The Campbells Are Coming

THE words of this old war-song of the clan Campbell seem almost prophetic of the proud career of its representative family, that of Argyle, which is one of the oldest of the great governing houses of Great Britain. Whether the family and clan Campbell can be traced in descent to the ancient kings of Scotland or not, they are of Gaelic origin, as are the other Highland tribes, and they occupy an honorable and elevated position among their peers. The tie that unites the clans at present is but a nominal one, far different from that of past centuries, but each member feels the ancient pride and interest in every great event or exploit of any of the clan, be it the ducal head or the humblest of its number. What that strong feudal and patriarchal government was that the chief of a Highland sept exercised and the clansmen obeyed is an interesting question ; and, well as Sir Walter Scott and other writers have delineated the customs and habits of these sturdy mountaineers, it may not be uninteresting here to notice some of their peculiarities, and the relation in which they stood to the rest of their countrymen

The Highlanders were far different from their Lowland neighbors, and Till the rebellion of 1745 thoroughly roused and enraged England, there was a most profound ignorance, contempt, and loathing for the Highlands of Scotland and their inhabitants. The English who were inquisitive enough about the manners and customs of the savages of North America and Africa, Asia and South America, were strangely misinformed as to the wild population of the Scotch mountains, and had no desire to add to their knowledge. Goldsmith was one of the few Englishmen who early ventured to explore the wild beauties of the Highlands ; he certainly was not wanting in taste or sensibility for the grand and picturesque scenes of other countries ; he pronounced the landscape of Holland, trim and level, infinitely more agreeable to him, saying of Scotland: “There hills and rocks intercept every prospect.”An earlier writer in 1730 says : “ It is a part of the creation left undressed ; rubbish thrown aside when the magnificent fabric of the world was created ; as void of form as the natives are indigent of morals and good manners.” It was almost as unknown land as the centre of Africa now is to the modern traveller ; the savage manners, the dirt and laziness of the Highlanders, were disagreeable and alarming, and formed an effectual bar to any study of their virtues, such as they were, with the traveller who had to encounter so many dangers and discomforts in his observations.

must not be confounded with them, for, though both were Scotch, the clans were composed of half-savage mountaineers who viewed with contempt the peaceful and quiet lives of the farmers of the Lowlands ; they, in turn, dreaded the half-naked, lawless thieves, — for many of them were nothing better,—who lived by levying black-mail on them, and stealing their cattle when their fierce demands were not complied with. At the first signal of war between the clans, the agricultural population, which by tribute of cattle was under the protection of either of the clans engaged in the conflict, was visited by all the horrors of the strife; houses were razed, families slain or captured, flocks driven off, and farms laid waste. Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, one of the stanch supporters of Charles I., was received by James II. at Whitehall, and knighted by his hand, but be paid him a very unflattering compliment, saying to his courtiers as he appeared, “ Take care of your pockets, my lords, here comes the king of thieves.” That remark was almost as appropriate to any of the Highland chiefs, for if they did not approve of the mode taken by their followers for support in peace or revenge in war, they certainly did not discourage it.

They had intermingled the good and bad qualities of all uncivilized people, and their code of honor and morality was very different from that which is common in peaceful and prosperous communities. Robbery was a calling not merely innocent among them, but honorable, and they scorned any kind of labor, preferring a life of wild depredation. A Lowland Scot, Colonel Cleland, ahout 1685. describes the Highlander : “ For a disobliging word, she 'll dirk her neighbor o’er the board. If any ask her of her drift, forsooth her nainself lives by theft.” And the writers of the period agree quite unanimously in this rhyming account of them. Scott puts into the mouth of Baillie Nicol Jarvie, in Rob Roy, the following words, “ Now, sir, it’s a sad and awful truth, that there is neither work, nor the very fashion nor appearance of work, for the tae half of these puir creatures ” ; that is to say, that the agriculture, the pasturage, the fisheries, and every species of honest industry about the country, cannot employ the one moiety of the population, let them work as lazily as they like, — and they do work as if a plough or a spade burnt their fingers ; and “ ye hae still mony thousands and thousands o’ lazy lang-legged Hieland gillies that will neither work nor want, and maun gang thigging and sorning about on their acquaintance, or live by doing the laird’s bidding be ’t right or be ’t wrong, living by stealing, reiving, or lifting cows, and the like depredations. A thing deplorable in ony Christian country, and the lairds are as bad as the loons.”

Like all barbarous people, their ideas of truth and right were very limited, and law and order had no force among them. They were hospitable to strangers, but would hardly have protected the claim of an alien against their own clan, so strongly were they imbued with attachment and respect for their chief and clan. Mrs. Grant, in her interesting book on the Highlanders, says : “ If twenty persons saw a trespass committed, no one durst, or indeed would be inclined, to witness in favor of a stranger against their own clan. They might have reversed the boast of the philosopher, and said, they loved truth well, but Plato and Socrates (i. e Donald and Malcolm) better.” They were very superstitious and full of imagination and poetry. Each chief had a bard or minstrel, who in glowing strains sung the clan’s great deeds and feats of daring in war or the chase, and would attempt to propitiate by laudatory verse the spirits which they believed inhabited the mountain streams and passes; these minstrels were also seers, and foretold coming events. We read of their gift of second sight, and the manner in which, wrapped in bull’s hides, they awaited the inspiration which was to reveal the future. The religion of a great part of the Highlands was a mixture of popery and almost pagan superstition, but among those who professed the Covenanters’ faith were the Campbells.

The chief retained the old sway till near the middle of the last century, and joined to that an almost patriarchal relation to his people. “ He was taught from the cradle to consider the meanest individual of his clan as his kinsman and his friend, whom he was born to protect and bound to regard. He was taught, too, to venerate old age, to respect genius, and to place an almost implicit dependence on the counsels of the elders of his clan. There is no instance of a chieftain’s taking any step of importance without the consent of the elders of his tribe.” “ Each chief then was the centre and head of a miniature court, attended by guards, armor-bearers, musicians, an hereditary orator, an hereditary poetlaureate, and he kept a rude state, dispensed rude justice, waged wars, and concluded treaties.” Many writers have presented with brilliant touch paintings of the old Highland life ; whatever was repulsive was thrown into the background, all that was graceful and noble was brought forward, and the old Gaelic manners and customs have never been displayed in the simple light of truth. Up to the middle of the last century they were despised and scorned ; then, when the old barriers of clan and feudal government were swept away, their claymores and scythes taken from them, and the use of the national garb interdicted, thus destroying forever the original of the picture ; romance must needs invest their barbarous though picturesque life with its bright fascination. Macaulay, in his brilliant history, gives an excellent sketch of them, though he says: “All that is possible is to produce an imperfect likeness by the help of two portraits, of which one is a coarse caricature and the other a masterpiece of flattery.”

The Highland mode of fighting, even as late as 1745, under the standard of Charles Edward, was simply rushing at the enemy, claymore and dirk in hand those who had muskets threw them away after once firing them. By the impetuous fury of their onset they even turned the flank of the charge of cavalry. Before the English had learned their mode of warfare, it inspired great terror and made the Highlanders victorious ; for with a single stroke of their powerful weapons they would sever a man’s head from his body. Their savage conduct made even Dundee, cruel as he was, revolt at it, and he said in wrath at the sight of blazing buildings on one occasion, “ I would rather carry a musket in a respectable regiment than be the captain of such a gang of thieves.” The first sight and sound of cannon, which they called musket’s mother, so alarmed them that, in the reign of James VI., the Earls of Huntley and Erol gained a great victory over a numerous Highland army, commanded by the Earl of Argyle, at Glenlivat. And the old ballad of “Bonnie George Campbell,” who

gave no unfaithful picture of the destruction in the ranks of Argyle that day. In another ballad on the battle of the Bridge of Dee these lines occur :

At the battle of Preston Pans, in the rebellion of 1745, one witness said the rebels “advanced with a swiftness not to be conceived ” ; and Sir John Cope said their motion “ was so very rapid that the whole line was broken in a few minutes.” Lord Loudon, in his account, confirmed by every eye-witness, says, “ As soon as the Highlanders approached on foot, immediately a panic struck them.” The Regulars were horror-struck at the very appearance of those wild fighters and fled before them several times ; but in the end discipline had its effect, and the want of order and the ungovernable temper and punctiliousness of the clansmen lost the last battle for the Stuarts, for Mr. Home says that the defection of the Macdonalds at the battle of Culloden was owing to their rage at being stationed on the left of the army instead of the right. In consequence of this they retreated, “ without having attempted to attack, sword in hand.” No entreaties would prevail on them to forego their ancient right, as they felt it to be.

Macaulay says, “ The clan Campbell, the children of Diarmid, had become in the Highlands what the Bourbons had become in Europe. A peculiar dexterity, a peculiar plausibility of address, a peculiar contempt for all the obligations of good faith, was ascribed, with or without reason, to the dreaded race. ' Fair and false as a Campbell,’ became a proverb. It was said that MacCallum More after MacCallum More, with unwearied, unscrupulous, and unrelenting ambition, annexed mountain after mountain and island after island to the original domains of his house. Some tribes had been expelled from their territory, some compelled to pay tribute, some incorporated with the conquerors. At length the number of fighting men who bore the name of Campbell was sufficient to meet in the field of battle the combined forces of all the other western clans. It was during those civic troubles which commenced in 1638 that the power of this aspiring family reached the zenith. The Marquis of Argyle was the head of a party as well as the head of a tribe. The knowledge that he coula bring into the field the claymores of five thousand half-heathen mountaineers added to his influence among the austere Presbyterians who filled the Privy Council and the General Assembly at Edinburgh. His influence at Edinburgh added to the terror which he inspired among the mountains.” And his influence, as well as that of his descendants at the head of the clan, was felt even in the heart of London long after, till “that terrible cornet of horse,” Pitt, on his entrance into power in the councils of the nation, either originated or first adopted the plan of turning an immense evil — the military spirit and training of the Scottish clans — to account in a most powerful and efficient branch of the English Army. Since that time the bonnet and plaid of the Highlanders have mingled with the more civilized uniform of the English soldier in many a hard-fought field, but never have they met as foes on British ground.

That almost sacred book, the “ Peerage,” so dear to the hearts of the English, which Thackeray so enjoyed a slap at, tells us that eight centuries ago Gillespie Campbell acquired by his marriage with an heiress the lordship of Lochow, and from him are descended all the Campbells. Sir Colin Campbell first received the surname of More, or Great, and the chief of the house still is called in Gaelic MacCallum More, the Great Campbell. They gradually rose in importance and eminence, and at length received the highest title accorded a subject in the kingdom, that of Duke, in 1701. At that time the ducal rank was very charily bestowed, and one might count the dukes on one’s fingers. That rank and honor which had become extinct in the reign of Elizabeth was before that reserved for princes of the blood; even Warwick, the “ king-maker,” was but an earl ; the title was revived by James, and the monarchs of the house of Stuart, noted for their lavish gifts of rank, still limited its bestowal to princes of the blood, favorites, great generals, and the unacknowledged offspring of kings. During the reign of Charles I., Archibald Campbell, Lord Lorn, was the representative of the great Argyle family, and later the holder of its titles and estates, as his father was incapacitated as a Catholic from holding his honors. Archibald Earl of Argyle and first Marquis, — for he was raised to that dignity by Charles in 1641, — was early an influential member of the Privy Council of Scotland, and the great supporter of the interests of the Covenanters. Later he became the avowed leader of that party against the attempts of Charles to force on them a regular church government, and extirpate what remained of the spirit of stanch old John Knox. The king and Archbishop Laud wished to substitute Laud’s favorite observances of form and ceremonial for what one writer has called “ its meagre, uncomely, beggarly worship” ; and that its forms satisfied the possessors of its belief mattered not to these zealous opponents of the kirk. Masson says of Laud’s fitness for understanding the Presbyterian spirit in Scotland, “ Far away on the banks of the Thames sits Laud, as ignorant of Scotland as Kamtchatka, but trying to govern it through the sixpenny post.” The service - book which was forced on the kirk was received on a memorable Sunday in 1637 with great dislike. “In St. Giles Cathedral, in the midst of prelates, lords, and magistrates, Jenny Geddes hurls her stool at the bishop’s head, and, backed by the wilder element in the congregation, breaks up the service in uproar and riven benches. In the other kirks there is as little success ; the whole city is in riot.” Premeditated or not, the riot in Edinburgh was understood by the whole Scottish nation. Repeated attempts to use the servicebook were failures, and a great part of the nation united in the signing of the Covenant, whole congregations standing up, men, women, and children, and swearing in affirmation to it, en masse.

The Earl of Argyle was the masterspirit of the Covenanters, whose deep convictions and rather harsh views of religion Charles had outraged by his attempts to introduce Anglican forms of worship. He was adored by his own clan, whose interests he had studied, even to the injury of other Highland septs ; he placed the welfare of the sons of Diarmid, and that of the signers of the Covenant, before his adherence and loyalty to Charles. In that, however, he was among a great and neverto-be-forgotten company of men, who, stern in their belief of justice and right, opposed the arbitrary and unconstitutional measures of the king, — measures which caused, after long years of struggle, the final discomfiture of the Stuart family. Those were the times that brought forward men like Milton, Hampden, Pym, Cromwell, and Eliot, and made Milton the calm and dignified defender of the people of England against the Defensio Regio of Salmasius, who addresses them as, “ Englishmen ! who toss the heads of kings as so many tennis-balls; who play with crowns as if they were bowls ; who look upon sceptres as so many crooks.” It was no play that cost Charles his head, but the deep and earnest protest of injured men against a long course of unwise, unjust, and oppressive government, and one of the events in the long struggle of the English people to free themselves from the tyranny which they were suffering. “The Marquis was perhaps more of a politician than a statesman, more of a party leader than a warrior,” says Scott, and he also gives us a picture of the Covenanter: “ His dark complexion, furrowed forehead, and downcast look gave him the appearance of one frequently engaged in the consideration of important affairs, and who had acquired by long habit an air of gravity and mystery, which he cannot shake off even when there is nothing to conceal. He had a cast in his eyes which had procured him in the Highlands the nickname of Gillespie Grumach (or the grim). Something there was cold in his address and sinister in his look.”

To him was opposed the Marquis of Montrose, and the war-cry of “ Argyle and the Covenant! ” was the signal for some disastrous defeats of the Campbells, who were routed on several occasions by Montrose. He wasted the whole country of Argyle, and wrote to Charles after his exploits in burning and slaughtering: “ My march was through almost inaccessible mountains, where 1 could have no guide but cowherds ; the difficultest march of all was over the Lochaber Mountains, which we at last surmounted, and came on the back of the enemy when they least suspected us.” He declared that a few victories in Scotland would reinstate the king, with uncontrolled power, on the throne of Great Britain.

Argyle was conspicuous among the opponents of Charles, and by his submission to Cromwell was preparing the way for his own ruin; the return of Charles II. “to enjoy his own again,” was the commencement of bloody reprisals against the Presbyterians and Puritans, who had fought against the first Charles, and Argyle was among the victims. “The excellent art of forgetfulness,” commended by Clarendon, was not practised; and, not content with wreaking vengeance on the living, the dead were not suffered to rest in their graves. Pepys, in his Diary, says, “There hath lately been a great clapping up of some old statesmen.” And Evelyn chronicles the disgusting spectacle of hanging at Tyburn the bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and I reton as among “ the stupendous and inscrutable judgments of God ! ” The Marquis had hastened to London to offer his homage to the king, who, if Burnet is to believed, — and the report seems to be corroborated by the events that followed, — allowed Argyle, by a verbal equivocation in answer to his son on the receipt of the letter of the Marquis, to suppose that he would be safe in personally paying his respects to Charles. He was, however, at once seized and sent back to Scotland to be tried, and was beheaded in 1661. His son and successor, Archibald, had been a warm adherent of Charles I., and during his detention in Scotland was one of those who tried to soften the rigor of his confinement. “ He brought,” says Burnet, “all persons that the king had a mind to speak with, at all hours, to him, and was in all respects not only faithful but zealous.” A bitter quarrel ensued between the Marquis and his son, who soon was openly fighting at the head of a regiment for Charles, at the disastrous battles Of Dunbar and Worcester. He was exempted from Cromwell’s act of grace of 1654, but submitted himself soon after with the king’s permission, and was compelled to give large security for his peaceable conduct; he continued an object of suspicion, and suffered frequent imprisonment till the restoration of Charles, when he was graciously received by that monarch. He endangered his own life in attempting to save his father from his unhappy fate ; for his strenuous efforts to avert his death brought upon him the enmity of those in power in Scotland, and he was condemned to death, but was pardoned by Charles, and later restored to his hereditary rank, offices, and estates. For many years his life of tranquillity amid Highland magnificence was undisturbed, and he enjoyed the confidence of the king.

The Test Act, the apparent object of which was to provide for the security of the Protestant belief, was then laid before the Scottish Parliament. It in reality was found to consist of an affirmation of the king’s supremacy, and of passive obedience ; of an abjuration of the Covenant, and other like measures ; and the clause for the reformed religion was at length introduced as an amendment, through the vigilance of the party opposed to the court. It was then proposed that princes of the blood should be exempted from the oath ; Argyle, true to his convictions formerly expressed, strongly opposed this, but after long debate the mass of contradiction and obscurity which resulted from these articles was passed. On taking the oath which was tendered to the members of the Privy Council, Argyle prefaced the ceremony by a verbal declaration that he took the test-oath as far “as it is consistent with itself and the Protestant religion.” That greatly offended James, and he was almost immediately after dismissed from his place in the Privy Council. Certainly, as Bishop Burnet, in speaking of his former persecution, exclaims with emphatic simplicity, “ Argyle was born to be the signallest instance in an age of rigor, or rather of the mockery of justice.” He was soon arrested and committed to the castle of Edinburgh on the charges of high treason, leasing making, and perjury ; and as the judges before whom he was brought were equally divided in their opinion, one old judge, superannuated and worn out with fatigue, was dragged from his bed to give the casting vote against the prisoner. Convicted of these crimes, he was sentenced to death again, but was respited by Charles. Fearing the mercy and justice of the king who so meanly rewarded his old friends, he managed to escape from prison disguised as a page holding up the train of his sister-in-law, Lady Sophia Lindsay. It is said that his place of concealment in London was made known to the king, who replied when it was proposed to seize him, “ For shame ! What, hunt a hunted partridge!” The remark seems not unlike the inconsistency of Charles.

The Marquis finally succeeded in escaping to Holland, and remained there for nearly three years ; then James II. ascended the throne, and a spirit of vengeance instantly filled the mind of Argyle. The idea of an invasion of Scotland inspired him, and without the means and almost without a plan he determined on the rash enterprise. He communicated his design to Monmouth, but the latter refused then to co-operate with him. Having received aid from some friends in Amsterdam, with a few of his companions in exile he set sail for his own country of Lorn. He met with an overwhelming opposition, and was completely defeated. He fled, as Lord Fountainhall quaintly describes it, “ on a little pony,” and was overtaken by two “ men of Sir John Shaw’s, who would have had his pony to carry their baggage.” He fired his pistol at them, “and thereafter took the water Inchinan. But a webster, dwelling there, hearing the noise, came with a broadsword.” The webster would not quit Argyle, though the other two men would have let him go for gold ; and finally “the webster gave him a great pelt over the head with his sword, that he damped him so that he fell into the river, and in the fall cried, ‘Ah, the unfortunate Argyle!’” He was captured and carried to Edinburgh, where he was beheaded at the Market Cross in a few days, 1685, under the unjust sentence passed on him in 1682. He showed wonderful calmness and dignity. He had written his epitaph on the day before his execution ; “ and the heroic satisfaction of conscience expressed in it.” to use the words of Lord Oxford, give it a title to notice which its poetic merits might claim in vain ; we extract a few lines from it: —

Charles II. had predicted to the Prince of Orange, in 1681, that “ he was confident, whenever the Duke (James II.) should come to reign, he would be so restless and violent that he could not hold it four years to an end,” says Burnet; and any one who knew his views and temper might with reason have made the same prediction, so soon to be verified ; for he commenced his reign in 1685 and fled in 1689. James complacently records of his Scottish administration, that he “ stifled at its birth a commotion of the fanatical party which then happened to break out” ; and he wonders how men could apprehend danger from Popery, “ while they overlooked the imminent danger of being swallowed up by Presbytery and fanaticism.” Evelyn, whose spirit of loyalty must have been sorely shaken by various acts of both Charles and James, records his amazement at the consecration of a Romish bishop at Whitehall: “I could not have believed I should ever have seen such things in the king of England’s palace.” Colley Cibber, in his life, describes this period and adds: “Yet, in the height of our secure and wanton defiance of him, we of the vulgar had no further notion of any remedy for this evil than a satisfied presumption that our numbers were too great to be mastered by his mere will and pleasure ; that, though he might be too hard for our laws, he would never be able to get the better of our nature ; and that to drive us all into Popery and slavery, he would find, would be teaching an old lion to dance.” James tried all that persuasion, force, and tyranny would do to obstruct the progress of the seventeenth century, but he might have held the royal power to his death, had not the fears of the people been increased by the birth of a prince. Evelyn notes in his Diary: “A young prince born, which will cause disputes.” And for long years the throne of Great Britain was rendered an uneasy seat for its occupant by that event. The birth of an heir to the throne, born of a Catholic mother and destined to follow in the bigoted steps of his father, precipitated the Revolution.

When William of Orange landed in England, it is said that a noble lord who was not alarmed at the report of an army of thirty thousand men, hearing that it was only twenty thousand, began to be afraid ; being told the Prince had with him but fourteen thousand soldiers, he cried, “ We are undone.”When he was asked the reason “ why he was afraid of so small a number, when he seemed no way afraid of thirty thousand,” he answered : “An army of thirty thousand could not conquer England ; but no man could come here with an army of fourteen thousand, if he was not sure of finding a great many traitors among us.” There were, besides many disaffected in England, great numbers of noblemen and gentlemen who had fled to Holland for protection. William was kept well informed of the state of feeling in England. He was aware of the unhappy rule of James, who had become the tyrant of his people, and the abject slave and pensioner of the great enemy of William and Protestantism, the king of France.

Among the noblemen who had found refuge at the court of William was the Marquis of Argyle, whose father had been executed in 1685. One writer says he was not “ so distinguished by an excess of the gloomy fury of Puritanism, and of the republican taint which is inseparable from it, as his ancestors ; the caution probably inspired by the sanguinary visitations of vengeance which of late had fallen on his family had rendered him more moderate.”He was well received by William, and rendered himself very serviceable to him through his intimate knowledge of Scottish affairs. He accompanied the Prince on his bloodless invasion of England, and his titles and estates were soon restored to him. He has been suspected of treating with the agents of James. Burnet, without giving us any hint of his previous connection with them, says : “ The Earl of Argyle withdrew himself from them.” James makes a slight allusion to the Earl in his Memoirs, but, as if to complete the confusion which those hints cause, we find he was most influential in Scotland ; and William declared on a certain occasion, that he “got more truth from Argyle than from all the rest of his countrymen, for that he had the courage to speak out what others durst not even hint at.” That seems rather direct testimony in his favor; one writer interprets it by supposing “ that he had secretly betrayed the design to the king, and was rewarded accordingly.” The greatest known stain on his character is that of his tacit approval of the massacre of Glencoe, in which part of his own regiment was the agent employed. That cruel extermination of a thievish tribe was highly resented in the Highlands, and it was found necessary to direct a commission of inquiry into it to several persons of rank.

Macaulay mentions him in a very unflattering manner. He says : “ Argyle was, in personal qualities, one of the most insignificant of the long line of nobles who have borne that great name. He was the descendant of eminent men and the parent of eminent men. He was the grandson of one of the ablest of Scottish politicians, the son of one of the bravest and most truehearted of Scottish patriots, the father of one MacCallum More, renowned as a warrior and as an orator, as the model of every courtly grace, and as the judicious patron of arts and letters, and of another MacCallum More, distinguished by talents for business and command, and by skill in the exact sciences. Both of such an ancestry and of such a progeny Argyle was unworthy. He had been guilty of the crime, common enough among Scottish politicians, but in him disgraceful, of tampering with the agents of James, while professing loyalty to William. Still, Argyle had the importance inseparable from high rank, vast domains, extensive feudal rights, and almost boundless patriarchal authority.” Though the burden of Scottish affairs, especially in Parliament, and of responsibility for the counsels by which they were directed, rested for many years chiefly on himself, he seems to have sought no reward except increase of dignity, for which he solicited William, who long hesitated to grant his request. Writing to his friend Cartaret, Argyle says, “ I must think it strange if the king scruple me my title, after all that is past.” It was, however, delayed till 1701, when he was created Duke of Argyle, with the addition of the numerous titles, some of them formerly in the family of the Marquis of Lorn and Kintyre, Earl of Campbell and Cowal, Viscount of Lochow and Glenila, Baron Inverary, Mull, Morvern, and Tiry.

John, the great Duke of Argyle, his son, was born in 1678, and throughout a long career was a worthy representative of the name he bore. We have several sketches of him left by his contemporaries, and it is easy to observe that the usual fate of high position, talents, and success in life was his ; for all these concomitants of fortune raised for him many enemies. His greatness excited the envy and illwill of many, as much as his haughty and rather overbearing manners. Among the many sharp remarks that fell from his lips was a retort on one occasion, at a meeting, to an opponent, “ that a grain of honesty was worth a cartload of gold,” and he had a blunt and sometimes uncourtly honesty and plainness of speech. He distinguished himself as a brave and prudent commander, and showed undaunted courage and brilliant daring in action. He served on the Continent, and was in many battles. — at Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, at the sieges of Ostend, Lille, Ghent, and Tournay and Mons ; at the latter place he joined an attacking corps at the moment it was shrinking from the onset, and rushing, open - breasted, among the men, exclaimed, “You see, brothers, I have no concealed armor; I am equally exposed with you. I require none to go where I shall refuse to venture.” His spirited appeal so roused the men that the assault was successful. The Duke used his powerful influence at a critical moment for the fortunes of the house of Hanover, that of the death of Queen Anne ; and by his prompt and sudden appearance before the Privy Council with the Duke of Somerset added great strength to the cause of the Protestant succession. He was prominently engaged in the field in suppressing the rebellion of 1715. For his powerful support of the house of Hanover he was well rewarded by his elevation in the English peerage, to which he had been raised by Anne as Earl of Greenwich and Baron Chatham. He was created Duke of Greenwich by George I., and held many high offices of state, among others that of hereditary Lord Steward of the Household and Field Marshal of all the forces.

The Duke united many great qualities with some small ones ; and great as was his birth and ancestry, and nobly as his talents, loyalty, and services to Queen Anne and the house of Hanover were requited by both sovereigns, still he was ambitious of office and desirous of power. He has been accused of many interested motives ; but ail that can with justice be alleged against him is more than counterbalanced by his virtues. The great Duke of Marlborough, noted for his beauty, avarice, and generalship, had some difficulty with the Duke of Argyle, and wrote to his vixen wife : " I cannot have a worse opinion of anybody than I have of the Duke of Argyle.” Another enemy left a character of him : “ He was extremely forward in effecting what he aimed at and designed, which he owned and promoted aboveboard, being altogether free of the least share of dissimulation, and his word so sacred that one might assuredly depend upon it. His head ran more upon the camp than the court ; and it appears that nature dressed him up accordingly, being altogether incapable of the servile dependency and flattering insinuations requisite in the last, and endued with that cheerful, lively temper and personal valor esteemed and necessary in the other.” Lord Hervey, himself the object of abuse and satire from Pulteney and Pope, has left, among other sharp and severe word-portraits of his contemporaries, male and female, those of John, Duke of Argyle, and his brother Lord Isla, later the third Duke of Argyle, It is difficult for his caustic pen, which does not spare royalty itself, to refrain from abuse of these two men, who were so unfortunate as to differ from him in their views. The Duke was much of the time in opposition to the court party, not being withheld from expressing his dislike of any measures or persons. Hervey says of him : “ As he was an ambitious man, he envied Sir Robert Walpole ; as he was a military man, he disliked him ; as a Scotchman, he hated him. His pride made him detest the possessor of any power superior to his own ; and as the opinion of his own height and merit, joined to an insatiable avarice, made him think he never could have his due in honorary employments or enough in lucrative ones, so he was always asking and always receiving, yet never obliged and never contented. His Grace commanded a great many followers in the House of Commons; and by being often hungry and often fed, was often in and often out of humor with the administration. He was haughty, passionate, and peremptory, gallant, and a good officer, with very good parts, and much more reading and knowledge than generally falls to the share of a man educated a soldier, and born to so great title and fortune.”

Sir Walter Scott has left us a more agreeable sketch of the Duke’s character, which gives one an idea of the regard in which his contemporaries held him, for he was extremely popular among them. “Few names,” he says, “deserve more honorable mention in the history of Scotland during this period than that of John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. His talents as a statesman and a soldier were generally admitted ; he was not without ambition, but ‘ without the illness that attends it,’— without that irregularity of thought and aim, which often excites great men in his peculiar situation (for it was a very peculiar one) to grasp the means of raising themselves to power at the risk of throwing a kingdom into confusion. He was alike free from the ordinary vices of statesmen, namely, falsehood and dissimulation; and from those of warriors, — inordinate and violent thirst after self-aggrandizement. His popularity with a discontented and warlike people was supposed to be a subject of jealousy at court, where the power to become dangerous is sometimes of itself obnoxious, though the inclination is not united with it.” The unhappy and divided condition of Scotland after the rebellion of 1715 caused much disaffection to the government, and the factious and discontented would gladly have claimed the great MacCallum More as their leader ; but he chose a course more safe and honorable. Argyle, in a spirited speech on the Porteous Bill, stated his own position towards the nation and the court as well as any of his biographers. “ I appeal,” said he, “ to the House, to the nation, if I can be justly branded with the infamy of being a jobber of votes, a buyer of boroughs, the agent of corruption for any purpose, or on behalf of any party ! Consider my life ; examine my actions in the field and in the cabinet, and see where there lies a blot that can attacli to my honor. I have shown myself the friend of my country, the loyal subject of my king. I am ready to do so again, without an instant’s regard to the frowns or smiles of a court. I have experienced both, and am prepared with indifference for either.” Pope has distinguished him as

And Thomson characterized his oratory as combining the charm of youth and the force of manhood with the depth of age.

The Duke dying without male heirs, his brother Archibald, Earl of Isla, succeeded him in his Scottish titles, but his English honors became extinct. Macaulay’s character of Lord Isla we already have had in connection with that of his brother, but we learn more of him from other sources. In the singular interview of Lord Stair with Oueen Caroline, when he attempted, for himself and others, to prejudice her against Sir Robert Walpole’s measures, the man whom she disliked and coarsely jeered at as “that poor man, avec cegros corps, ces jambes enflées, et ce vilian ventre,” the minister whose power she respected and valued, he said to her: “No greater proof can be given of the infinite sway this man has usurped over you, madam, than in the very instance I have given of his first personal injury to me, which is the preference he has given Lord Isla to me on every occasion, both here and in Scotland ; for what cannot that man persuade you to, who can make you, madam, love a Campbell ? ” There were reasons for her Majesty’s dislike of the Duke and his brother, and it was a strong proof of Walpole’s power that his sense of Lord Isla’s usefulness did always prevail over the private dislike of the Queen. Hervey says of Walpole : “No man ever was blessed with a clearer head, a truer or quicker judgment, or a deeper insight into mankind; he continued in power longer than any first minister in this country, since Lord Burleigh, ever did. Every project was of his forming, conducting, and executing ; as he had infinite application and long experience, so he had great method and a prodigious memory, with a mind and spirit that were indefatigable.” After that eulogium of Walpole, Hervey bears strong testimony to Lord Isla’s ability, for he writes of him : “ He was the man on whom Sir Robert Walpole depended entirely for the management of all Scotch affairs. A man of parts, quickness, knowledge, temper, dexterity, and judgment,” but, “ a man of little truth, little honor, little principle, and no attachment but to his interest.” He left no heirs and was followed by his cousin, John Campbell, who had been a groom of the bedchamber to George II. when Prince of Wales. He was colonel of the Campbell regiment, and served in Scotland in 1745. He married the beautiful Miss Bellenden, celebrated by Pope and Gay, Hervey and Walpole. The last wrote : “ She was incontestably the most agreeable, most insinuating, and the most likable woman of her time; made up of every ingredient likely to engage or attach a lover.” She rejected the royal but not very delicate advances of the Prince, and married Colonel Campbell ; from them the present Duke is lineally descended. One of their sons married a daughter of Ralph Izard of South Carolina.

John, the fourth Duke, was followed by his son in 1770. He had married the widow of James, Duke of Hamilton, Elizabeth, the youngest Miss Gunning, one of the three sisters so celebrated in their day for their wit and beauty. She had been married clandestinely to the Duke of Hamilton at Keith’s Chapel, May fair at half an hour after midnight with the ring of a bed-curtain, says Horace Walpole. The Duke of Argyle was followed by his son George William in 1806, and he was succeeded by John, the seventh Duke, his brother, who died in 1847, and was the father of George Douglas Campbell, the present Duke, whose descent can be traced through eight centuries, from the first Campbell who was Lord of Lochow. He unites in his person the titles and honors of that long line of ancestry. He is Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Argyle, K. T. P. C. Marquis of Lorn and Kintyre, Earl of Campbell and Cowal, Viscount Lochow and Glenila, Lord of Inverary, Mull, Morvern, and Tiry, in the peerage of Scotland ; Baron Sundridge and Hamilton in the peerage of England. His offices are those of hereditary Master of the Queen’s Household, and Keeper of the great seal of Scotland, Admiral of the Western Isles, Keeper of Dunoon Castle, of Dunstaffnage, and Carrick ; one of her Majesty’s counsellors for Scotland, Lord-Lieutenant and hereditary sheriff of Argyle. He has been twice Lord Privy Seal, for a time Postmaster - General, and now holds the office of Secretary of State for India under the Gladstone administration. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Sundridge, and his son John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, by courtesy the Marquis of Lorn, is a member of the House of Commons for Argyleshire.

The marriage of the Marquis with the Princess Louise, sentimentally heralded to the public at Oxford by Mr. Vernon Harcourt, as “a matter so interesting, both in its political and its historic importance, one which will secure the hearty sympathy and approval of the English people,” has excited much comment and wonder ; but Mrs. Grundy, at first disposed to grumble that the Princess preferred a trueborn Briton to some petty potentate or adventurous poverty-stricken foreign Prince, now feels that it is well that the nineteenth century should show a more just appreciation of the sacredness of marriage, and not subordinate the feelings of the individual to the possible advantage of the nation. Thackeray, in 1849, contributed to the columns of Punch some imaginary extracts from newspapers of 1869, in which he, in his inimitable style and with almost prophetic foresight, assumes to give from the Snobsever an item on royal marriages. In it he says “are the nobles of our country, who have been free for hundreds of years, who have shown in every clime the genius, the honor, the splendor of Britain,— are these, we ask, in any way inferior to a Prince (however venerable) of Sachs-Schlippen-schloppen, or a Grand Duke of Pigzwitz Gruntenstein ? Why, we ask, shall not AngloSaxon princes or princesses wed with free Anglo-Saxon nobles, themselves the descendants, if not the inheritors, of kings ? ” And he adds that a “ little bird” has whispered that an alliance will shortly be formed between a member of the royal family and one whose “distinguished parents are ‘ frae the North,’ whose name is known and beloved throughout the wide dominions of Britain’s sway in India, at the admiralty, at the home and colonial offices, in both Houses of Parliament, and who are allied with that great and illustrious family, who have rendered such priceless services to the country in the maintenance of that cause for which Hampden bled on the field, while they paid their part on the scaffold.” An amusing caricature of the court circular style of newspaper writers, and verified in a wonderful degree !

The Thunderer has assured the nation mysteriously that her Majesty had a great problem to solve and has solved it satisfactorily; which we translate, that gossip says the attachment of the Marquis to the Princess is not a new one, but her mother favored the suit of the heir to the throne of Holland, William of Orange, till finding that, in the words of the old nursery rhyme, her daughter was “ the maiden all for Lorn,” she gave her consent to the marriage. The Marquis has greatly changed since his mother-in-law wrote in her “Journal of our Life in the Highlands ” of him as a “dear, white, fat, fair little fellow,” and so immortalized his appearance at that early age. What new honors he may add to those already in the possession of his ancient house cannot be foretold, but he must claim high culture, ability, and brilliant qualities to have won the heart of the fair and accomplished Louise, the flower of English princesses of the house of Hanover. Dryden says, “ None but the brave deserves the fair,” and the amount of moral courage shown by the Marquis in braving destiny in the form of a princess of the blood royal, gives him no common claim to our admiration. The first occasion on which a princess of England married a subject was when Mary, the daughter of Henry VII., the young widow of Louis XII. of France, ran away with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk ; there have been marriages solemnized between other members of the royal family and subjects, but we believe the last acknowledged marriage with a prince or princess was when James II., then Duke of York, married Anne Hyde, in 1661. She died before he ascended the throne, but left two daughters, Mary and Anne, who were both queens of England.

We have spoken especially of the Campbells of the house of Argyle, but within the last century have lived three men who bore that name, and are connected with the fortunes of the clan ; three men of mark, the first in literature, the second noted for “extraordinary industry” and legal ability, the last a brilliant warrior and undaunted soldier in an epoch celebrated for its men of thought and action,—Thomas Campbell the poet, John Lord Campbell, and Sir Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde.

After that of the poet Campbell, the name of “ Plain John Campbell,” the skilful and successful lawyer, arrests attention. Miss Martineau, in her graphic sketch for the London Daily News, says that he delighted in calling himself so, “ while all his hearers knew all the while that there was not such a man for getting on in the three kingdoms.” He said less in later years about “ his plainness and humility, and the paternal manse, but he had exhibited these things so often in his electioneering speeches and official addresses that he was best known as plain John Campbell to the last.” He was born in Fifeshire in 1781. He was wonderfully industrious, and worked at the study of law with the added labor of parliamentary reporter and theatrical critic of the Morning Chronicle, a London paper. It is needless to detail the drudgery and application which gained him professional success and fame. He held various law offices of the Crown, that of Attorney-General and Chancellor of Ireland. The latter place he, with a kind regard for his friend Lord Plunket’s age and infirmity and his own ends, caused him to be asked to resign that he might enjoy its advantages. That office he held but for a single day, and then became the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. About that time he began to write his “ Lives of the Lord Chancellors,” of which work one writer says, “ The style is entertaining, the facts anything he chose to make them, and the spirit depreciatory to the last degree.” Sir Charles Wetherell, at a dinner in London, addressed Lord Campbell thus : “ Then there is my noble and biographical friend who has added a new terror to death.” Lord St. Leonards, in his little book on the Misrepresentations in the Lives, adds, “ I have lived to find that he has left behind him a new terror to life,” referring of course to the lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham. He was made Chief Justice in 1850, and attained the highest honor of his profession in the Lord Chancellorship in 1859. He died in 1861. Miss Martineau says : “ Heartfelt respect and intimate friendship were not necessary to him ; and he would probably have been quite content with the knowledge that, after his death, he would be held up as an example of the social success obtainable in our fortunate land by energy and assiduity, steadily reaching forward to the prizes of ambition.”

The life of Lord Clyde embraces some of the most daring and brilliant achievements of this century. He was born in Glasgow in 1792, and entered the army in 1802 ; he served in the Peninsula until 1814. In 1842 he became colonel, and served against the Chinese. He distinguished himself as general of brigade in India, and commanded the Highland Brigade in the Crimean War, contributing to the victories of Alma and Balaklava. He was made Majorgeneral in 1854, and the next year received the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. In 1857 Sir Colin was appointed Commander in Chief of the Army of India, and departed to suppress the Sepoy mutiny. His relief of Lucknow is one of the memorable and thrilling events of his time and a bright spot amid the horrors of that terrible mutiny. Later he defeated the Sepoys at Cawnpore and crushed the rebellion. He was raised to the peerage in 1858 as Lord Clyde, and died in 1863. The writer has seen at Wilton House, the ancient seat of the Earls of Pembroke, where Sir Philip Sidney wrote his “ Arcadia,”— which alone would give an added charm to that classic and beautiful spot, the abode of so much genius and talent in times past, — a quaint bronze cannon sent by Lord Clyde from India to his noble friend Lord Herbert of Lea, and regarded by the family as one of their most valued possessions. So highly is it esteemed for the giver’s sake, that it is accorded a conspicuous place in one of the finest collections of ancient Greek and Roman art, and mediæval painting, sculpture, and architecture. So long-gone centuries are united to modern times in our mind as we think of that peerless Englishman the noble Sidney, and feel that as yet the time lamented by Burke as “ that of sophisters, economists, and calculators,” is not come, great and noble men yet live, and the age of chivalry is not gone. True chivalry was never more triumphant than in this era of the world’s history, though under the same form as of old, and near the garb of ancient and heroic daring. Courage and heroism are alike, whether shown on that old battle-field of the world, Europe, in the arena of politics or literature, in the field against well-trained armies, and polished commanders, or under the burning sun of India, with its fell diseases, battling against maddened and infuriated savages.

G. A. E.