THE CAMPBELLS.—THE GREAT MARQUIS.
A RCHIBALD, eighth Earl of Argyll, was born in the year 1598. He received an excellent classical education, and from an early age gave much time to the perusal of the Scriptures, im- bibing strong religious feelings, under the influence of which he became a Protestant of the most decided Calvinistic and Puritan type. When only seventeen he accompanied his father in the successful expedition against the Macdonalds which led to the acquisition of the county of Kentire or Kintyre by the House of Vampbell. When his father left the kingdom in 1618 young Lord Lore succeeded him in the care of the West Highlands, was sworn a Privy Councillor in 1626, and in 1628 surrendered to the King (as fkr as in him lay) the hereditary office of Justice-General of Scoda d, reserving to himself the office of Justiciary of Argyll and the Western Isles, and wherever else he had lands in Scotland. This agreement was ratified by Act of Parliament in 1633. In that year his father, having declared himself a Roman Catholic, was ordered by the King to make over to Lord Lora all his estates, reserving only a suitable maintenance for himself for the rest of his life. Lord Lorn was appointed one of the extraordinary Lords of Session, January 14, 1634, and in April, 1638, after the Cove- nant had been signed by nearly all the clergy and people of Scot- land, he was summoned to London, with Traquhair and Roxburgh, to consult with the King as to the best course to be pursued. Traquhair advised temporizing, Lorn boldly recommended the removal of the religious innovations which had led to the Covenant being taken ; but the Scotch Bishops, who recommended coercive measures and the raising of an army in the North of Scotland, carried the day. The Earl of Argyll had then just returned from abroad, and being at Court, recommended Charles to detain his son in London, or he would certainly do the King a mis- chief, but Charles attributed this advice to the old man's irritation at being deprived of his estate, or thought he could deal with Lorn more. effectually by letting him openly declare himself first. He entered into a secret agreement, however, with the Earl of Antrim for an invasion of Scotland by the Irish, for which Antrim was to have the county of Kentire as a reward. This agreement Lorn discovered while he was in London, and he returned to Edinburgh on the 20th of May, 1638, in no, pleasant mood at this underhand blow of the King's. By order of Charles himself he now took the Covenant, but not with the purpose of deluding and betraying his new associates, as the King intended he should. The death of his father the same year made him Earl of Argyll. He attended the General Assembly of the Church at Glasgow November 21 ; but when the Marquis of Hamilton, as High Commissioner, on the 28th discharged the Assembly from sitting any longer on pain of treason, and withdrew on their refusal to disperse, Argyll alone of all the Privy Councillors did not follow his example, but sat on in the Assembly in defiance of the Royal mandate, joined in all their decisive measures for the restoration of the Presbyterian discipline, and at the close was complimented by Alexander Henderson, the celebrated preacher, who acted as Moderator, on his having at length taken his side with the Kirk. ( Argyll in reply stated that his principles had always been in unison with theirs, and he had only delayed joining them before because he had hoped to influence the King's counsels. While Leslie marched to the English border with the main army of the Covenan- ters, Argyll went into the west to secure it against the threatened attack of Antrim and the Irish. He raised nine hundred of his clansmen, and stationing part of them in Kentire and part in Lorn, crossed over to Hamilton's island of Arran, took the castle of Brodick, and altogether effectually prevented any descent from Ireland in those parts. On the pacificaton at Berwick in 1639 Charles sent for Argyll to Court, but he was too wary to trust himself there, and so escaped the fate of the Earl of Loudoun, whom, notwithstanding his safe conduct, the King threw into the Tower. When hostilities were renewed in 1640 Argyll was sent with a small force against the northern clans Atholl and the Ogil- vies. In this expedition (which was also quite successful) he demo- lished the castles of Airly and Forthar in Forfarshire., belonging to James Ogilvy, Earl of Airly, who had left for England in 1640 to avoid subscribing the Covenant. Aid), Castle, which was defended by Lord Ogilvy in his father's name, and was strongly garrisoned and furnished with large stores of ammunition, had just defied the efforts of the Earls of Montrose and Kinghorn, but Argyll marching against it in July with 5,000 men, Lord Ogilvy abandoned the castle, and Argyll destroyed it and levied heavy contributions on the tenants. This is the incident which forms the subject of the well-known ballad—" The Bonnie House o' Airly.".
The pacification of Ripon followed, and the assembling of the Long Parliament in England secured the Scotch Covenanters from any immediate dread of further attempts on the King's part against them. Meanwhile the Earl of Montrose, who had hitherto acted as a vehement Covenanter, and, as we have just seen, had co-operated with Argyll in his expeditions against Atholl and the Ogilvies, despairing of attaining to that unrivalled pre-eminence in the popular party of Scotland which his soaring ambition and imperious nature
day, Argyll When the corn grew green and yel- To coins in the morning early, That there fell out a great dispute Dunkeld And lead ta Ids men by the back o " The lady look'd o'er her window sae hie, And oh but she looked weary, And there she espied the great Argyll
Come to plunder the bonnie hcube o' ke. demanded as his due, had engaged in seerat communications with the English Court, in one of which he accused Argyll of having declared in the presence of Atholl and eight others, when he made them prisoners in June, that the Scotch Estates of Parliament intended to proceed to the deposition of the King. Montrose's messenger with this information was intercepted on his return, and an inquiry being ordered, and all his witnesses denying the testi- mony imputed to them, Montrose's informer was convicted of leasing-making and executed, and Montrose himself committed a prisoner to Edinburgh Castle. Here he still was when in the summer of 1641 King Charles came into Scotland, with a fixed purpose to remove the difficulties which had hitherto prevented the landing of the Irish forces under Antrim, and to combine if possible such of the Scotch army as was still undisbanded with the remains of the English army in the North of England, and to employ them all against the English Parliament. Montrose communi- cated with him by letters and it is said a private interview, and persuaded him that he must remove Argyll and Hamilton as a pre- liminary to the accomplishment of his plans. It was settled that they were to be seized and carried on board a vessel in Leith Roads, but it does not appear that any further act of personal violence was designed against them, unless they resisted. Probably it was intended to keep them in custody its hostages for the good behaviour of the Covenanters, while a Colonel Cochrane marched with his regiment to overawe Edinburgh, and something was to have been done in Ireland simultaneously. Certain it is that the Catholic rising in Ireland took place on the day said to have been fixed for the seizure of Argyll and Hamilton. But a few days previously they received information of the plot against them, and on the 12th October made a hasty flight to a seat of Hamilton's, where his mother, the zealous Covenanter, resided, twelve miles from Edin- burgh. The King on this demanded that they should be seques- tered from their seats in Parliament, entering the outer court of that body for the purpose attended by armed followers; but his influence in the Scotch Parliament was insufficient to carry this, and in two or three weeks' time it was voted that they should be recalled to their legislative duties, a private committee having been appointed to investigate any accusations brought by the King against them. But on their return the King received them apparently with great favour, and the whole affair was allowed to drop. It was afterwards known by the name of the "Incident." Charles, finding it impossible to crush Argyll and Hamilton, now endeavoured to conciliate them and tha other Covenanters, and among other honours bestowed on them Argyll was on the 12th of November advanced by patent to the rank of Marquis, while Montrose was released and a superficial recon- ciliation effected among all parties. The King, as the differences between himself and his English Parliament increased, endeavoured to get the Scotch Council to send up Commissioners to Westminster to protest against the conduct of the English Parliament, and a Privy Council being summoned for this purpose, the Earls Kinnoul, Rox- burgh, and other Royalists known as "the Sanders," assembled at Edinburgh with numerous retainers, evidently to overawe all opposi- tion to the measure. But the gentlemen of Fife and the Lothians hastened to the capital to support Argyll and his friends in the Council, and thereupon the whole matter was dropped by orders from the King. When forces were raised by the Scots in 1642 to assist in the suppression of the Irish rebellion, Argyll was nominated to a colonelcy in one of the regiments. After the commencement of hostilities between the King and Parliament, he signed, along with Loudoun, Wariston, and Henderson, an invitation to the Queen to return from Holland and mediate a peace, but the King elated by the battle of Edgehill declined this offer.
The English Parliament succeeded in 1643 in inducing the Scots to intervene in their behalf, and the Solemn League and Covenant was arranged, probably chiefly through Argyll and Sir Henry Vane, and in January, 1644, Argyll accompanied General Leslie on his march into England, returning in a short time with the tidings of the defeat of Newcastle at Newburn. In April the Marquis was sent against Huntley, who had risen in the North for King Charles, and obliged him to fly to Strathmaver. But a more formidable opponent now appeared on the scene. Montrose began that eventful campaign in Scotland which for the time reduced the Covenanters to extremities. Argyll held a command against him, but was at first wholly unable to overtake him in his rapid marches, and afterwards suffered some humiliating defeats from him, his hereditary enemy Alister Macdonald co-operating with Montrose along with the Irish he had contrived to land in Mull. During the course of these campaigns the country of the Camp- bells suffered severely—first Glenurchy, and then Argyll and Lorn to the confines of Lochaber, being subjected to the extremi- ties of fire and sword, and "not a four-footed beast in the haill country" being left. On the 2nd of February, 1645, Argyll was taken at disadvantage at Inverlochy, and having been compelled to retire to a boat on the lake in consequence of a fall from his horse, had the pain of witnessing from that situation the complete rout of his forces, and then hoisted sail and beat a harried retreat. This is the great case brought forward in support of the charge of cowardice against Argyll, but all that it seems to prove is that he was wanting in that physical daring and courageous enterprise which characterized his rival: in persistent and passive physical courage he was fully his equal, and in moral courage greatly his superior. Argyll threw up his commission as General, but was present as a member of the Committee of Parliament at the disastrous battle of Kilsyth, August 13, 1645, which placed Scotland for the moment at the mercy of Montrose. While the latter occupied the capital, received the sub- mission of of a large part of the nobility, and prepared to call a Parlia- ment in the King's name, Argyll, Loudotm, and Lanark, scorning to submit, fled to Berwick, and thence summoned aid from the Scotch army in England. David Leslie promptly obeyed the summons, and the battle of Philiphaugh stripped Montrose of all the fruits of his victories, and restored Argyll and his party to the head of the Government of Scotland. In February, 164e, Argyll was sent over to Ireland, to bring back from that country the Scotch troops which had been sent thither, and returned to Edinburgh in May. Alister Macdonald had (following the example of Montrose) wasted the country of the Campbells in so merciless a manner that Argyll was compelled to obtain a grant of provisions from the Parliament for his estates, and a sum of money for the support of himself and his family, and a collection was ordered through all the churches of Scotland for the relief of the poor people who had been plundered by the Irish. Up to this time Argyll may be said to have steadily co-operated with the English Parliament, but now he showed the old Campbell jealousy of foreign ascendancy,. and the Scotch Presbyterians being, as one of their own writers expresses it, " liehtlied " by the English Puritans on account of the small achievements of their co-operating army, Argyll. took the opportunity of going up to London in August, as one of the Commissioners respecting the articles of agreement with the King, to • consult with the Royalists, Richmond and Hertford (with the King's authority), respecting the advisability of the Scotch Parliament and army declaring for Charles. But both noblemen entirely disapproved of the plan, as certain to lead to the ruin of the King, and Argyll wholly abandoned the idea, and seems to have had, in the course of the negotiation, his former doubts of the King's sincerity once more revived. Hence, when Hamilton proposed the "Engagement," in the latter part of the year 1647, Argyll strongly opposed it, but Hamilton's party prevailed, and the latter marched into Eng- land in 1648 only to encounter defeat and death, and to bring destruction on the head of Charles. Argyll, meanwhile, with Eglintoun, Cassilis, and Lothian, occupied Edinburgh, expelling and displacing from the Government Lanark and the other heads of the " Engagement " party in Scotland, and when Cromwell pursued his beaten enemies to the Borders Argyll met him at Morclington, had an interview with him, and conducted him and Lambert to Edinburgh with every mark of honour. It was afterwards said that Argyll and Cromwell in their re- peated interviews at this time concerted together the death of the King ; but this is all conjecture, and there is no evidence that Cromwell ever reproached Argyll with breach of faith afterwards, which he could scarcely have failed to do if any such definite agreement had been arrived at between them.
Certain it is that, whether spontaneously or through force of circumstances, Argyll joined in protesting against the trial and execution of the King; and we can well trace his hand in the jealous ground taken by the Scotch, that Charles was King of Scotland as well as England, and therefore not answer- able in such a case to a purely English tribunal. He was one of those who in February, 1649, declared Prince Charles King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, and called on the English Commonwealth men to raise him to his father's throne. A party among the Covenanters certainly were in power at this time in Scotland, with whom Argyll, with his greater breadth of intellect and clearness of perception, could scarcely sympathize. His brother-in-law, Huntley, was executed as a Royalist, notwith- standing his exertions in his behalf, and he is said to have declined to take any part in the proceedings against Montrose, on the gener ous ground that he was too much a party to be a judge in that m ter. Nor can he have really approved of the wanton insult to land conveyed in the proclamation of Charles as King of that n ton. But he was evidently partly blinded by his desire to see a Ek8--
and if possible a Covenanting King—of Scotland once more, and he placed the crown on the head of Charles at Scone on the 1st of January, 1651. There was also some talk of the young King of Scots marrying one of his daughters. The Marquis would seem to have been thoroughly deluded by Charles into a belief in his religious conversion, if we may credit an account in Wodrow's Diary, that having long waited for an opportunity to address the King on the subject, one Sabbath night after supper he went into the King's closet, and after deep discourse they prayed and mourned together till two or three o'clock in the morning, and the Marquis told his lady on returning that he had never had such a sweet night in the world, and what liberty in prayer he had, and bow much convinced the King was. The lady, according to this account, more discerning than her husband, said plainly that that night would cost him his head. The King, how- ever, kept up the farce of confidence in him, and after the battle of Dunbar wrote a memorandum of his services, in which he promised "upon the word of a King" to create him on his restoration Duke of Argyll, a Knight of the Garter, and one of the Gentlemen of his Bedchamber, and to pay him 40,000/. sterling due to him. Argyll, however, probably disapproved of the march into England, and foresaw its fatal issue, for he obtained leave to remain behind, on plea of the illness of his .wife. Upon the news of the decisive defeat at Worcester the Marquis retired to his stronghold of Inverary, where he held out for a year among the fastnesses of .Argyll against the Commonwealth forces, until surprised by Gene- ral Deane and carried to Edinburgh. His friends say that he re- fused to acknowledge the Commonwealth, and only at last was induced to sign a paper engaging himself to live peaceably, and that he was entrapped into being present at the proclamation of Cromwell as Protector. But facts are against this view of Argyll's conduct. There is a letter among the Tanner Papers in the Bodleian Library written by the Marquis to the governing powers in Scotland in the most painfully submissive tone, and at the Res- toration confidential letters of his were produced on his trial through the infamous Monk which left no doubt as to his friendly co-operation with the English Government. He could scarcely indeed have relished the incorporation of Scotland with England by Cromwell, nor the blow struck at the heritable jurisdictions of the great proprietors of Scotland by several of the provisions of that Act. We find also Monk complaining to Thurloe of Argyll's struggling to have Scotchmen alone elected to serve in the United Parliament for North Britain. But on the whole he must be said to have been something more than a passive adherent of the Protectorate. It appears from the Journals of the House of Commons that by an order of September 11, 1656, by Oliver Cromwell and his Council, the Marquis of Argyll was to receive the moiety of the excise of wines and strong water in Scotland, not exceeding 3,000/. a year, until he should receive 12,116/. 13s. 4d. in full of 145,400/. Scotch with interest, and that by the Auditor of Scotland's certificate it appeared that the Marquis had received (before April, 1659), by a particular order of the Lord Protector and Council, 1,0001., part thereof, and that there remained 11,116/. 13s. 4c1., upon which the Council of Scot- land had given no further order for the Marquis's satisfaction, and for which he now advanced his claim. This claim was put forward by him in the Parliament of Richard Cromwell (1658-9), in which he sat for the county of Aberdeen. On the Restoration Argyll's friends advised him to keep out of the way, but he boldly came up to Court, July 8, 1660, but the King no sooner heard his name announced than "with an angry stamp of the foot he ordered Sir William Fleming to execute his orders," which were to carry the Marquis to the Tower. Thence in December he was sent down to Leith, and thence transferred to Edinburgh Castle, to be tried by the Parliament of Scotland. His case was allowed to be pre- judiced by a previous charge preferred by the Laird of Lamont, arising out of the retribution inflicted on Alister Macdonald and the Irish when Argyll cleared his territories of those savage invaders. The general indictment against Argyll consisted of fourteen articles, and ranged over the whole course of affairs in Scotland from the year 1638; but the Crown lawyers were at last compelled to confinethemselves to his complianceswith the Common- wealth and Protectorate as the only treason that could be made to affect him. "How could I suppose," said the Marquis at his trial, "that I was acting criminally when the learned gentleman who now acts as His Majesty's advocate took the same oaths to the Common- wealth with myself'?" It was not till Monk treacherously forwarded the confidential correspondence that the charge could be fixed upon Ai 11, who defended himself with a calm dignity and presence of which removed from the minds of his judges much of the pre- judice against him engendered during those troublous and perplex- ing times. He was sentenced to death on the 25th of May, and exe- cuted on the 27th of May, 1661. The incident of his peaceful sleep just before his death is recorded on canvass as well as on paper. "He came to the scaffold," says Burnet, "in a very solemn but undaunted manner, accompanied by many of the nobility and some ministers. He spoke for half an hour with great appearance of serenity. Cunningham, his physician, told me that he touched his pulse, and it did then beat at the usual rate, calm and strong." That Argyll was a man of deep religious feelings there can be no doubt whatever. They were not assumed for any particular personal or political occasion, but deeply impressed on his daily ordinary life. In Wodrow's Diary it is stated, on the authority of a clergyman, the last survivor of the General Assembly of 1651, that the Marquis used to rise at five and continue in private till eight ; besides family worship and private prayer morning and evening, he prayed with his wife morning and evening, in the' presence of his own gentleman and her gentlewoman, and he never went abroad, though but for one night, without tak- ing along with him his writing-standish, a Bible, and New- man's Concordance. During the Glasgow Assembly Henderson and other ministers spent many nights in prayer and conference with Argyll, and he dated his conversion, or his knowledge of it, from that time. As a statesman and politician Argyll ranks high among the nobles of Scotland, for he is among the very few in whom the love of his country and the desire for her good govern- ment and improvement seem to have been really paramount to other considerations, and nearly always the guiding rule of his conduct. He lived through a great Revolution, and he had to deal with every description of crisis and personal character, but taking him on the whole, with the exception of a few passages in his life which are at the same time those about which we have least re- liable information, he passed through this terrible ordeal far better than most men of his time. "Calm and strong, a true Scot and true to Scotland," is the best epitome we can give of his cha- racter.
Previous page
