stinging disquietnesse.
For that our intestin troubles and distempers, by silencing the laws
for a while, gave some repose to those that longed for a breathing time,
and by hudling up the terms of Whitsuntide and Martimass, which in
Scotland are the destinated times for payment of debts, promiscuously
with the other seasons of the year, were as an oxymel julip wherewith to
indormiat them in a bitter sweet security."[61]
The most importunate of all the creditors, or, as Urquhart describes
them, "the usurious cormorants," who harassed the unhappy proprietor of
Cromartie, was a certain Robert Lesley of Findrassie. He held a mortgage
upon the estate, and though he was indebted to its owner for many acts
of kindness, he had been the first to foreclose upon the property, and
had persuaded other creditors to join with him in taking this step. The
annoyance and mortification caused by these proceedings hastened Sir
Thomas's death. Two days before that event, animated by regret for the
wrong he had done his heir by the impoverishment of the family property,
he assembled his younger children, and bound them, "under pain of his
everlasting curse and execration," to do all in their power to help
their elder brother. The terms of this extraordinary bond, his son tells
us, were these: "to assist, concur with, follow, and serve me, to the
utmost of their power, industry, and means, and to spare neither charge
nor travel, though it should cost them all they had, to release me from
the undeserved bondage of the domineering creditor, and extricate my
lands from the impestrements wherein they were involved; yea, to bestow
nothing of their owne upon no other use, till that should be done; and
all this under their own handwriting, secured with the clause of
registration to make the opprobrie the more notorious in case of
failing, as the paper itself, which I have _in retentis_, together with
another signed to the same sense, by my mother, and also my brothers and
sisters, Dunbugur [Dunlugas][62] only excepted, will more evidently
testifie."[63] Sir Thomas Urquhart, the elder, died in April [?], 1642,
after a long and lingering illness.[64]
Our author now returned home to enter on possession of his estates, and
to attempt to reduce to something like order the chaos in which the
family affairs were. He resolved to commit the management of his
property to trustees, who, after paying his mother's jointure, were to
devote the whole of the rest of the rents to the reduction of debt. He
himself went to live on the Continent, in the hope that in a few years
he would be able to return home and enjoy his inheritance unencumbered
by debt. These proceedings, with the disappointing results that followed
them, are related in a passage of his _Logopandecteision_, which is
worth quoting. "Immediately after my father's decease," he says, "for my
better expedition in the discharge of those burthens, having repaired
homewards, I did sequestrate the whole rent (my mother's joynture
excepted) to that use only, and, as I had done many times before, betook
myself to my hazards abroad, that by vertue of the industry and
diligence of those whom, by the advise and deliberation of my nearest
friends, I was induced to intrust with my affairs, the debt might be the
sooner defrayed, and the ancient house releeved out of the thraldome it
was so unluckily faln into. But it fell out so far otherwayes, that
after some few years residence abroad, without any considerable expence
from home, when I thought, because of my having mortified and set apart
all the rent to no other end then [than] the cutting off and defalking
of my father's debt, that accordingly a great part of my father's debt
had been discharged, I was so far disappointed of my expectation therin,
that whilst, conform to the confidence reposed in him whom I had
intrusted with my affairs, I hoped to have been exonered and relieved of
many creditors, the debt was only past over and transferred from one in
favours of another, or rather of many in the favours of one, who, though
he formerly had gained much at my father's hands, was notwithstanding at
the time of his decease none of his creditors, nor at any time mine; my
Egyptian bondage by such means remaining still the same, under task
masters different only in name, and the rents neverthelesse taken up to
the full, to my no small detriment and prejudice of the house standing
in my person. The aime of some of those I concredited [committed] my
weightiest adoes [affairs] unto, being, as is most conspicuously
apparent, that I should never reap the fruition nor enjoyment of any
portion, parcell, or pendicle of the estate of my predecessors, unlesse
by my fortune and endeavours in forrain countries, I should be able to
acquire as much as might suffice to buy it, as we say, out of the
ground. And verily," he concludes, "though not in relation to these
ignoble and unworthy by-ends, it was my purpose and resolution to have
done so, which assuredly, had not the turbulent divisions of the time
been such as to have crossed and thwarted the atchievements of more
faisible projects, I would have accomplished two or three severall ways
ere now."[65]
One is inclined to wonder what the two or three lucrative undertakings
were, which this Highland gentleman had in view when he spoke in this
way of the practicability of making enough money to purchase back his
estates. "What song the syrens sang," says Sir Thomas Browne, "or what
name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling
questions are not beyond all conjecture." But even as wise a man as Sir
Thomas Browne might well pause before venturing on a conjecture in
connection with this matter.
In one of the official records of the time,[66] there is an entry which
shows that Urquhart was resident in London in 1644. On the 9th May of
that year he is assessed for a forced loan at £1000; and, on the 16th of
the same month, there is an order for him to be brought up in custody to
pay his assessment; while, on the 21st, it is noted that his assessment
is "respited till he shall speak with the Scottish committee and take
further orders, be engaging to appear whenever required." He no doubt
proved to the committee that he had no property in London, but was only
a sojourner there, and was accordingly virtually discharged. His place
of residence in London at this time was Clare Street,[67] then newly
erected upon St Clement's Inn Fields, on the east side of Drury Lane,
and called after John Holles,[68] second Earl of Clare, whose town-house
was near by.
Sir Thomas Urquhart now resolved to take the management of his own
affairs, and, if possible, so to conduct matters as to secure
subsistence for himself, as well as satisfaction for his father's
creditors; and, in the year 1645, he went to live in the ancestral home
at Cromartie. His rental still amounted to £1000 Sterling a year, which
represents about £7000 in our time, but a debt of twelve or thirteen
years' income was a very serious burden upon such an estate.
There can be little doubt that the entanglement in which the financial
affairs of the house of Urquhart were involved became none the less
confused and confusing when the gallant knight applied himself to
unravel it. That was scarcely a task for which he was fitted. Much more
appropriate would it have been for him to draw the sword, like
Alexander, and cut the Gordian knot. Perhaps his failure, as in another
well-known case,[69] is partly to be attributed to his not having had a
legal adviser, familiar with the intricacies of the law, and able to
prevent his creditors getting more than their pound of flesh, if not to
save even that from them. Charles I. once said that he knew as much law
as a gentleman ought to know. Sir Thomas Urquhart seems to have had a
somewhat similar acquaintance with the same subject, and this, like that
of the person mentioned in the footnote on the preceding page, was
probably acquired "as a defendant on civil process." There can be no
doubt that he "made an effort" more than once. In vain did he have
recourse to "pecunial charms, and holy water out of Plutus' cellar."[70]
The charms were indeed potent, but they were not applied long enough;
the holy water was composed of the right ingredients, but there was too
little of it in the cellars at Cromartie. He could not, with all his
struggles, succeed in curing what the Limousin scholar in Rabelais calls
"the penury of pecune in the marsupie" [_i.e._ the want of money in the
purse]--that complaint which is so mortifying to the pride of any
gentleman, but which is specially exasperating to a Highland gentleman.
His cares and distresses, or, as he calls them, his "solicitudinary and
luctiferous discouragements," were enough "to appall the most undaunted
spirits, and kill a very Paphlagonian partridge, that is said to have
two hearts."[71]
Probably Sir Thomas Urquhart was harshly dealt with by his father's
creditors, though, of course, it is possible that in the story as told
by them they would appear in a more favourable light. They had to do
with a man who was unpractical and fantastical in the highest degree,
and morbidly sensitive in all matters that seemed to lower his dignity
or to cast a slur upon his honour. His brains seethed with plans for the
improvement of agriculture, trade, and education, but none of these did
the importunity of his creditors permit him to carry into effect. "Truly
I may say," he complains, "that above ten thousand severall times I have
by these flagitators been interrupted for money, which never came to my
use, directly or indirectly one way or other, at home or abroad, any one
time whereof I was busied about speculations of greater consequence then
[than] all that they were worth in the world; from which, had I not been
violently pluck'd away by their importunity, I would have emitted to
publick view above five hundred several treatises on inventions never
hitherto thought upon by any."[72] Before his imagination there floated
the dream of what he might have been, and his mind alternated between
passionate remonstrances against his unfortunate circumstances and
delusive hopes and anticipations.
The editor of the Maitland Club edition of Urquhart's works truly
remarks that there is a melancholy earnestness, almost approaching
insanity, in his wild speculations on what he might have done for
himself and his country but for the weight of worldly incumbrances.
"Even so," he says, "may it be said of myself, that when I was most
seriously imbusied about the raising of my own and countrie's reputation
to the supremest reach of my endeavours, then did my father's creditors,
like so many millstones hanging at my heels, pull down the vigour of my
fancie, and violently hold that under, what [which] other wayes would
have ascended above the sublimest regions of vulgar conception."[73]
So convinced was he that the schemes and inventions with which his
thoughts were occupied were of immense value, that he declared that he
ought to have the benefit of that Act of James III. (36th statute of his
fifth Parliament) which provides that the debtor's movable goods be
first "valued and discussed before his lands be apprised." He claimed
this as a right from the State; "and if," he says, "conform to the
aforesaid Act, this be granted, I doe promise shortly to display before
the world, ware of greater value then [than] ever from the East Indias
was brought in ships to Europe."[74] But unfortunately the Philistines
were too strong for him.
To these pecuniary difficulties were added annoyances and wrongs, which
the meekest of mankind, among whom Sir Thomas is not to be reckoned,
would have found it hard to bear.
Mention has already been made of Robert Lesley of Findrassie, the most
relentless of all the creditors, who, according to Sir Thomas
Urquhart's account of matters, made life bitter for him, and defeated
his many schemes for the benefit of the human race. The injurious
proceedings of this man form a subject which our author can never leave
for any length of time, and to which it is necessary for his biographer
to revert occasionally. His unfortunate debtor found a certain grim
satisfaction, as well as an opportunity for gratifying his taste for
genealogical research, in tracing Robert's descent from a celebrated
murderer--that Norman Lesley whose hands were dipped in the blood of
Cardinal Beaton. It is certain, however, that there was no real
foundation for this opinion.[75]
Unless Robert Lesley is a much-maligned man, his conduct towards the son
of his patron was both rapacious and ungrateful. On one occasion at
least he acted in a very high-handed manner. "With all the horse and
foot he was able to command," says Sir Thomas, "he came in a hostile
manner to take possession of a farm of mine called Ardoch; unto which
... he had no more just title then [than] to the town of Jericho
mentioned in the Scriptures; and at the offer of such an indignity to
our house, some of the hot-spirited gentlemen of our name would even
then have taken him, with his three sons, bound them hand and foot, and
thrown them within the flood-mark, into a place called the Yares of
Udol, there to expect the coming of the sea in a full tide, to carry him
along to be seized in a soil of a greater depth, and abler to restrain
the insatiableness of his immense desires, then [than] any of my lands
within the shire of Cromartie." Sir Thomas, according to his own
account, hindered the perpetration of this violence, and gave his enemy
and those who accompanied him "a pass and safe-conduct to their own
houses."[76]
Yet so far was the caitiff creditor from being touched by this proof of
magnanimity on the part of his debtor, that he applied himself with
renewed vigour to the concoction of schemes for his total destruction.
So at least Sir Thomas would have us believe. On one occasion Lesley
tried to inveigle him to Inverness, with the intention of having him
arrested at the suit of an accomplice--James Sutherland, "Tutor of
Duffus"--and kept in durance until he had satisfied all his enemy's
demands. On another occasion Lesley managed to get a troop of horse
quartered upon the tenants of Cromartie, till, says our author, "I
should transact for a sum, of money to be paid to his son-in-law; which
verily was the greater part of his portion."[77] In addition to this, a
garrison was stationed for nearly a year in the castle of Cromartie,
where they conducted themselves in a way calculated to wound and
humiliate the proud spirit of its proprietor. Among other wrongs and
losses inflicted upon him was the sequestration of his library, which he
had collected with such pains. Sir Thomas says that he sought eagerly
to be allowed to purchase back the precious volumes, but was hindered by
the spitefulness and indifference of those to whom he made application,
and was ultimately able to secure only a few of them, which had been
stolen from the collection and dispersed through the country.[78]
In an amusing passage in the _Logopandecteision_, our author gives us a
specimen of the peculiarities of speech which distinguished his
arch-enemy, Lesley of Findrassie. As we read it we seem to hear the very
tones in which he enunciated or defended his "felonious little plans."
"Several gentlemen of good account," he says, "and others of his
familiar acquaintance, having many times very seriously expostulated
with him why he did so implacably demean himself towards me, and with
such irreconciliability of rancor, that nothing could seem to please him
that was consistent with my weal, his answers most readily were these:
'I have (see ye?) many daughters (see ye?) to provide portions for, (see
ye?), and that (see ye now?) cannot be done, (see ye?) without money;
the interest (see ye?) of what I lent, (see ye?), had it been termely
[regularly] payed, (see ye?), would have afforded me (see ye now?)
several stocks for new interests; I have (see ye?) apprized[79] lands
(see ye?) for these summes (see ye?) borrowed from me, (see ye now?),
and (see ye?) the legal [time] being expired, (see ye now?), is it not
just (see ye?) and equitable (see ye?) that I have possession (see ye?)
of these my lands, (see ye?), according to my undoubted right, (see ye
now?)?' With these over-words of 'see ye' and 'see ye now,' as if they
had been no less material then [than] the Psalmist's _Selah_, and
_Higgaion Selah_, did he usually nauseate the ears of his hearers when
his tongue was in the career of uttering anything concerning me; who
alwayes thought that he had very good reason to make use of such like
expressions, 'do you see' and 'do you see now,' because there being but
little candour in his meaning, whatever he did or spoke was under some
colour."[80]
It must have been very hard for the proud-hearted chieftain to see his
farms devastated, his tenants maltreated, his library thrown to the
winds, a garrison placed in his house, and troops of horse quartered
upon his lands without any allowance, in addition to all the misery and
impoverishment which his father's wastefulness and neglect had brought
down upon his head.
In 1647 an event occurred which seriously affected the interests of our
author, and placed him in a still more humiliating position. Sir Robert
Farquhar[81] of Mounie had "apprised" the estate and sheriffship of
Cromartie, and was now confirmed in the possession of them. He proceeded
to sell his rights to (Sir) John Urquhart of Craigfintray, the
great-grandson of the Tutor of Cromartie. Immediately upon this (Sir)
John purchased a commission from Charles I. to become hereditary Sheriff
of Cromartie. In this way the ancestral domains and jurisdiction of
which Sir Thomas Urquhart was so proud virtually passed out of his
hands. It was not, however, till after the Restoration apparently that
the new proprietor entered into possession. He evidently allowed his
claims to lie dormant until the death of his cousin, Sir Thomas, and
then put them in force. Even if our author had no other troubles to
contend with, the knowledge that this Damoclean sword was suspended
above his head would have been enough to destroy his peace.
No doubt Sir Thomas sometimes thought that he was the most unlucky
chieftain the Urquhart race had yet known,--that such a multitude of
misfortunes had never come upon one who bore his name since that day
when, on a sunny plain in Achaia, wild armed men first raised Esormon
"aloft on the buckler-throne, and with clanging armour and hearts"
hailed him as "fortunate and well-beloved."[82] Sir Theodore Martin,
indeed, says that Urquhart's statements with regard to his misfortunes
should not be construed to the letter, any more than should the
announcements of his wonderful inventions and designs. They were both,
he considers, in a great degree pet objects on which he had permitted
his imagination to rest, till they had been transfigured into a
magnitude to which the reality probably bore but a faint
resemblance.[83] There is, however, ample evidence in what we have
already quoted, to show that certain of the grievances he complained of
were by no means imaginary. It is beyond dispute that he suffered
heavily in his property in consequence of his adherence to the Royalist
cause. In 1663 his brother, Sir Alexander, presented a petition asking
compensation for the losses suffered in the time of his father and
brother. The Commissioners appointed to examine into these claims
reported that, before 1650, the damage inflicted upon the Urquhart
property amounted to £20,303 Scots, and during 1651-52 to £39,203
Scots--in all £59,506 Scots, which is almost £5000 Sterling.[84]
The relations of Sir Thomas Urquhart with the ministers of the churches
of which he was patron were unfortunately of a painful character. The
grounds of misunderstanding and dispute were numerous. In addition to
political and ecclesiastical differences of opinion between the
ministers of the three parishes[85] (of which Sir Thomas was the sole
heritor) and himself, there were disputes about augmentation of
stipends,[86] which they thought inadequate but with which he had no
fault to find, the abolition of his heritable right to the patronage of
these churches, the legal proceedings taken by the incumbents to compel
him to agree to arrangements decided upon by the Presbytery with regard
to stipends and the upkeep of buildings, and there were also personal
quarrels with the ministers themselves. In the following passage he
tells his side of the story, and gives us a vivid, though not an
edifying glimpse of the parochial politics of that far-off time and
remote corner of Scotland. It is to be noticed that Sir Thomas writes
of himself in the third person. "I think," says the supposed anonymous
writer of him, "there be hardly any in Scotland that proportionably hath
suffered more prejudice by the Kirk then [than] himself; his own
ministers (to wit, those that preach in the churches whereof himself is
patron, Master Gilbert Anderson, Master Robert Williamson, and Master
Charles Pape by name, serving the cures of Cromartie, Kirkmichel, and
Cullicudden), having done what lay in them for the furtherance of their
owne covetous ends, to his utter undoing; for the first of those three,
for no other cause but that the said Sir Thomas would not authorize the
standing of a certain pew (in that country called a desk), in the church
of Cromarty, put in without his consent by a professed enemy to his
House, who had plotted the ruine thereof, and one that had no land in
the parish, did so rail against him and his family in the pulpit at
several times, both before his face and in his absence, and with such
opprobrious termes, more like a scolding tripe-seller's wife then [than]
good minister, squirting the poyson of detraction and abominable
falshood (unfit for the chaire of verity) in the cares of his tenandry,
who were the onely auditors, did most ingrately and despightfully so
calumniate and revile their master, his own patron and benefactor, that
the scandalous and reproachful words striving which of them should first
discharge against him its steel-pointed dart, did oftentimes, like
clusters of hemlock or wormewood dipt in vinegar, stick in his throat;
he being almost ready to choak with the aconital bitterness and venom
thereof, till the razor of extream passion, by cutting them into
articulate sounds, and very rage it self, in the highest degree, by
procuring a vomit, had made him spue them out of his mouth into rude,
indigested lumps, like so many toads and vipers that had burst their
gall.[87]
"As for the other two, notwithstanding that they had been borne, and
their fathers before them, vassals to his house, and the predecessor of
one of them had shelter in that land, by reason of slaughter committed
by him, when there was no refuge for him anywhere else in Scotland; and
that the other had never been admitted to any church had it not been for
the favour of his foresaid patron, who, contrary to the will of his owne
friends and great reluctancy of the ministry it self, was both the
nominater and chuser of him to that function; and that before his
admission he did faithfully protest he should all the days of his life
remain contented with that competency of portion the late incumbent in
that charge did enjoy before him; they nevertheless behaved themselves
so peevishly and unthankfully towards their forenamed patron and master,
that, by vertue of an unjust decree, both procured and purchased from a
promiscuous knot of men like themselves,[88] they used all their utmost
endeavours, in absence of their above recited patron, to whom and unto
whose house they had been so much beholding, to outlaw him,[89] and
declare him rebel, by open proclamation at the market-cross of the head
town of his owne shire, in case he did not condescend [consent] to the
grant of that augmentation of stipend which they demanded, conforme to
the tenour of the above-mentioned decree; the injustice whereof will
appeare when examined by any rational judge.
"Now the best is, when by some moderate gentlemen it was expostulated,
why against their master, patron, and benefactor, they should have dealt
with such severity and rigour, contrary to all reason and equity; their
answer was, They were inforced and necessitated so to do by the synodal
and presbyterial conventions of the Kirk, under paine of deprivation,
and expulsion from their benefices: I will not say, kakou korakost
kakon oon [an evil egg of an evil crow], but may safely think that a
well-sanctified mother will not have a so ill-instructed brat, and that
_injuria humana_ cannot be the lawfull daughter of a _jure divino_
parent."[90]
Sir Thomas Urquhart is not to be taken as infallible in the opinions
which he formed and expressed concerning the quality of the sermons
which were delivered from the Presbyterian pulpits of his time. But
there can be no doubt that he hits upon one great fault by which many of
them were marred--that of being rather political harangues than
exhortations to godliness after the Pauline fashion. Indeed, he goes so
far as to say that, as a rule, the preachers of his time seldom gave
such exhortations, as they were "enjoyned by their ecclesiastical
authority [authorities?] to preach to the times,[91] that is, to rail
against malignants and sectaries, or those whom they suppose to be their
enemies."[92] Preaching "to the times" Sir Thomas found meant in his
neighbourhood preaching against _him_; and one may be allowed, it is to
be hoped, without unduly wounding the feelings of those who admire the
Covenanters, to think sympathetically of his sufferings. Sydney Smith
once spoke of a form of capital punishment in which the victim was to be
"preached to death by wild curates." If the above description of Mr
Gilbert Anderson's sermons be true, he certainly was eminently qualified
to officiate as one of the executioners in carrying out such a death
sentence.[93]
But though Sir Thomas Urquhart was a Royalist in politics, and an
Episcopalian in religion, he was certainly no bigot in his devotion to
the King or the Church. In a passage in _The Jewel_, he plainly declares
his belief "that there is no government, whether ecclesiastical or
civil, upon earth that is _jure divino_, if that divine right be taken
in a sense secluding all other forms of government, save it alone, from
the privilege of that title."[94] Indeed, he treats such an idea as
merely a pious fraud, by which despotism is established and maintained
at a very cheap rate over tender consciences by threatening them with
the vengeance of Heaven in case of disobedience. Such a man was not
likely to be a blind partisan of any cause. Differences in religious
beliefs and practices he attributed to differences of temperament among
individuals, and to climatic and national peculiarities; and in no
obscure terms he hints that he was of the opinion of Tamerlane, "who
believed that God was best pleased with diversity of religions, variety
of worship, dissentaneousness of faith, and multiformity of
devotion."[95] However powerfully such opinions may appeal to a certain
class of minds, it is hard to conceive of their being associated with
deep religious feeling; and accordingly we can scarcely be wrong in
concluding that one of the reasons why Sir Thomas Urquhart held aloof
from the Covenanting movement was that he was at the antipodes to the
majority of his fellow-countrymen in the matter of religious belief. A
certain measure of aversion, suspicion, and horror is still manifested
by many towards those whose creed is supposed to be of too limited and
negative a character; and we can easily believe that in the middle of
the seventeenth century this attitude was taken up even more openly and
emphatically. On a later occasion, when, as we shall relate, Sir Thomas
Urquhart applied to the Commission of the General Assembly to pardon his
having taken part in the capture of Inverness, his case was referred to
the minister of that town, Mr John Annand, "that he might confer with
him [Sir Thomas] concerning some dangerous opinions, which, as is
informed, he hes sometimes vented."[96] In the view of the Commission of
Assembly the guilt of cherishing "dangerous opinions" was as great as
that of rekindling the flames of civil war, if, indeed, it did not
surpass it.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] The utter chaos which resulted from the fusion of religion and
politics may be estimated from the fact that, in the October of 1650,
there were in the narrow bounds of Scotland four different armies, at
enmity with each other, and each prepared to maintain with the sword a
different cause, namely, the Scottish (Presbyterian) army under General
Lesley, for King and Covenant combined; the English (Independent) army,
under Cromwell, which was against both; the Highland army, under General
Middleton, which was for the King without the Covenant; and the
Westland, or ultra-Covenanting army, which was for the Covenant without
the King.
[45] Gordon's _Scots Affairs_, i. 49, 50. James Gordon (? 1615-1686) was
minister of Rothiemay in Banffshire. His _History of Scots Affairs from
1637 to 1641_ is one of the principal authorities for this period. It
has no pretensions to style, but is correct and impartial. It was first
published in 1841 by the Spalding Club.
[46] Early in the year 1638 some account was given to King Charles of
the chief persons in the north of Scotland whom he might regard as
faithful to his cause. "In Rosse," it was said, "Sir Thomas Urqhward,
Sheriff of Cromerty, with his following, but they [are] environed with
Covenanters, ther neighbours" (_ibid._ i. 61).
[47] _A History of the University of Aberdeen, 1495-1895_, by J. M.
Bulloch, p. 110.
[48] These courageous worthies were the bishop's son, Dr John Forbes,
Professor of Divinity in King's College; Dr Robert Baron, Professor of
Divinity, and minister in Aberdeen; Dr Alexander Scrogie, minister of
Old Aberdeen; Dr William Leslie, Principal of King's College; and Drs
James Sibbald and Alexander Ross, both ministers in Aberdeen.
[49] _History of Scotland_, vi. 235.
[50] See note on p. 123.
[51] Towie-Barclay is the name of an estate in the south-east corner of
Turriff parish, Aberdeenshire, near Auchterless Station, and four and a
half miles south-east of Turriff. The castle is supposed to have been
built in 1593. It remained pretty perfect till 1792, was re-roofed in
1874, and retains a fine baronial hall with vaulted ceiling. From at
least the beginning of the fourteenth century till 1733, the estate
belonged to the Barclays, one of whose line was the celebrated Russian
general, Prince Michael Barclay de Tolly (1759-1818). In 1792 it was
sold to the governors of Gordon's Hospital, Aberdeen, for £21,000. Towie
is a corruption of Tolly. See Billing's _Baronial Antiquities_, vol. iv.
[52] Balquholly, now Hatton Castle: a Square, castellated mansion of
1814, with finely wooded grounds, in Turriff parish, three and a quarter
miles south-east of Turriff. It comprises a considerable fragment of the
ancient baronial castle of Balquholly (Gael. _bailecoille_, "town in the
wood"), the seat of the Mowats from the thirteenth century till 1729,
when the estate was sold to Alexander Duff, Esq. Sir Thomas Urquhart
must either have rented the house from the Mowats, or have obtained
leave to keep arms there. The cellars in which the arms were probably
kept are exactly as they were in 1638, except that the old loop-holes
are partly filled up. The name of the mansion was changed to Hatton
Lodge in 1745, and to Hatton Castle in 1814, when the modern part was
built--Hatton being the name of the property in Auchterless, which
previously belonged to the Duff family. The present proprietor is Garden
Alexander Duff, Esq., who succeeded to the estates in 1866. There is
behind Hatton Castle a small croft called Cromartie (see Ordnance Map),
probably from our author's occupancy of Balquholly or connexion with it.
[53] An ancestor of Lord Byron.
[54] Spalding's _Memorials_, i. 185. Until within living memory the
exact site of Prott's [or Pratt's] grave was pointed out; but it is now
quite obliterated by being ploughed over repeatedly.
[55] MS. _Epigrams_: The Animadversion.
[56] "Ther fell only two gentlemen upon the Covenanters syde: one Mr
James Stacker, a servant to the Lord Mucholles; and one Alexander
Forbesse, servante to Forbesse of Tolqhwone: upon the Gordons syde, one
common foote souldiour killed, (by the unskilfullnesse of his owne
comerades fyring ther musketts, as was thoughte), whom the Gordons
caused burye solemnly, that day, out of ane idle vante, in the buriall
place of Walter Barcley of Towey, within the church of Turreffe; not
without great terror to the minister of the place, Mr Thomas Michell,
who all the whyle, with his sonne, disgwysd in a womans habite, had gott
upp and was lurkinge above the syling of the churche, whilst the
souldiours wer discharging volleyes of shotte within the churche, and
peircing the syling with ther bulletts in severall places" (Gordon's
_Scots Affairs_, ii. 258). The reader will keep in mind that Gordon was
the family name of the Marquis of Huntly.
[57] This was originally the King's Confession, and was drawn up in 1580
by John Craig, minister of Holyrood House, and subscribed by James VI.
and his household on 28th January, 1580-81. It is printed at length in
Row's _Historie of the Kirk of Scotland_. It reaffirms the Confession of
Faith of 1560, but contains also a solemn renunciation in great detail
of the errors of Popery. It was approved by the General Assembly in
April, 1581. A "General Band [Bond] for Maintenance of the true
Religion" was added in 1588. The National Covenant of 1637 was an
amplification of the previous Confessions, containing in addition an
abjuration of Episcopal Church-government, as the King's Confession did
of Popery. In September, 1638, Charles I. issued a proclamation for the
Scottish people to subscribe this King's Confession and General Band,
but the Covenanters regarded this as a subtle plot to divide them, and
destroy the National Covenant, and, therefore, protested against the
proclamation. The Confession and Band so subscribed, for it was
subscribed by some, got the name of the "King's Covenant." It did not,
of course, contain the abjuration of Episcopal Church-government. Those
who adhered to it were called Malignants; while the name Covenanters was
applied to those who subscribed the National Covenant.
[58] Among those who made their escape from Aberdeen along with Urquhart
were Adam Bellenden, the bishop of the diocese; Alexander Innes,
minister of Rothiemay; Alexander Scrogie, a Regent of King's College;
together with the bishop's son, nephew, and servant (Spalding's
_Memorials_).
[59] _Lives of the Scottish Writers_, vol. i.; Urquhart's MS.
_Epigrams_: The Animadversion.
[60] _Works_, p. 340.
[61] _Works_, p. 346.
[62] Dunlugas is in the parish of Alvah, close by the river Deveron, on
the east side.
[63] _Works_, p. 341.
[64] "He was alive last Whitsuntide! said the coachman....
Whitsuntide!--alas! cried Trim.... What is Whitsuntide, Jonathan, or
Shrovetide, or any tide or time past, to this!" (_Tristram Shandy_, vol.
v. chap. vii.).
Our author states (_Works_, p. 341) that "his father's death occurred in
August in the year 1642, some four yeares after the hatching of the
Covenant." He is, however, very careless in details of fact, and is in
error concerning this date. Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, is termed
"_umqll_" (_i.e. "the late"_) in the Burgess Roll of Banff, on 14th
June, 1642 (_Annals of Banff_, ii. 418). Perhaps the date was April
instead of August. The Covenant was signed 1st March, 1638.
[65] _Works_, pp. 346, 347.
[66] _Calendar of Proceedings of Committee for Advances of
Moneys-Taxes_, i. 381.
[67] The neighbourhood is now a cluster of narrow, dirty streets and
passages, lined chiefly with butchers' and grocers' shops, which
overflow into the adjacent streets, and are supplemented by fishmongers
and miscellaneous stalls and barrows--a crowded, noisy, and unsavoury
place on Saturday nights. In 1640, Charles I. granted his licence to
Thomas York, his executors, etc., to erect as many buildings as they
thought proper upon St Clement's Inn Fields, the inheritance of the Earl
of Clare. He issued another licence in 1642, permitting Gervase Holles,
Esq., to make several streets of the width of thirty, thirty-four, and
forty feet. These streets still retain the names and titles of their
founders--Clare Street, Denzil Street, and Holles Street. Clare Street
is somewhat rich in interesting associations. There is a letter of
Steele's to his wife, dated from the Bull Head Tavern in this street,
24th August, 1710. It seems likely that he was hiding there. Mrs
Bracegirdle, a celebrated actress of that time, "was in the habit of
going into that neighbourhood, and giving money to the poor
basket-women, insomuch that she could not pass without having thankful
acclamations from people of all degrees." It was to Clare Street and
Clare Market that Jack Sheppard went, after his escape from Newgate: he
there bought a butcher's frock and woollen apron, which he was wearing
when captured at Finchley. Here was Johnson's Hotel, celebrated for
upwards of seventy years for its _à la mode_ beef. Isaac Bickerstaffe,
too, lived in this street.
[68] John Holles, created Baron Houghton of Houghton, in the county of
Nottingham, in 1616, and Earl of Clare in 1624.
[69] "If I had known that young man [Uriah Heep]," said Mr Micawber, "at
the period when my difficulties came to a crisis, all I can say is, that
I believe my creditors would have been better managed than they were"
(_David Copperfield_, chap. xvii.).
[70] _Works_, p. 347.
[71] _Ibid._ p. 346. For the authority on which this interesting
ornithological statement is made the reader will overhaul his Pliny (_H.
N._ xi. chap. 3).
[72] _Works_, p. 326.
[73] _Works_, p. 328.
[74] _Ibid._ p. 325.
[75] Norman Lesley, Master of Rothes, eldest son of George, fifth Earl
of Rothes, died without issue in 1554. This disposes of Sir Thomas
Urquhart's statement. The Lesleys of Findrassie themselves claimed to be
descended from Robert, the fourth son of Earl George. See _Scotch
Peerage Law_, by J. Riddell, p. 190.
[76] _Works_, p. 379.
[77] _Ibid._ p. 380.
[78] One of these volumes containing the signature of our author is
still in existence. It is a copy of Arthur Johnston's Latin poems,
printed at Aberdeen by Raban, 1632, and is in the possession of the Rev.
J. B. Craven, Kirkwall. It is a very fragile volume. The signature in
this volume, and two others, attached to legal documents, are all that
are known to be extant. We give a fac-simile of one of the latter on p.
iv.
[79] "_Apprizing_" is a legal process to which Sir Thomas several times
refers with great horror, and it may be as well to explain to our
readers what it was, for fortunately it is now a thing of the past. It
was for long the only method of attaching a debtor's heritable property.
By the Act, 1469, c. 36, when payment of a debt could not be obtained
out of the debtor's movables (including rent), "the King's letters might
be obtained, under which a debtor's land might be sold by the Sheriff to
the amount of his debts, and the creditor paid out of the proceeds. If
within six months no purchaser could be found, a portion of the land
equal to the debt was to be apprised by thirteen men chosen by the
sheriff, and the portion apprised by them was to be made over to the
creditor." The debtor could redeem within seven years. This procedure at
first took place in the head burgh of the shire, where the jury probably
knew enough to make a fair valuation of the land. But after a time the
proceedings often took place in Edinburgh, where the jury had no special
knowledge, and might be packed by the creditor. So that large estates
were sometimes carried off in payment of trifling debts. The appriser at
once entered into possession, and was not obliged to account for the
rents (until 1631, c. 6). It was thus a powerful engine of oppression.
If A. wished B.'s land, and B. owned land and nothing else, it was
possible for A., if he could only get B. as his debtor even in a small
sum, so to work matters that for the debt he might apprise all B's land.
Being then in right of B.'s rents, he had B. completely in his power,
and B. had no resources for gathering together the amount of the debt
which he must pay in order to redeem his lands within the seven years
allowed. The law was much relaxed by the Act, 1621, c. 6, but the above
will enable us to understand how an unscrupulous creditor might get an
easy-going, thriftless man into his clutches, and impoverish him and his
family.
[80] _Works_, p. 382. The evident meaning of the last sentence is that
Lesley's ways were so dark that it was highly necessary for him often to
ask, "See ye?" Yet one cannot help feeling that this relentless creditor
may not have been solely animated by malignant hatred of his debtor.
Even in the above speech there seem to be claims which cannot be lightly
brushed aside. One is again reminded of Mr Micawber, and of the sudden
and unexpected glimpse of a better nature in his most truculent
creditor, which was vouchsafed him when he got his discharge in
bankruptcy. "Even the revengeful bootmaker," we are told, "declared in
open court that he bore him [Mr M.] no malice, but that when money was
owing to him he liked to be paid. He said he thought it was human
nature" (_David Copperfield_, chap. xii.). An eminent American
philosopher has said that there is a great deal of human nature in man.
There seems at any rate to have been a great deal in Mr Lesley of
Findrassie.
[81] In one of his queer _Epigrams_, after comparing the insatiable
demands of his creditors to those of the grave and of the sea, he closes
with the following alliterative litany:
"Free me from Farcher, Fraser, Fendrasie."
[82] "His subjects and familiars surnamed him [Esormon] ourochartost,
that is [to] say, 'fortunate and well-beloved'" (_Works_, p. 156).
[83] Rabelais, p. xv.
[84] _Acts of the Parliament of Scotland_, vol. vii. 479, _a_, _b_.
[85] The parish of Cromartie consists of the north-east portion of the
peninsula called the Black Isle, terminating eastward in the precipice
called the Southern Sutor, and stretches for about four miles along the
shore of the Moray Firth on the east, and about six along that of the
Firth of Cromartie on the north and west. To the west of the parish of
Cromartie were situated the joint parishes of Kirkmichael and
Cullicudden, on the southern shore of the Cromartie Firth. In Sir Thomas
Urquhart's time these were separate parishes, but they were united in
1662, and a new church was built at Resolis, in Kirkmichael, near the
border of Cullicudden. The newly constituted parish bore and still bears
the name of Resolis.
[86] In his _Logopandecteision_ he speaks of the "stipauctionarie tide"
which began to overflow the land. He thought "with sufficient bulwarks
of good argument to have stayed the inundation thereof from two of his
churches"; but, he says, "I was violently driven like a feather before a
whirlewind, notwithstanding all my defences, to the sanctuary of an
inforced patience" (_Works_, p. 352). He does not, however, appear to
have stayed long in this sanctuary, or else the shelter it afforded was
but imperfect. His "_stipauctionarie_" (_i.e._ stipend-increasing)
reminds us of Mr Micawber's calling his salary his "_stipendiary
emoluments_."
[87] The attention of the reader is specially directed to the marvellous
felicity and vigour of the above description. Sir Thomas himself has
never written anything better in its way.
[88] We fear that this is meant as a description of a presbytery.
[89] The reference is to the process of "horning" described on p. 16.
[90] _Works_, p. 280-282.
[91] That Sir Thomas Urquhart is not exaggerating matters in speaking of
such injunctions being given by ecclesiastical authorities, is proved by
the following well-known passage in the memoir prefixed to the _Works_
of Archbishop Leighton:--"It was a Question asked at [of] the Brethren,
both in the classical and provincial Meetings of Ministers, twice in the
Year, If they preached the Duties of the Times? And when it was found
that _Mr Leighton_ did not, he was quarrelled [_sic_] for this Omission,
but said, _If all the Brethern have preached to the_ TIMES, _may not one
poor Brother be suffered to preach on_ ETERNITY?"
[92] _Works_, p. 280.
[93] The notice given us by Sir Thomas of Mr Anderson's preaching makes
us desirous of knowing more about him; but, unfortunately, only a very
few facts concerning him are known. He was born in 1597; he graduated at
Aberdeen in 1618; was settled at Cawdor, near Nairn, some time before
30th October, 1627; was transferred to Cromartie between 5th October,
1641, and 11th January, 1642; died in November, 1655, and was succeeded
in the benefice by his son Hugh (Scott's _Fasti_).
[94] _Works_, p. 276.
[95] _Ibid._ p. 261.
[96] See p. 83.
CHAPTER III
Unsuccessful Rising in the North--Sir Thomas makes his Peace with the
Church--Return of Charles II. to Scotland--Invasion of
England--Battle of Worcester--Sir Thomas a Prisoner in the
Tower--Makes Friends--Is liberated on Parole--Great Literary
Activity--Revisits Scotland--Dies--Later History of the Urquharts
of Cromartie--Characteristics of our Author--Glover's Portraits of
him.
Shortly after the news of the execution of Charles I. reached Scotland,
a rising on the part of some of the leading Cavaliers in the north took
place, with the view of restoring the Royal Family. The most prominent
person in this attempt was Thomas Mackenzie of Pluscardine, a younger
brother of George, the second Earl of Seaforth, who for nearly ten years
past had managed the affairs of the family, and was looked up to, both
on account of his ability and also on account of the great territorial
influence he represented. He had seen a good deal of service abroad, and
was at one time governor of Stralsund.[97] Along with him, and only
second to him, was our Sir Thomas Urquhart, to whom even civil war was
scarcely more fraught with anxiety and danger than was the life he had
been forced to lead for some time past. Together with them were
associated eight other Royalists of good standing,--among whom Colonel
Hugh Fraser of Belladrum and John Munro of Lemlair had a certain
pre-eminence,--and these ten formed a kind of revolutionary committee
for the control of the movement they had set on foot, and the government
of the district that might become subject to them.
Montrose had determined, on hearing of the execution of the King, to
renew the war in Scotland, but Pluscardine and his associates did not
wait for his arrival. Charles was beheaded on Tuesday, the 30th of
January, 1649, and, by the 22nd of the next month, the Scottish
gentlemen in the north had already taken the field, and captured
Inverness. Four days after, on Monday, 26th February, a meeting of the
Committee of War was held in that town, the minutes of which are still
in existence,[98] and contain the name of our author next in order to
that of Pluscardine himself.
The Committee passed certain enactments, by which they took into their
own hands the customs and excise of the six northern counties--Inverness,
Sutherland, Cromartie, Caithness, Nairn, and Elgin. An inventory of all
the ammunition of the garrison was ordered to be taken. It was also
decided that Sir Thomas's house at Cromartie should be put in a state of
defence, and that the work should be carried out by the tenants of Sir
James Fraser, a bitter Parliamentarian, and opponent of the Stuarts in
the north, and by those of our knight's old enemy, Lesley of
Findrassie.[99] It is easy for unregenerate human nature to understand
the pleasure with which the members of the Committee of War would give
this last order. By another enactment, the Committee declare that they
consider it expedient for their safety that the works and forts of
Inverness be demolished and levelled with the ground, and they ordain
that each person appointed to this work should complete his proportion
of it before eight days have passed, "under pain of being quartered upon
and until the said task be performed."
On the 2nd of March, Mackenzie of Pluscardine, Sir Thomas Urquhart, and
their associates, were proclaimed as rebels and traitors by the Estates
of Parliament,[100]--as "wicked and malignant persouns intending so far
as in thaine lyes, for their own base ends to lay the foundation of a
new bloodie and unnaturall warre within the bowells of this their native
country," etc. etc.
On the 1st of March the Commissioners of the General Assembly had
written to Pluscardine and his associates expressing their wonder and
grief at such a rising in the interests of "the Popish, Prelaticall and
Malignant party," and threatening the penalty of excommunication within
ten days if they would not "desist from and repent of that horrid
insurrection."[101] The reply to this letter came in due time, and was
signed by the principal leader in the insurrection, and by some other
members of the Clan Mackenzie, and is, it must be confessed, a
distinctly prevaricating and hypocritical document. For one sentence at
least in it our author was responsible, though he neither signs the
letter nor is named in it. His pedantic phraseology reveals his hand in
the construction of the reply to the Commissioners' remonstrances and
threats.
The letter is addressed "to the Honourable and Right Reverend," and
begins as follows:--"Wee have lately received yours of the first of
Merch, 1649, for the which and your wisdomes Christian care of ws, and
your fatherly admonition to ws, we humbly and heartily rander yow all
possible thanks." This lamb-like tone is maintained with admirable
gravity all through the epistle, and is combined with a canting
phraseology which was meant to be impressive, but which must have
entertained any members of the Commission of the General Assembly who
originally possessed and still retained a sense of humour. "And quheras
[whereas]," so it goes on, "your wisdomes taks it a matter of no lesse
wonder then [than] greife that we, being vnder the oath of God and tye
of our Nationall Covenant, would make insurrection and take armes
against the Lords people, certainly, if it were so, we acknowledge your
wisdomes had reason to wonder and to be grieved. And it is no lesse
winder and griefe to ws, being wnder the said oath and tye of Covenant,
furthering the same with all our power and meanes, and at all occasions
desireing nothing els then [than] the enjoying of the liberty of the
subject, and proprietie of our goods, intended and promised in and by
our Covenant." No one who has read any of Sir Thomas Urquhart's original
works can doubt that the next sentence was either composed or revised by
him. The two phrases which we have taken the liberty of putting into
italics could scarcely have occurred to any other member of the
Committee of War. "Yet we find, that evill willers and envyous
vnderminers, _in a singular and proetextuous way_ aiming at our ruine,
doe spend _the quintessence of their witts_ to find out means whereby,
under specious pretences of the publick [good?] to extermine ws with
povertie, and by inventing fresh occasions to make ws odious, and bring
ws vpon fresh stages [_sic_] vnder the base name of Malignancy." It is
unnecessary to quote the whole of the letter, but a couple of sentences,
which describe what the insurgents had done at Inverness, deserve
notice. "But the whole countrey of all degrees, being sensible of the
oppression and insolency of the vnnecessary and vnprofitable garison of
Innernes to Church or State, did heartily and vnanimously contribute to
the demolishing thereof, which being done, all disbanded peaceablie, and
the people retired peaceablie to their owne homes, without offence to
any nighbour of any degree or condition.... And now, when the said
garison is dismantled, we shall be found not only disposed to live
peaceablie, bot also ready to obey all publick ordours for the good of
the Kingdome." The writers ask that "the taxes and impositions," which
pressed with special severity on the class to which they belonged,
should be remitted, and liberty given them to lead that religious,
peaceful life, to which both by nature and by deliberate choice, they
seem to say, they were strongly inclined. The sting of the letter is in
its closing words. If these "evill willers" succeed in persuading the
Commissioners of Assembly to go on with the sentence of excommunication,
as fully deserved, they (the writers) formally appeal against such a
decision from the Commission to the next General Assembly.[102]
The ecclesiastical court to which the above letter was sent _may_ have
contained a goodly sprinkling of fanatics, but it is certain that in it
there were but few, if any, imbeciles; so that the communication from
the Committee of War did not succeed in imposing upon those to whom its
contents were read. They did not condescend to answer it, but at once
issued a pamphlet, entitled _A Declaration and Warning to all Members of
this Kirk_, "to recover, if possible, the disturbers of the peace of
God's people out of the snare of Sathan, and to prevent others from
falling therein." The document displays very genuine indignation and
dismay at the possibility of the negotiations which were being carried
on for restoring Charles II. as a "covenanted king" to the throne of his
ancestors, being defeated, and of his coming back as an arbitrary ruler
and oppressor of the Church. Those who have any doubt about the
deterioration of both religion and politics when they are fused
together, should read this and other State Papers of the period, and
their eyes would be opened. The calm assumption by the writers that
political opponents are the enemies of God, the claim to knowledge of
the Divine purposes and counsels, the free use of the most sacred words
of Scripture, the dark fanaticism which inspires so many of the
utterances, and the intense passion which makes so many of them sound
like mere raving--all combine to make these documents very painful
reading. A circular letter of warning and exhortation was sent to
Presbyteries, attempts were made to persuade individuals to disconnect
themselves from the insurrectionary movement, and a message of
encouragement was sent to Lieutenant-General David Lesley to strengthen
his hands in the work of putting it down by fire and sword.[103]
The insurgents, after demolishing the fortifications of Inverness,
retired before the troops sent to suppress them, and took refuge among
the mountains of Ross-shire. Lesley advanced to Fortrose and garrisoned
the castle there, and then proceeded to endeavour to make terms with the
leaders of the insurrection. The only one who would listen to no
accommodation was Mackenzie of Pluscardine. Immediately on Lesley's
return south, he descended from the mountains, and attacked and took the
castle of Chanonry. Our Sir Thomas Urquhart was now safely out of the
conflict, but our readers may wish to know what became of the
insurrectionary movement which he had such a large share in setting on
foot, and from which he found it prudent to retire at an early stage.
Mackenzie's force was brought up to eight or nine hundred men by the
accession of his nephew, Lord Reay, with three hundred followers. Soon
afterwards he was joined by General Middleton and Lord Ogilvie, and
advanced into Badenoch, with the view of raising the people in that and
the neighbouring districts. In what is called the Wardlaw MS. a very
vivid picture is given of the behaviour of the Highlanders from the Reay
country, when they poured into Inverness on the morning of Sunday, the
2nd of May, 1649. "They crossed the bridge of Ness," says the Royalist
minister of Kirkhill, "on the Lord's Day in time of divine service, and
alarmed the people of Inverness, impeding God's worship in the town. For
instead of bells to ring in to service I saw and heard no other than
the noise of pipes, drums, pots, pans, kettles, and spits in the streets
to provide them victuals in every house. And in their quarters the rude
rascality would eat no meat at their tables until the landlord laid down
a shilling Scots upon each trencher,[104] calling this '_airgiod
cagainn_' (chewing-money), which every soldier got, so insolent were
they."
The campaign was a very brief one. The Royalists, joined by the Marquis
of Huntly, attacked and took the castle of Ruthven, but, soon after,
being hardly pressed by Lesley, they turned southwards and took up their
quarters in Balvenie Castle. General Middleton and Mackenzie were
despatched to treat with Lesley, but before they reached their
destination, the troops from Fortrose, after a rapid march, surprised
the Royalist forces at Balvenie. A fierce engagement took place, in
which both sides suffered severely.[105] Eighty of the insurgents fell
in defence of the castle. The Highlanders were dismissed to their homes
on swearing never again to take up arms against the Parliament; while
their leaders were sent as prisoners to Edinburgh, where most of them
were set free soon after, on payment of fines, and on giving security
that they would keep the peace. By sharp and vigorous action the
remaining sparks of insurrection in the north were stamped out, and
fresh bodies of troops were stationed in the principal strongholds of
that part of the country. Thus ended a rising which would probably have
had a very different result, if it had been postponed until the arrival
of Montrose.
The same writer[106] who gave an account of the riotous and insolent
demeanour of the Highland soldiers in Inverness, furnishes us with a
companion-picture--that of them on their way back to their homes after
their defeat at Balvenie. It is as follows:--"Next twenty horse, and
three companies of foot, were ordered to convey the captives back over
the Spey, and through Moray to Inverness, where I saw them pass through;
and those men who, in their former march, would hardly eat their meat
without money, are now begging food, and, like dogs, lap the water which
was brought them in tubs and other vessels in the open streets. Thence
they were conducted over the bridge of Ness, and dismissed everyone
armless and harmless to his own house. This is a matter of fact which I
saw and heard."
The profound feelings of anxiety which this abortive attempt at
insurrection had excited in the minds of the ecclesiastical rulers of
Scotland are very clearly indicated by the exuberance of joy with which
the tidings of the victory at Balvenie were received by the Commission
of Assembly.[107] They instantly decided to appoint a solemn Day of
Thanksgiving, on the 25th of May, for "the Lord's mercifull defeat of
the enemies of the peace of this land."[108] They tacked on a postscript
to the above-mentioned _Declaration and Warning_, containing a
statement of the causes of the Thanksgiving, and ordered both to be read
from all the pulpits in Scotland. Letters of congratulation were
despatched to the victorious officers, and to others who had been
faithful in the recent crisis, and full particulars of what had taken
place were sent to the Commissioners of Scotland at the Hague, who were
engaged in the negotiations with "the young man, Charles Stuart." In the
last-mentioned document there is a flicker of grim humour, as the
writers send intelligence of the destruction of the hopes which news of
the rebellion might have excited in the minds of Charles and his
friends. The last sentence in the letter can scarcely have been written
or read without a smile. "We have appointed," they say, "the twenty-fift
day of Maij for a solemn thanksgiving for this and other late mercies,
wherewith we thought good to acquaint yow, that yow manage this to the
best advantage of the work in your hands, according as yow shall thinke
fitt."[109] It was once said of a good man that he would have been
better if he had had a little more of the devil in him; and one is
inclined to think more highly of these good men for the touch of malice,
which relieves the sombre character of their communication.[110]
The threatened bolt of excommunication was not launched, but our author
found it necessary to apply to the Commission of General Assembly in
order to make his peace with the ecclesiastical power. Accordingly, on
the 22nd of June, 1650, he appeared in Edinburgh before this body, and
presented his "supplicatioun" for pardon for the guilt of taking part in
the Northern insurrection, and of assaulting and razing the walls of
Inverness.
The Commission met, doubtless, in that "little roome of [off] the East
Church" of St Giles, which Baillie describes as having been "verie
handsomelie dressed for our Assemblies in all time coming,"[111] and
from which, three years later, the English officers, under Cromwell's
order, ejected the members of the General Assembly. The Commission on
that day, when our author appeared before them, consisted of twenty-four
members--the most distinguished divines and politicians in Scotland of
the Covenanting party. The moderator, or chairman, was Robert
Douglas,[112] "a great State preacher," who had been chaplain to the
Scots troops in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, and had won the esteem
of that monarch, and who in little more than six months' time would
officiate at the coronation of Charles II., for whom Sir Thomas Urquhart
had prematurely drawn the sword. Beside him was Samuel Rutherford, the
Principal of St Andrews, whose fervid piety has found no lack of
admirers in every generation since his time. Robert Baillie, the writer
of the _Letters_ which contain so many vivid pictures of events in that
stirring period; David Dickson, Professor of Divinity in Glasgow, whose
name we have heard as one of the deputation to persuade the people of
Aberdeen to take the Covenant; and James Guthrie, who died as a martyr,
the year after the Restoration, were present there that day. The
contrast between these grave, dignified, saintly Covenanting leaders,
and the brilliant Cavalier, Sir Thomas Urquhart, is one which, by its
picturesqueness, strongly impresses the imagination.
The Commission, after hearing the petitioner's statements, did not,
apparently; treat the matter as of very serious moment. The dangerous
crisis was over, and they could afford to be merciful. They seem to have
condoned the political offence, but referred Sir Thomas to Mr John
Annand, minister of Inverness, one of their number, "that he might
confer with him concerning some dangerous opinions which, as was
informed, he had sometimes vented." If these could be explained away,
and no further complicity in disloyal schemes were brought home to him,
Mr Annand was empowered, acting at all times under the advice of the
Presbytery of Inverness, to receive his public "satisfaction" in the
church of that city. How the matter ended we do not know. But there is
very little doubt that Sir Thomas's nebulous heterodoxy proved no bar to
his being freed from ecclesiastical censure, and that, in due course,
according to the custom of that time, he stood, as a penitent, before
the congregation of the Parish Church, in that city the walls of which
he had assisted to assault and overthrow.
A fortnight after Sir Thomas Urquhart's appearance before the Commission
of the General Assembly, Charles II. landed in Scotland, and was
accepted, though at first not without deep misgivings, as "covenanted
King." The party to which our author belonged was for a time excluded
from all share in public life; and even the army, which was to defend
the sovereign against the English sectaries, was carefully sifted, to
remove those whose presence might bring a curse upon it. So that, though
the land resounded with war and the rumour of war, Sir Thomas remained
in an enforced quietude in his castle at Cromartie. The effect of the
battle of Dunbar (3rd September) was to depress the faction which had
excluded the Royalist partisans from the army, and kept the King himself
in something very like bondage. Charles II., indeed, is said to have
given thanks to God for the victory of Cromwell over the Covenanting
forces at this battle, and the only difficulty in the way of believing
this statement lies in the fact that he so seldom gave thanks for
anything.
The Royalist party now began to rally about their sovereign. Charles II.
was crowned at Scone on the 1st January, 1651, and in due time an army,
which included many of the so-called Malignants, was ready for trying
conclusions once again with the terrible English General. And now for
the third time our author took up arms on behalf of the Stuarts. After
some months of endless marchings and counter-marchings, in which
Cromwell evidently endeavoured to provoke his enemies into a repetition
of the blunder by which they had lost the battle of Dunbar, the Scottish
forces found an opportunity of marching into England.
The latter, under David Lesley, had taken up a strong position on the
height of the Tor Wood, between Stirling and Falkirk, from which they
refused to be drawn out to battle; and Cromwell resolved to take up his
post on the other side of the Royalist army. Accordingly, he crossed the
Forth at Queensferry, and, after defeating an attempt to intercept him
at Inverkeithing, reached and occupied Perth. The way to England was now
open, and the Scottish army swiftly and silently entered upon it,
resolved to stake everything upon a great battle.
Sir Thomas Urquhart left his castle of Cromartie, and took part in this
expedition, though apparently he held no position of command in the
army, and was very much out of sympathy with many of those who journeyed
with him. Indeed, his unfortunate prejudices against the Presbyterian
and Covenanting party come out in the statement he makes, that many of
those who started out to smite "the Midianites and Philistines," when it
came to the push, managed to make their way home, "being loth to hazard
their precious persons, lest they should seem to trust to the arm of
flesh."[113] The mass of those, however, who formed the Scottish army
were of very different mettle, and the battle in which they staked and
lost everything was one of the fiercest in the whole of the great Civil
War.
The course of their journey southward was through Biggar and Carlisle,
and then through Lancashire. To their disappointment, they received no
great accession of Royalists, nor of any others who were inclined to
join them in the attempt to overthrow the Commonwealth. "They marched,"
says the historian, "under rigorous discipline, weary and uncheered,
south through Lancashire; had to dispute ... the Bridge of Warrington
with Lambert and Harrison, who attended them with horse-troops on the
left; Cromwell with the main army steadily advancing behind. They
carried the Bridge at Warrington; they summoned various Towns, but none
yielded; proclaimed their King, with all force of lungs and heraldry,
but none cried, God bless him. Summoning Shrewsbury, with the usual
negative response, they quitted the London road; bent southward towards
Worcester, a City of slight Garrison and loyal Mayor; there to entrench
themselves, and repose a little."[114] Yet but slight opportunity for
this was given them. The course taken by Cromwell was through York,
Nottingham, Coventry, and Stratford-on-Avon, and when he arrived at
Worcester with his army from Scotland, and with the county militias, who
had risen at his summons, his forces numbered over thirty thousand men
as against the enemy's sixteen thousand.
Meantime Sir Thomas Urquhart had taken up his quarters in Worcester, in
the house of a Mr Spilsbury, "a very honest sort of man, who had an
exceeding good woman to his wife." His luggage, which was stored in an
attic, consisted, besides "scarlet cloaks, buff suits, and arms of all
sorts," of seven large "portmantles," three of which were filled with
unpublished works in manuscript, and other valuable documents--the
amount of which he gives us in quires and quinternions, but which need
not be repeated here. "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than
war," sang Milton in his sonnet to the Lord General Cromwell; and
perhaps Sir Thomas Urquhart hoped, after achieving victory in war, to
win a second set of laurels by means of the contents of the three
"portmantles."
On the evening of the 3rd September, the anniversary of the battle of
Dunbar, and afterwards to be the date of Cromwell's own death, the
battle of Worcester was fought, and the Royalist cause utterly
shattered. "The fighting of the Scots," says Carlyle, "was fierce and
desperate. 'My Lord General did exceedingly hazard himself, riding up
and down in the midst of the fire; riding, himself in person, to the
Enemy's foot to offer them quarter, whereto they returned no answer but
shot.' The small Scotch Army, begirdled with overpowering force, and cut
off from help or reasonable hope, storms forth in fiery pulses, horse
and foot; charges now on this side of the River, now on that;--can on no
side prevail. Cromwell recoils a little, but only to rally and return
irresistible. The small Scotch Army is, on every side, driven in again.
Its fiery pulsings are but the struggles of death: agonies as of a lion
coiled in the folds of a boa. 'As stiff a contest,' says Cromwell, 'for
four or five hours as ever I have seen.'"[115]
The conquered lost six thousand men, and all their baggage and
artillery; and Charles only with difficulty, and after many romantic
adventures, succeeded in escaping to the Continent when the fight was
over. Ten thousand prisoners, including eleven of the Scottish nobility,
were taken. The sufferings of many of these brave men were severe in the
extreme. Some perished from want of food and from gaol diseases, and
large numbers of the survivors were shipped for the plantations, and
sold as slaves.
Sir Thomas Urquhart, and, apparently, more than one of his brothers,
were among the prisoners, but appeared to have fared better than many of
their companions in arms. The greatest of the misfortunes that fell upon
him was, in his estimation, the sad fate that overtook his precious
manuscripts. The whole story, related in his own inimitable style, may
be read in Chapter VI. It is enough to say here that a party of
marauders broke into his quarters in search of valuables, that they
forced open the "portmantles" and turned their contents out upon the
floor, and afterwards carried off the papers to use them for wrapping up
articles of plunder, and for lighting their pipes. Fortunately some
bundles of these papers were afterwards picked up in the streets and
brought back to him, and in due time found their way to the printer's.
After the battle of Worcester, Sir Thomas Urquhart and some of the other
Scottish gentlemen who had been taken prisoners there were confined in
the Tower of London. He seems to have speedily gained the favour of his
captors, and to have been treated with remarkable leniency. Indeed, he
speaks in terms of affectionate respect of various officers of the
Parliamentary army from whom he had received kindness, and acknowledges
courtesies extended towards him by the Lord General himself. Thus he
places on record his indebtedness to a "most generous gentleman, Captain
Gladmon," for speaking in his favour to the Protector. And of another,
whom he calls the Marshal-General, in whose charge he had been placed,
he has set down the praise in the following elaborate sentence:--"The
kindly usage of the Marshal-General, Captain Alsop, whilst I was in his
custody, I am bound in duty so to acknowledge, that I may without
dissimulation avouch, for courtesies conferred on such as were within
the verge of his authority, and fidelity to those by whom he was
intrusted with their tuition [oversight of them] in that restraint, that
never any could by his faithfulness to the one and loving carriage to
the other bespeak himself more a gentleman, nor in the discharge of that
military place acquit himself with a more universally-deserved applause
and commendation."[116]
The severity of his imprisonment was soon abated; and he was removed
from the Tower to Windsor Castle,[117] and not long after, by the orders
of Cromwell, was paroled _de die in diem_.[118] The comparative liberty
he now enjoyed enabled him to repair the loss of his manuscripts after
the battle of Worcester, and he set himself to make the best of the
fragments he had recovered, and to prepare them for publication, as well
as to compose new material. A paragraph in the Epilogue of one of his
works, in which he describes his warm appreciation of the measure of
freedom he now enjoyed, is worth quoting. "That I, whilst a prisoner,"
he says, "was able to digest and write this Treatise, is an effect
meerly proceeding from the courtesie of my Lord General Cromwel, by
whose recommendation to the Councel of State my parole being taken for
my true imprisonment, I was by their favour enlarged to the extent of
the lines of London's communication; for had I continued as before,
coopt up within walls, or yet been attended still by a guard, as for a
while I was, should the house of my confinement have never been so
pleasant, or my keepers a very paragon of discretion, and that the
conversation of the best wits in the world, with affluence of all manner
of books, should have been allowed me for the diversion of my minde, yet
such all antipathie I have to any kinde of restraint wherein myself is
not entrusted, that notwithstanding these advantages, which to some
spirits would make a jayl seem more delicious then [than] freedom
without them, it could not in that eclipse of liberty lie in my power to
frame myself to the couching of one sillable, or contriving of a fancie
worthy the labour of putting pen to paper, no more then [than] a
nightingale can warble it in a cage, or linet in a dungeon."[119]
Another friend whom Sir Thomas Urquhart found in the time of need was
the celebrated Roger Williams, the apostle of civil and religious
liberty, and the founder of the settlement of Providence, Rhode Island,
and missionary to the Indians. In the Epilogue to the _Logopandecteision_
he thus acknowledges his obligations to him: "[I cannot] forget my
thankfulness to that reverend preacher Mr Roger Williams of Providence,
in New England, for the manifold favours wherein I stood obliged to him
above a whole month before either of us had so much as seen other, and
that by his frequent and earnest solicitation in my behalf of the most
especial members both of the Parliament and Councel of State; in doing
whereof he appeared so truely generous, that when it was told him how I,
having got notice of his so undeserved respect towards me, was desirous
to embrace some sudden opportunity whereby to testifie the affection I
did owe him, he purposely delayed the occasion of meeting with me till
he had, as he said, performed some acceptable office worthy of my
acquaintance; in all which, both before and after we had conversed with
one another, and by those many worthy books set forth by him, to the
advancement of piety and good order, with some whereof he was pleased to
present me, he did prove himself a man of such discretion and
inimitably-sanctified parts, that an Archangel from heaven could not
have shown more goodness with less ostentation."[120]
The years 1652 and 1653 form a period of astonishing literary activity
on the part of our author, for no fewer than five separate works were
then published by him, two of which were of very considerable bulk. The
motive that had led him to bring out his two former works--the
_Epigrams_ and _The Trissotetras_--had been a desire to benefit mankind
and to advance the glory of his native land. But now he had to consider
his own interests, and to exert himself to promote them. Accordingly,
his present aim was to convince his captors of his extraordinary merits
and gifts, and of the incomparable glory of that family which he had the
honour of representing.
In 1652 he issued his PANTOCHRONOCHANON; _or, a Peculiar Promptuary
of Time_, of which a detailed description is given in Chapter V. The
object of this treatise is to show the Protector and the English
Parliament that the family of the Urquharts could be traced back, link
by link, to the red earth out of which Adam was made, and to suggest how
lamentable it would be, if the ruling power extinguished a race which
had successfully resisted the scythe of Time, and was capable of
rendering great services to the State.
This small treatise was closely followed by a more important production,
upon which Sir Thomas's fame as an author largely rests--his
EKSKYBALAURON; _or, The Discovery of a most Exquisite Jewel_. The
title of this work is intended to be an abbreviation of a Greek
phrase--"_Gold from a dunghill_"--and contains an allusion to the fact
that the first half of it was, in its manuscript form, one of the
bundles of paper which the soldiers treated with such disrespect after
the battle of Worcester, and which, indeed, was found next day in a
kennel of one of the streets of that city. This book, a fuller account
of which we give later on, consists of an introduction to a work on a
Universal Language, to which is added a rhapsodical panegyric on the
Scottish nation, and an account of his fellow-countrymen who had been
famous as scholars or soldiers during the previous fifty years.
In the course of the early part of 1652 Urquhart had in some way excited
the suspicions of the Government, and in the month of May his papers
were seized by the authorities. Nothing treasonable, however, was found
among them, and probably the harmless character of his pursuits, which
was thus brought to light, made a favourable impression upon the Council
of State. For, a few weeks later, he was allowed, in answer to a
petition which he presented to the Council, and which was referred to
Cromwell, to return to Scotland to arrange his private affairs, and to
be absent for five months.[121] The only condition imposed upon him was
that during this time he should do nothing to the prejudice of the
Commonwealth.
Sir Thomas Urquhart's creditors had been told that he had been killed
at the battle of Worcester, and, as he says in his own characteristic
way, "for gladness of the tidings [they] had madified [moistened] their
nolls to some purpose with the liquor of the grape,"[122] and had
possessed themselves of all his property. When they were assured by
letters from himself that he was still alive, they claimed payment for
debts which had been long discharged, under the impression that the
receipts had perished along with other papers after the battle. They
even plotted, we are assured, to arrest our author in London, after he
had been liberated upon parole. By the thoughtful discretion of a
Captain Goodwin, of Colonel Pride's regiment, the receipts in question
had been saved out of the spoil of Worcester, and Sir Thomas Urquhart
was able to display them to the unjust creditors. "And when," he says,
"they saw that those their acquittances ... were produced before them,
they then, looking as if their noses had been ableeding, could not any
longer for shame retard my cancelling of the aforesaid bonds."[123]
In the midst of so many complaints of the iniquity of creditors, it is
gratifying to find Sir Thomas acknowledging that there was one of that
class who treated him with forbearance and even with kindness. His
thankfulness at discovering this green oasis in the arid desert in which
so much of his life had been passed, is expressed in his own
characteristic way. "But may," he says, "William Robertson of Kindeasse,
or rather _Kindnesse_ (for so they call this worthy man), for his going
contrary to that stream of wickedness which carryeth head-long his
fellow-creditors to the black sea of un-christian-like dealing, enjoy a
long life in this world, attended with health, wealth, a hopeful
posterity, and all the happiness conducible to eternal salvation; and
may his children after him, as heires both of his vertues and means,
derive [transmit] his lands and riches to their sons, to continue
successively in that line from generation to generation, so long as
there is a hill in Scotland, or that the sea doth ebbe and flow. This
hearty wish of mine, as chief of my kinred [kindred], I bequeath to all
that do and are to carry the name of Urquhart, and adjure them, by the
respect they owe to the stock whence they are descended, for my father's
love and mine to this man, to do all manner of good offices to each one
that bears the name of Robertson."[124]
His old enemy, Lesley of Findrassie, endeavoured in vain to persuade the
officers of the English garrison, then stationed in Urquhart's house at
Cromartie, to arrest him as a prisoner of war, and keep him in
confinement "till he [Lesley] were contented in all his demands."[125]
An attempt was also made to apprehend him at Elgin; but he escaped all
these machinations, and, after travelling in safety through many of the
principal towns of Scotland, returned to London within the specified
time, and gave himself up to the Council of State.
In the course of the year 1653 Sir Thomas Urquhart published the last of
his original works--his _Logopandecteision_, and the translation of the
first two books of Rabelais, in connection with which his name is best
known. The object of the former of these was to suggest a wonderful
scheme for a universal language, with the idea of being restored by the
Government to the full possession of his liberty, and of being
reinstated in the position of power and wealth, which he maintained was
his by hereditary right, in order to carry out the scheme. His hopes and
anticipations of success in this appeal to the English Government were
not daunted by the fact that to do what he required would need several
legislative changes, a reversal of proceedings in Scottish courts of
law, and a substantial grant from the Treasury. This, after all, he
considered, was a very small price to pay for the benefits he would
thereby confer upon the world. That the appeal was not successful needs
scarcely be told. Probably in no country in the world, and at no period
in history, could any be found more likely to turn a deaf ear to such
requests, than such men as Cromwell, Fleetwood, and Overton. Men like
these were too practical, and of too hard a nature, to be impressed by
any such visionary schemes as those which their prisoner delighted in
constructing.
A veil of obscurity hangs over the closing years of our author's life.
His last appearance before the public was in the issuing of the books
above mentioned. The only further record of him is in the continuation
of the Pedigree of the Urquharts, which is contained in the Edinburgh
edition of his Tracts. In this we read that "he was confined for several
years in the Tower of London; from whence he made his escape, and went
beyond seas, where he died suddenly in a fit of excessive laughter, on
being informed by his servant that the King was restored."[126] If this
account of matters be true, it would seem that Sir Thomas had forfeited
some of those privileges which he had won so soon after he had become a
State prisoner. It is quite possible that this was in consequence of
having joined in some Royalist plot against the Commonwealth and for the
restoration of Charles II.
In the preface to the second book of Rabelais, Sir Thomas promises very
speedily to translate the three remaining books of that author, so that
the whole "Pentateuch of Rabelais," as he calls it, might be in the
hands of English readers. But this design was never completed. The
translation of the third book was found among his papers, and was
published in 1693 by Pierre Antoine Motteux, but it is probable that the
editor himself had some share in the work as issued to the public.
Sir Theodore Martin considers that there is a strong presumption against
the truth of the above account of Sir Thomas's death, in his entire
silence during the long period which elapsed between the publication of
his last work and 1660, the date of the Restoration of Charles II.
"Men," he says, "so deeply smitten with the _cacoëthes scribendi_ as
Urquhart was, do not thus readily cast the pen aside; nor was the lack
of a publisher likely to have stood in the way of his literary career.
His writings, if for no other cause but the number of his friends, must
always have been a safe speculation for a printer, at a time when
printing was cheap and readers numerous. But the imperfect state of his
translation of Rabelais is perhaps the best evidence of the inaccuracy
of the current belief.... Motteux says that Urquhart's version 'was too
kindly received not to encourage him to English the three remaining
books, or at least the third, the fourth and fifth being in a manner
distinct, as being Pantagruel's voyage. Accordingly he translated the
third book, and would have finished the whole, had not death prevented
him.' This bears hard against the supposition of that event having
occurred upwards of six years after the two first books had been given
to the world. It is probable that he died much sooner, a victim in all
likelihood to that fiery restlessness of spirit,
'Which o'er-informs its tenement of clay,
And frets the pigmy body to decay.'"[127]
This conjecture is, however, improbable. A petition from our author's
brother, Sir Alexander Urquhart, is still in existence, in which he asks
for a new commission of hereditary Sheriffship of Cromartie to be made
out for him, on the ground of his being the eldest surviving son of the
Sir Thomas Urquhart who died in 1642.[128] Though this document is
undated, it is assigned by the editor of the volume of State Papers in
which it is to be found, to August of 1660. If this date be
trustworthy, we may be almost sure that the traditional statement as to
the year of our author's death is correct.
The cause of his giving up his literary labours, and of omitting to
carry through the work of translation on which he had entered, is, of
course, unknown to us. His health, physical or mental, may have become
seriously impaired, or his spirits may have been too much depressed by
the misfortunes that crowded upon him, to allow him to engage in
literary work. Indeed, the alleged cause of death from violent agitation
of feeling caused by hearing of the Restoration of Charles II., argues
in itself a previous condition of great physical weakness.
There seems at first, a certain grotesqueness in such a fatal exuberance
of joy in connexion with such an event as Charles II. regaining the
crown which his father had lost, and of which in another generation all
of his blood were to be deprived. But we have to keep in mind that Sir
Thomas was not alone in his folly, if folly it were; for a great wave of
exultation swept over the three kingdoms at that time. Our author had,
like many of his fellow-Royalists, staked and lost everything he
possessed in the defence of the House of Stuart, and one can have little
difficulty in understanding how the announcement of the triumph of the
cause, which was so dear to him, should have agitated him
profoundly.[129]
Sir Alexander Urquhart failed to recover possession of either the barony
or the Sheriffship of Cromartie, and a year after the supposed date of
his petition, he is said to have ratified his cousin's rights,[130] and
in 1663 he formally "disponed" the estate (_i.e._ his title to it) to
Sir John.[131] The new possessors were, however, as unfortunate as
their immediate predecessors, for in no very long time they were
overwhelmed by distresses like those which had burdened and embittered
the lives of our author and his father. In 1682 the celebrated Sir
George Mackenzie, whose name, like that of Queen Mary of England, is
usually associated with an unenviable epithet, as that of a cruel
persecutor,[132] "apprized" the estate from Sir John's[133] son,
Jonathan.[134]
No one who knows what this means[135] will be surprised to hear that it
soon afterwards passed into his possession. On his elevation to the
peerage (1685) as Viscount Tarbat, first Earl of Cromartie, he put his
third-born son, Sir Kenneth, into possession of the estate, with the
view of establishing a branch of his family to be known as the
Mackenzies of Cromartie. This plan was doomed to be defeated, for Sir
Kenneth's son George had no family, and sold the estate to Captain
William Urquhart of Meldrum in 1741.[136] The lands were again sold to
Patrick, Lord Elibank,[137] in 1763, and by him to George Ross of
Pitkerrie, nine years afterwards. Mr Ross had amassed a large fortune in
England as an army agent,[138] and part of this he expended in the
purchase of the estate, and in the extensive improvements which he
effected in it. One wishes he had not thought it desirable to pull down
the picturesque old castle, which had stood on the mote-hill of
Cromartie for three hundred years, and which had sheltered so many
generations of the Urquhart family. Let us now, however, return to our
author.
In telling the story of Sir Thomas Urquhart's life, some of his most
striking peculiarities have been displayed and illustrated, so that no
one who has read the foregoing pages is altogether dependent upon what
may now be said for forming an estimate of his character. His vanity is
perhaps the most striking trait in it; but only a very hard-hearted
moralist would call it a vice in his case, for it is as artless as it is
boundless, and is combined with so much kindness of heart and generosity
of feeling, that we are more entertained by it than indignant at it. No
one who looks into his works can doubt the intensity of his patriotism.
Indeed, his passionate longing after personal fame is in all cases
combined with the wish to confer additional glory upon the land of his
birth. His devotion to the Royalist cause[139] is of the purest and most
heroic type, and the general tone of his character, as revealed to us in
his books, is elevated and noble. At the same time there is an element
of the grotesque in it, so that in his disinterested and chivalrous
disposition he reminds us of Don Quixote,[140] while in his frequent
allusions to struggles with pecuniary difficulties, as well as in his
use of magniloquent language, he distinctly recalls Wilkins Micawber. A
lively fancy, a strain of genuine erudition beneath his pedantry, and
some sparks of insanity, are other elements in his fantastical
character. Only a mind like his own could trace the maze of its windings
and turnings, and fathom the depths of its eccentricity. In his thoughts
"truth is constantly becoming interfused with fiction, possibility with
certainty, and the hyperbolical extravagance of his style only keeps
even pace with the prolific shootings of his imagination."[141]
It is perhaps expected that one should, in a measure, apologize for the
eccentricities of Urquhart's character and literary style, by explaining
that he was a humourist. But, unfortunately, humour is a quality in
which Urquhart was lacking, unless we understand by the word mere
fantastical quaintness of thought and speech. In one passage of his
works he speaks with contempt of "shallow-brained humourists,"[142] and
we should wrong his ghost by putting him among those whom he abhorred.
Not a single trace of that subtle, graceful play of fancy and of feeling
which enters into our conception of humour is to be found in his
works.[143] His readers may smile as they turn over his pages, but he
is always in deadly earnest. The quality of wit he occasionally
manifests in the form of keen sarcasm, when he gives full vent to his
feelings of scorn and contempt; as when, for example, he describes those
who went out to fight, "but did not hazard their precious persons, lest
they should seem to trust to the arm of flesh."[144]
He can never give a simple statement of matters of fact. Thus in his
account of the Admirable Crichton, instead of saying that the rector of
the university addressed a few complimentary sentences to Crichton, and
that the latter replied in the same vein, he says: "In complements after
this manner, _ultro citroque habitis_, tossed to and again, retorted,
contrerisposted, backreverted, and now and then graced with a quip or a
clinch for the better relish of the ear, being unwilling in this kind of
straining curtesie to yeeld to other, they spent a full half-hour and
more."[145] Everything must be dressed up "with divers quaint and
pertinent similes" before it is fit to be introduced to the reader's
notice. To quote again from the most accomplished literary critic who
has written upon him: "History, philosophy, science, literature are
ransacked for illustrations of the commonest subject. His fancy is ever
on the alert, and you are constantly surprised by some incongruous
image, begotten in its wanton dalliance with knowledge the most
heterogeneous. He has always an eye to effect. His own learning must be
brought into play, rhetorical tropes must flourish through his periods,
'suggesting to our minds two several things at once,' and, of course, as
diverse as possible, that 'the spirits of such as are studious in
learning may be filled with a most wonderful delight.'"[146] His style
reacts upon and controls his thoughts, and often carries him, as
Ariosto's Hippogriff carried Astolfo, up into the skies, whither those
are unable to follow him who are mounted on humbler animals, or have no
other means than those with which they were born for plodding along the
dusty roads of earth.
If we can trust the two engraved portraits of Sir Thomas Urquhart which
have come down to us, he was a man of handsome presence, and accustomed
to deck himself in all the splendour of costume to which so many of his
brother-cavaliers were addicted. George Glover, the famous engraver,
drew both the portraits of him which are extant. One of these appears as
a frontispiece to the _Epigrams_ and to the _Trissotetras_. It is a
small whole-length, and represents Sir Thomas in rich dress,[147]
holding out his hand to receive from some allegorical personage a
laurel wreath "for Armes and Artes."[148] On a table beside him are his
hat and embroidered cloak. In the vacant spaces on each side of the
upper part of the figure are his name and titles: "S^r Thomas Urchard,
Knight, of Bray and Udol, etc., Baron of Ficherie and Clohorby, etc.,
Laird Baron of Cromartie and Heritable Sheriff thereof, etc." The
portrait is described as taken from the life, and engraved in 1641;[149]
and beneath it is a couplet by W. S., as follows:
"Of him whose shape this Picture hath design'd,
Vertue and learning represent the Mind."
Who W. S. was we do not know. The date forbids our identifying him with
the Bard of Avon. He was probably one of those mysterious personages,
who were always at hand to write epistles of commendation to works by
Sir Thomas, and to testify on their "book-oath" to his gifts and graces.
The second engraved portrait is of great rarity, and only one impression
of it is known to be in existence. It was probably meant to be a
frontispiece to the unpublished volume of Epigrams described on p. 116,
the title of which was to have been _Apollo and the Muses_, but which
never found its way into print. In this engraving Sir Thomas is depicted
as seated with great complacency upon Mount Parnassus, in the midst of
the Muses, seven of whom are pressing upon his attention wreaths of
laurel of which he is worthy, "for Judgment, Learning, witt, Invention,
sweetness, stile." At his feet is the sacred fountain of Castalia or
Hippocrene, into the waters of which the other two Muses are sportively
dipping "sprinklers" or asperges. One of them seems inclined to give Sir
Thomas a sprinkling, but refrains, either because it was unnecessary or
for fear of spoiling his nice clothes. In the background, the winged
horse Pegasus is flying sufficiently low down to allow a woman to pluck
a couple of feathers from his wings.[150] These are no doubt intended
to provide pens for Sir Thomas's next literary undertaking. In the
further distance are several feathered creatures, which are probably
meant for poetical swans, but which bear a painful likeness to prosaic
geese. At the foot of the picture in one corner we have Apollo, playing
on his lyre; and on the ground in front are a half-starved dragon and a
snake, writhing in impotent rage, as they witness the triumph of Sir
Thomas. We can hardly be mistaken in concluding that these last are
symbolical representations of envious and carping critics.
[Illustration: The Poet surrounded by the Muses.]
FOOTNOTES:
[97] _Antiquarian Notes_, by C. Fraser-Mackintosh, p. 156.
[98] _Antiquarian Notes_, pp. 155-158; _History of the Clan Mackenzie_,
by Alex. Mackenzie.
[99] The enactment in question runs as follows:--"It being thought
expedient by the said Committee that the house of Cromartie be put in a
posture of defence, and that for the doing thereof it is requisite some
faill [turf] be cast and led, the said Committee ordains all Sir James
Fraser's tenants within the parochins [parishes] of Cromartie and
Cullicudden, together with those of the Laird of Findrassie, within the
parochin of Rosemarkie, to afford from six hours in the morning to six
hours at night, one horse out of every oxengait [= about 13 Scotch
acres] daily for the space of four days to lead the same faill to the
house of Cromartie." Of this enemy, Sir James Fraser, our author
remarked at a later time with regrettable bitterness, that he knew only
one good thing about him, and that was that he was dead.
[100] _Acts of the Parliament of Scotland_, vi. 392.
[101] _General Assembly Commission Records_, 1648-49, p. 220.
[102] _General Assembly Commission Records_, 1648-49, pp. 249, 250.
[103] _General Assembly Commission Records_, 1648-49, pp. 252-262.
[104] Strangely enough, in Hope's _Anastasius_, a Tatar messenger
travelling through Asia Minor to Constantinople is described as acting
in the same insolent manner. "He would not," says Anastasius, "even
after the daintiest meal in the world, forego the douceur he expected
for what he used to call the wear and tear of his teeth" (ii. 320).
[105] An account of the battle is given in a letter addressed by the
victorious generals, Ker, Halket, and Strachan, to the Moderator of the
Commission of Assembly, dated 9th May, 1649. In it they say: "We were in
Innernes vpon Sunday at night, when we received intelligence that the
enemie were come from Torespay to Balvine, presently to discusse ws
(_sic_). We could not hear from the Livetennent-Generall [Lesley], and
the enemy was making himselfe strong in many severall quarters in [the]
countrie. We conceived it better to suppresse nor [than] to be
suppressed. We in our weak maner beged the Lords direction, that His
blissing might wait His owne and our labours, and, with great freedome
concluded to march with all expedition to Torispay, intelligence having
come certaine that they were lyeing in Balveine at a wood, where we
engaged with them; and there the Lord delivered them vnto our hands. We
were not abone six score fighting horsemen and tuelfe muskiteires. We
had some more, but they were wearied. We have at this tyme about 800
prisoners, betuixt 3 or 4 scoir killed, and tuo or thrie hundred fled.
My Lord Rae and all the officers are, according to the capitulatioun,
prisoners; the rest are to be conveyed to their countrey, after we
receive order from the publick; and therefore we shall expect such
further directions from you as you shall thinke fit, for securing and
obliging, by oath, such as shall returne to their countrey" (_General
Assembly Commission Records_, 1618-49, p. 263). There is a genuine
Cromwellian ring about the phrases "beged the Lord's direction," and
"the Lord delivered them vnto our hands," which we cannot help admiring;
and there is a beauty of its own in the phrase "with great freedome" in
the connection in which it stands.
[106] Wardlaw MS.
[107] The Commission of the General Assembly is each year nominated by
that body, and is responsible to it, and is empowered to dispose of all
items of business remitted to it, and to act in the interests of the
Church during the months between the meeting of the Assembly which
nominated them, and that to which they report their proceedings. They
are authorised to meet on certain specific days, and oftener, when and
where they think fit. The next General Assembly may reverse their
sentences, if they have exceeded their powers, or have acted in any way
which is considered prejudicial to the interests of the Church.
[108] _General Assembly Records_, 1648-49, p. 264.
[109] _General Assembly Records_, 1648-49, p. 270. The instructions
given to the Commissioners suggest the process known to us in modern
times as "rubbing it in" (the phrase is a technical one).
[110] In March of the following year, 1650, occurred the descent of
Montrose on the north of Scotland, which ended so disastrously for him.
After spending a few weeks in the Orkneys, where he collected a few
recruits, he landed in Caithness, and proceeded into Sutherland, where
he suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Strachan and Halket, the
generals who had successfully suppressed the insurrection in the north
in the previous year. Montrose was taken prisoner, and was executed in
Edinburgh, on Tuesday, 21st May, 1650.
[111] Baillie's _Letters_ (Edinburgh, 1841), ii. 84.
[112] Robert Douglas (1594-1674) had been chaplain to a brigade of
Scottish auxiliaries, sent with the connivance of Charles I. to the aid
of Gustavus Adolphus, in the Thirty Years' War. He was minister of the
second charge of the High Church, Edinburgh, and then of the Tolbooth
Church, and was five times Moderator of the General Assembly (1642,
1645, 1647, 1649, and 1651). Wodrow says, "He was a great man for both
great wit, and grace, and more than ordinary boldness and authority and
awful majesty appearing in his very carriage and countenance." Burnet
affirms that he had "much wisdom and thoughtfulness, but was very silent
and of vast pride" (_Dictionary of Nat. Biog._ xv. 347).
[113] _Works_, p. 279.
[114] Carlyle's _Oliver Cromwell_, iii. 148.
[115] Carlyle's _Oliver Cromwell_, iii. 154.
[116] _Works_, p. 408.
[117] _Cal. State Papers, Dom._
[118] _Ibid._
[119] _Works_, p. 408.
[120] _Works_, p. 419. Roger Williams (c. 1600-c. 1684) was himself a
remarkable man. He was a native of Wales, was educated at Oxford, and
entered into holy orders; but his aversion to the government and
discipline of the Church of England led him to seek for greater freedom
in America. He was a strenuous asserter of religious toleration at a
time when it was little understood and less practised anywhere. His
liberty of thinking and speaking led to his being banished from
Massachusetts; and, thereupon, he purchased a tract of land from the
Indians, and founded a settlement, which he named Providence. At the
time when he generously interceded in favour of Sir Thomas Urquhart, he
was residing in London as the agent of the new settlement, of which he
was afterwards chosen president. He was on intimate terms with Cromwell,
Milton, and other leading Puritans, and consequently would be in a
position to render great service to his friend Urquhart.
[121] The leave granted was for five months from the 14th of July, 1652.
Before the expiration of this time, Sir Thomas asked for liberty to stay
for six weeks longer in Scotland, and this was granted (_Acts of
Parliament_, vol. vi. pt. 2, p. 748_b_).
[122] _Works_, p. 377.
[123] _Ibid._ p. 378.
[124] _Works_, p. 384.
[125] _Ibid._ p. 380.
[126] P. 37.
[127] _Rabelais_, p. xiv.
[128] _Cal. State Papers, Domestic_, 1660-61, p. 237.
[129] In the preface to a new translation of Rabelais by W. F. Smith,
Esq., Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, some doubt is cast upon
the above narrative of Sir Thomas's death. Mr Smith remarks, "This looks
something like an imitation of Rabelais in his account of the death of
Philemon." The reference is to the following passages in Rabelais, who
alludes to the story no fewer than three times. In Book i. 10, we read:
"Just so the heart with excessive joy is inwardly dilated, and suffereth
a manifest resolution of the vital spirits, which may go so farre on,
that it may thereby be deprived of its nourishment, and by consequence
of life itself, by this Pericharie or extremity of gladnesse, as Galen
saith ... and as it hath come to passe in former times ... to Philemon
and others, who died with joy." In chap. xx. some more particulars are
given of the case: "As Philemon, who, for seeing an asse eate those
figs, which were provided for his own dinner, died with force of
laughing." But in Book iv. 17, we are told the whole story: "[Neither
ought you to wonder at] the death of Philomenes, whose servant, having
got him some new figs for the first course of his dinner, whilst he went
to fetch wine, a straggling ... ass got into the house, and, seeing the
figs on the table, without further invitation, soberly fell to.
Philomenes coming into the room, and nicely observing with what gravity
the ass eat its dinner, said to his man, who was come back, 'Since thou
hast set figs here for this reverend guest of ours to eat, methinks it
is but reason thou also give him some of this wine to drink.' He had no
sooner said this, but he was so excessively pleased, and fell into so
exorbitant a fit of laughter, that the use of his spleen took that of
his breath utterly away, and he immediately died." The story is taken
from Lucian (makrobiui, c. 25) or from Valerius Maximus (ix. 12), in
which in the Paris folio edition (1517) the name is given as Philomenes.
There is undoubtedly a resemblance between the account of Philemon's
death and that of our author, but we think it can only be accidental.
The editor of the Edinburgh edition of the Tracts is, as I have said,
our only authority for the story of Urquhart's death; but there is no
adequate reason for doubting it. He seems to have been well versed in
the history of the Urquhart family, which he brings up to date, and must
have derived his information from some members of it. It would be
strange if in little more than a century after our author's death, an
utterly mythical account of it should have sprung up and found a place
among the details of family history. According to Lowndes's
_Bibliographer's Manual_, the editor of the volume was David Herd, the
well-known antiquary. If this statement be correct, we have all the more
reason to rely upon the supplementary information the volume contains,
as Herd's acquaintance with Scottish history and biography was very
extensive and accurate. In one of the _Notes Ambrosianæ_ (_Blackwood's
Magazine_, September, 1832), a highly extravagant version is given of
Urquhart's death. It is intended to be humorous, but is merely flat and
silly. Only those can smile at it who have been trained up to believe
that the _Notes_ contain exquisite humour, and who have, therefore, been
accustomed to welcome passages from it as mirth-inspiring. The statement
made in this mention of Urquhart, that his death was caused by excessive
alcoholic celebration of the happy event of the Restoration, is utterly
baseless and offensive; and it is a pity that in Allibone's _Dictionary_
and in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ this article in
_Blackwood's Magazine_ should be referred to as one of the sources of
information concerning Urquhart. The author of it had not access to any
other account of Sir Thomas's death than that given in the
above-mentioned edition of the Tracts.
[130] _Acts of Parliament_, vii. 70.
[131] _Inverness Sasines._ The date when Sir Alexander Urquhart received
knighthood seems to be approximately fixed by the fact that in a grant
under the Privy Seal of 5th March, 1661, he is called Alexander, and in
a notice of him of the 29th of the same month and year he appears as Sir
Alexander (_Acts of Parliament_, vii. 93). From the fact that in this
year the succession to the estates and hereditary Sheriffship of
Cromartie were entered upon by his cousin Sir John Urquhart of
Craigfintray, it was taken for granted by the editor of the Tracts
(Edinburgh, 1774) that Sir Alexander had died. This error is repeated by
Hugh Miller, and by most of those who have made any reference to him. He
was still alive in 1667, for during that year he sold his salmon
fishings in Over-rak and the King's Water to John Gordon (see also _Acts
of Parliament_, vii. 537). He is spoken of as _quondam_ in a charter of
certain lands which had belonged to him, 19th June, 1668. His cousin,
Sir John Urquhart, received knighthood about the same time; at least he
appears in Parliament as Sir John, 1st January, 1661 (_Acts of
Parliament_, vii. 4).
[132] "There was the Bluidy Advocate Mackenyie, who, for his worldly wit
and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god" ("Wandering Willie's Tale"
_Redgauntlet_, chap. xi.).
[133] There is said to have been some tragedy in connection with the
death of this Sir John Urquhart. According to Wodrow, as quoted by Hugh
Miller, after having posed as an ultra-Presbyterian, he became the
friend and counsellor of the Earl of Middleton, Charles II.'s
Commissioner for Scotland, under whom Presbyterianism was overturned and
Episcopacy set up in its place (1661). Tradition says that "about eleven
years after the passing of the Act, he fell into a deep melancholy, and
destroyed himself with his own sword in one of the apartments of the old
castle. The sword, it is said, was flung into a neighbouring draw-well
by one of the domestics, and the stain left by his blood on the walls
and floor of the apartment was distinctly visible at the time the
building was pulled down" (_Scenes and Legends of the North of
Scotland_, p. 111). Tradition is wrong, however, in saying eleven years
after 1661; for on August 7th, 1677, Sir John, along with others,
received a commission "for putting the laws against conventicles and
other disorders into execution" (_Wodrow_, ii. p. 366).
[134] On the death of Jonathan's son, Colonel James Urquhart, in 1741,
the shadowy honour of the headship of the family passed to the Urquharts
of Meldrum, who were descended from the Tutor of Cromartie by a third
marriage with Elizabeth Seton, only daughter of Alexander Seton of
Meldrum, and ultimately heiress of that estate. The last male
representative of this line was Major Beauchamp Colclough Urquhart, who
closed a promising career by a heroic death at the battle of Atbara, in
the Sudan, on 8th April, 1898. His sister, Isabel Annie, is wife of
Garden Alexander Duff, Esq., Hatton Castle, Turriff.
[135] See p. 58.
[136] Pococke, in his _Tour through Scotland_ (1761), says of the castle
of Cromartie: "It has fallen into the hands of one Mr Urquhart, who had
commanded a Spanish Gally, and died a Convert to Popery; which slip his
son, now eighteen years old, has in some degree recovered, by conforming
to the Church of England" (p. 176; _Scottish History Society_).
[137] In the old Statistical Account of Cromartie, and in the preface to
the Maitland Club edition of Urquhart's Works, the estate is said to
have passed into the hands of Sir William Pulteney.
[138] Mr Ross is mentioned in the _Letters_ of Junius (see those of 29th
November and 12th December, 1769). He was succeeded by his nephew, from
whom the present proprietor of Cromartie, Major Walter Charteris Ross,
is descended.
[139] Our Sir Thomas's memory should be cherished by defenders of the
name and fame of Mary Queen of Scots, for he goes so far as to say that
"ignorance, together with hypocrisie, usury, oppression, and iniquity,
took root in these parts [Scotland], when uprightness, plain-dealing,
and charity, with Astroea, took their flight with Queen Mary of Scotland
into England." Probably few of her admirers would be so daring as to
assert this, though many of them doubtless would be glad to hear the
assertion made.
[140] We take the liberty of extracting those few sentences from the
letter of a friend, who has taken great interest in the execution of
this work;--"Sir Thomas would have been an original character in almost
any surroundings--a kind of literary Quixote, with what may be called a
'parenthetical' genius, branching off at every comma into the fresh
images furnished by a teeming imagination. He was more than a translator
of Rabelais--he seems to have been a kind of Rabelais himself."
[141] Sir Theodore Martin, _Rabelais_, p. xix.
[142] See p. 28.
[143] A different opinion is expressed in the preface to W. Harrison
Ainsworth's capital novel of _Crichton_. "Sir Thomas," he says, "is a
joyous spirit--a right Pantagruelist; and if he occasionally
'Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba,'
he has an exuberance of wit and playfulness of fancy that amply redeem
his tendency to fanfaronade." Our readers have abundance of material
before them for coming to a decision upon this question.
[144] See p. 85.
[145] _Works_, p. 226.
[146] Sir Theodore Martin, _Rabelais_, p. xx.
[147] In Granger's _Biographical Dictionary_ (1779), this portrait is
described erroneously, as Sir Thomas Urquhart is said in it to be
dressed in armour. Probably the description was given from memory. In
the second volume of Bohn's edition of _Rabelais_, the frontispiece is a
half-length portrait of the translator, evidently reproduced from the
above. The effect, however, is highly disagreeable, and the likeness
must have produced an unfavourable opinion of our author in the minds of
most of those who have looked upon it.
[148] In this engraving, which is our frontispiece, the Greek
inscription runs thus: toist se pempsasiu kai prostatasiu eicharisto, and
means, "_I thank those who sent you and gave the order_." These words
are, of course, addressed to the messenger who has been commissioned by
the Muses to convey the wreath to Sir Thomas. Above the wreath itself is
an obscure phrase--Mousary[m] stolost--which is evidently a mixture of
Latin and Greek, musarum stolost (=apostolost?), "_messenger of the
muses_." It may, however, be that stolost is to be taken as "_equipment_"
or "_decoration_," as referring to the wreath. The courage with which
Greek and LaMousary[m] stolosttin forms are mixed up, and an old word
despatched on its way with a new meaning, of which this brief phrase
gives evidence, is highly characteristic of Cromartian Greek. For
further illustration of the peculiarities of this local variety or
Hellenic speech, see p. 149.
[149] Sir Thomas, therefore, claims by anticipation the titles of Baron
and Sheriff, which were afterwards to be his.
[150] This use of the quills is referred to in the following passage in
Sir Thomas Urquhart's _Epigrams_ (MS.):--
"The Invocation to Clio.
Book 2.
Wench wholly martial, to whose inspiration
The Colophonian Pöet ow'd his skill:
Let my verse merit no Lesse estimation,
Then [than] if the point of a Pegasid quill,
Dip'd in the sacred fontain Caballine,
Character'd the Impression of each Line."
The "Colophonian Poet" is--"not to put too fine a point upon it"--Homer,
who, according to some, was born at Colophos, in Asia Minor. The phrase
"Pegasid quill" in this passage strengthens our opinion that this second
portrait of Sir Thomas, which we give here, was intended to be a
frontispiece to a second volume of poems. The similarity of diction
between this "Invocation" and the speeches of Ancient Pistol is very
great.
CHAPTER IV
EPIGRAMS: DIVINE AND MORAL, AND THE
TRISSOTETRAS
In 1641, Sir Thomas Urquhart published his first work--a volume of
poems, entitled "EPIGRAMS: DIVINE AND MORAL,"[151] and dedicated to the
Marquis of Hamilton. The poems are divided into three books, two of
which contain forty-five epigrams, while the third contains forty-four.
Most of them are in iambic pentameters, and are for the greater part
sextets in form; but though the versification is occasionally smooth,
these compositions do little credit to the Muse who inspired them. They
are, without an exception, pointless; and an epigram without a point is
about as useless and exasperating as a needle without one.[152] It is
somewhat remarkable that in his prose compositions the imagination of
Sir Thomas seems quite unfettered, while in his poems it is under some
such restraining influence as a strait-waistcoat is said to exercise
upon a certain class of patients.
A wild legend, the origin of which is unknown, but which is utterly
baseless, asserts that Urquhart "was laureated poet at Paris before he
was three and twenty years of age."[153] We could hardly conceive of any
responsible authorities being so far "left to themselves" as to do a
deed like this. The story may be either the misapplication to Urquhart
of some vague tradition of one of the feats of his hero, the Admirable
Crichton, or of what he himself has actually recorded of the poet,
Arthur Johnston.[154]
A modern critic, who has given Urquhart a full measure of praise, finds
himself unable to say a word in favour of his poems. "This slender
volume," he remarks, "gives not the slightest promise of talent. Its
stanzas are indistinguished and indistinguishable. There is no reason
why anyone should have written them, but, on the other hand, there is no
reason why anyone should not. They express the usual commonplaces: the
inevitableness of death, and the worth of endeavour. A mildly Horatian
sentiment is dressed up in the tattered rags of Shakespearianism, and
the surprise is that the author, whose prose is restrained by no
consideration of sound or sense, should have deemed it worth while to
print so tame a collection of exercises."[155]
A favourable specimen of the _Epigrams_ is the following from the first
book:--
"HOW DIFFICULT A THING IT IS TO TREAD IN THE PATHES
OF VERTUE.
"The way to vertue's hard, uneasie, bends
Aloft, being full of steep and rugged alleys;
For never one to a higher place ascends,
That always keeps the plaine, and pleasant valleyes:
And reason in each human breast ordaines
That precious things be purchased with paines."
Or take this from the opposite page:--
"WHEN A TRUE FRIEND MAY BE BEST KNOWNE.
"As the glow-worme shines brightest in the darke
And frankincense smells sweetest in the fire;
So crosse adventures make us best remarke
A sincere friend from a dissembled lyer;
For some, being friends to our prosperity,
And not to us, when it failes, they decay."
The fault of obscurity, of which the poet Browning has been accused,
could not be laid to the charge of Sir Thomas Urquhart. Nor can it be
said of him that he neglects truths that are obvious, and occupies
himself in discovering and bringing forward those that are recondite.
The sentiments to which he gives utterance seem those which
spontaneously occur to the average mind; on reading the subject of the
poem, as given in the title, and then the poem itself, we think
"A said whot a owt to 'a said,"
and we come away without any feverish mental agitation or accelerated
movement of pulse.[156]
The sentiments which, from his own account, had, on more occasions than
one, filled his mind, are expressed in the piece entitled "THE GENEROUS
SPEECH OF A NOBLE CAVALLIER AFTER HE HAD DISARMED HIS ADVERSARY AT THE
SINGLE COMBAT." They are as follows:--
"Though with my raper, for the guerdon
Your fault deserveth, I may pierce ye,
Your penitence in craving pardon,
Transpassions my revenge in mercy;
And wills me both to end this present strife,
And give you leave in peace t' enjoy your life."
Another Epigram, which one critic regards as Urquhart's _chef d'oeuvre_
in this kind of composition, is the following:--
"Take _man_ from _woman_, all that she can show
Of her own proper, is nought else but _wo_."[157]
In a letter of commendation prefixed to his next work, _The
Trissotetras_, Sir Thomas Urquhart says of himself: "This Mathematicall
tractate doth no lesse bespeak him a good Poet and Orator, then [than]
by his elaboured poems he hath showne himselfe already a good
Philosopher and Mathematician." This self-criticism is all that could be
desired. A work on mathematics that proves an author's possession of
poetical and rhetorical gifts, and a volume of poetry which leads one to
think that the singer is an accomplished mathematician, are gifts with
which the world is but seldom favoured, and as it is likely that their
merits will not instantly be observed, the zeal of the author in calling
our attention to them is by no means unnecessary. But when he goes on to
say, still speaking of himself in the third person, "The Muses never yet
inspired sublimer conceptions in a more refined stile then [than] is to
be found in the accurate strain of his most ingenious Epigrams," we feel
that he is less felicitous. His first shot has hit the blank, but the
second is wide of the target altogether.
In his dedication of the volume to "the Marquis of Hamilton, Earle of
Arren and Cambridge, etc.," he describes its contents as "but flashes of
wit." A modern reader will probably, however, be inclined to think that
this modest opinion of them is far too flattering. At times there is a
faint suggestion of a possible gleam of brightness, but this is
instantly followed by Egyptian darkness, and one is reminded of a
revolving light that has somehow gone wrong.
The volume closes with the somewhat liturgical formula, "Here end the
first three Bookes of Sir Thomas Vrchard's Epigrams," and with a
doxology, the latter being almost the only trace of matter in it to
justify the use of "Divine" in the title. The author was evidently
prepared to go on with more "bookes" of the kind, if he got any
encouragement from publishers or public, but, probably, both thought it
about time for him to stop. The fact that, in five years after this
volume of poems had appeared, a second edition should apparently have
been brought out, would seem at first to indicate that there must have
been some little run upon the _Epigrams_. But the truth of the matter
is, that one "William Leake" had evidently got the "remainder," and
issued them in 1646 with a new title-page.
In the Introductory Notice to Sir Theodore Martin's edition of Rabelais,
some information is given concerning a folio volume of unpublished
Epigrams by Urquhart, which is still in existence.[158] It consists of
ten books, called after Apollo and the Muses, each containing 110
Epigrams, except the last, which has 113. The MS. is dedicated to the
Marquis of Hamilton; but, in addition to this, each book has a separate
dedication to some one of the author's political associates or friends.
The persons thus honoured are the Marquis of Huntly, the Earl of
Arundel, the Earl of Northumberland, the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of
Dorset, the Earl of Holland, the Earl of Newcastle, the Earl of
Stafford, Lord Craven, and Lord Gaurin (Gowran). According to the custom
of that time, the reader finds his progress barred by several prefaces,
respectively named, in this instance, as the "Isagoge," or
"Introduction," the "Premonition," and the "Prolog," and cannot get away
without a "Corollarie," an "Animadversion," several extra leaves of
verses, "A Table for the more easie finding out of such Epigrams as
treat of one subject," an "Index," and a "List of proper names." For one
of these latter he has reason to be grateful to Sir Thomas, for the
"Index" is a glossary of "the harshest and most difficult words
contained in the preceding Epigrams."
[Illustration: Fac-simile of Sir Thomas Urquhart's handwriting
considerably reduced.]
The general character of the unpublished Epigrams does not seem to be
higher than that of those which have seen the light of day, and
consequently there is little likelihood of any anxiety being expressed
by the general public for a sight of them. Some of them also are of a
sportive turn, and are more in accordance with the standard of taste and
manners which prevailed in the middle of the seventeenth century than
with that, of our own day. From the "Animadversion" it seems that
Urquhart "contryved, blocked, and digested these eleven hundred epigrams
in a thirteen weeks tyme." This surely breaks the record in the matter
of speed in producing epigrams. Had the results been b
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