United States or Luxembourg ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was, I think, after I had left London this year, that this Epitaph gave occasion to a Remonstrance to the MONARCH OF LITERATURE, for an account of which I am indebted to Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo. That my readers may have the subject more fully and clearly before them, I shall first insert the Epitaph.
WHEN Prince Charles came to Scotland in 1745, to seek his grandfather's crown, no braver and no better man rode with him than Lord Pitsligo. He was now sixty-seven years of age, for he was born in 1678, ten years before James II. was driven out of England.
Of the four vessels which composed the flotilla, one was lost on the coast of Norway, another as it left Drontheim, and the Bonaventure, on board of which were Chancellor and the ambassador, foundered in the Bay of Pitsligo, on the east coast of Scotland on the 10th of November, 1556.
He was obliged to sit down and cough, and one of the dragoons who were in search of him actually gave him some money as they passed by, and condoled with him on the severity of his cough. Lord Pitsligo often hid in a cave on the coast of Buchan. Here was a spring of water welling through the rock, and he carved a little cistern for it, to pass the time.
In France he met the members of the exiled Royal family, whom he never ceased to regard as his lawful monarchs, though Queen Anne, and later the First and Second Georges, occupied the throne of England. When the clans rose for King James, the son of James II., in 1715, Lord Pitsligo, then a man of twenty-seven, joined the forces under his kinsman, Lord Marr.
Pitsligo was a nobleman of very amiable character, as well as of great personal interest; and great dependence was placed upon the power and attachment of lord Lovat, who had entered into private engagements with the chevalier de St. George, though he still wore the mask of loyalty to the government, and disavowed the conduct of his son when he declared for the pretender.
Mr Scott came to breakfast, at which I introduced to Dr Johnson, and him, my friend Sir William Forbes, now of Pitsligo; a man of whom too much good cannot be said; who, with distinguished abilities and application in his profession of a banker, is at once a good companion, and a good Christian; which I think is saying enough.
On the search through the house being given over, Lord Pitsligo was hastily taken from his confined situation, and again replaced in bed; and as soon as he was able to speak, his accustomed kindness of heart made him say to his servant, 'James, go and see that these poor fellows get some breakfast, and a drink of warm ale, for this is a cold morning; they are only doing their duty, and cannot bear me any ill-will. When the family were felicitating each other on his escape, he pleasantly observed, 'A poor prize had they obtained it an old dying man! That the friends who lived in the house, the hourly witnesses of his virtues, and the objects of his regard, who saw him escape all the dangers that surrounded him, should reckon him the peculiar care of Providence, is not to be wondered at; and that the dream which was so opportune, as the means of preventing his apprehension, and probably of saving his life, was supposed by some of them at last to be a special interposition of Heaven's protecting shield against his enemies, need not excite surprise.
'Sir, your most obliged, 'And most humble servant, 'London, May 6, 1775. It would be improper for me to boast of my own labours; but I cannot refrain from publishing such praise as I received from such a man as Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, after the perusal of the original manuscript of my Journal . 'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. 'Edinburgh, March 7, 1777. 'My DEAR SIR,
By this time, however, the prince-pretender was joined by the earl of Kilmarnock, the lords Eleho, Balmerino, Ogilvie, Pitsligo; and the eldest son of lord Lovat had begun to assemble his father's clan, in order to reinforce the victor, whose army lay encamped at Duddingston, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh.
Word Of The Day