JOHN GRAHAM,

FIRST VISCOUNT OF DUNDEE.

Br EDMUND LODGE.

HIS remarkable man, whose name can never be for

gotten while military skill and prowess, and the most loyal and active fidelity to an almost hopeless cause, shall challenge recollection, was the eldest son of Sir William Graham, of Claverhouse, in the County of Forfar, by Jane, fourth daughter of John Carnegy, first Earl of Northesk. His family was a scion which branched off from the ancient stock of the great House of Montrose, early in the fifteenth century, by the second marriage of William Lord Graham, of Kincardine, to Mary, second daughter of Robert the Third, King of Scotland, and had gradually acquired considerable estates, chiefly by the bounty of the Crown. He received his education in the University of St. Andrews, which he left to seek on the Continent the more polished qualifications of a private gentleman of large fortune, the sphere to which he seemed to have been destined. In France, however, the latent fire of his character broke forth; he entered as a volunteer into the army of Louis the Fourteenth; and having presently determined to adopt the military profession, accepted in 1672 a commission of Cornet in the Horse Guards of William the Third, Prince of Orange, by whom, in the summer of 1674, he was promoted to be Captain of a troop, for his signal gallantry at the battle of Seneffe, in which indeed he saved the life of that Prince by a personal

effort. He asked soon after for the command of one of the Scottish regiments in the Dutch service, and, strange to tell, was refused, on which he threw up his commission, making the cutting remark, that "the soldier who has not gratitude cannot be brave," and returned to England, bringing with him, however, the warmest recommendations from William to Charles the Second; and Charles, who had been just then misadvised to subdue the obstinacy of the Scottish Covenanters by force of arms, appointed him to lead a body of horse which had been raised in Scotland for that purpose, and gave him full powers to act as he might think fit against them, although under the nominal command of the Duke of Monmouth. His conduct in the performance of this impolitic and cruel commission has left a stain on his memory scarcely to be glossed over by the brilliancy of his subsequent merits. Bred from his infancy in an enthusiastic veneration to monarchy, and to the Established Church, his hatred to the Whigs, as they were then called in Scotland, was almost a part of his nature; and, under the inf ence of a temper which never allowed him to be lukewarm in any pursuit, his zeal degenerated on this occasion with a frightful facility into a spirit of persecution. He watched and dispersed, with the most severe vigilance, the devotional meetings of those perverse and miserable sectaries, and forced thousands of them to subscribe, at the point of the sword, to an oath utterly subversive of the doctrines which they most cherished. But this was not the worst. On the 1st of July, 1679, having attacked a conventicle on Loudoun Hill, in Ayrshire, the neighboring peasants rose suddenly on a detachment of his troops, and, with that almost supernatural power which a pure thirst of vengeance alone will sometimes confer on mere physical force, defeated them with considerable loss. The fancied disgrace annexed to this check raised Graham's fury to the highest pitch, and he permitted himself to retaliate on the unarmed Whigs by cruelties

inconsistent with the character of a brave man. The track of his march was now uniformly marked by carnage; the refusal of his test was punished with instant death; and the practice of these horrible excesses, which was continued for some months, procured for him the appellation of "Bloody Claverhouse"; by which he is still occasionally mentioned in that part of Scotland. He apologized for these horrors by coldly remarking, that "if terror ended or prevented war, it was true mercy."

It may be concluded that this intemperance had the full approbation of the Crown, for we find that he was appointed in 1682 Sheriff of the Shire of Wigton; received soon after a commission of Captain in what was called the Royal Regiment of Horse; was sworn a Privy-Councillor in Scotland; and had a grant from the King of the Castle of Dudhope, and the office of Constable of Dundee. Nor was it less acceptable -such is the rage of party, especially when excited by religious discord-to the Scottish Episcopalians, who from that time seemed to have reposed in him the highest confidence. James, however, in forming on his accession a new Privy Council for that country, was prevailed on to omit his name, on the ground of his having connected himself in marriage with the fanatical family of Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald, but that umbrage was soon removed, and in 1686 he was restored to his seat in the Council, and appointed a BrigadierGeneral; in 1688 promoted to the rank of Major-General ; and, on the 12th of November in that year, created by patent to him, and the heirs male of his body, with remainder, in default of such issue, to his other heirs male, Viscount of Dundee, and Baron Graham of Claverhouse, in Scotland. The gift of these dignities was, in fact, the concluding act of James's expiring government. Graham, who was then at tending that unhappy Prince in London, used every effort that good sense and high spirit could suggest, to induce him to remain in his capital, and await there with dignified firmness

the arrival of the Prince of Orange; undertaking for himself to collect, with that promptitude which was almost peculiar to him, ten thousand of the King's disbanded troops, and at their head to annihilate the Dutch forces which William had brought with him. Perhaps there existed not on the face of the earth another man so likely to redeem such an engagement; but James, depressed and irresolute, refused the offer. Struck, however, with the zeal and bravery, and indeed with the personal affection, which had dictated it, he intrusted to Dundee the direction of all his military affairs in Scotland, whither that nobleman repaired just at the time that James fled from London.

When he arrived at Edinburgh he found a Convention sitting, as in London, of the Estates of the country, in which he took his place. He complained to that assembly that a design had been formed to assassinate him; required that all strangers should be removed from the town; and, his request having been denied, he left Edinburgh at the head of a troop of horse, which he had hastily formed there of soldiers who had deserted in England from his own regiment. In the short interval afforded by the discussion of this matter, he formed his plans. After a conference with the Duke of Gordon, who then held the Castle for James, he set out for Stirling, where he called a Parliament of the friends of that Prince, and the revolutionists in Scotland saw their influence, even within a few days, dispelled as it were by magic, in obedience to his powerful energies. He was, in a manner, without troops, depending on the affections of those around him, which he had heated to enthusiasm, when a force sent by the Convention to seize his person seemed to remind him that he must have an army. He retired therefore into Lochaber; summoned a meeting of the chiefs of clans in the Highlands, and presently found himself at the head of six thousand of the hardy natives, well armed and accoutred. He now wrote to James, who, in compliance with French

counsels, was wasting his time and means in Ireland, conjuring him to embark with a part of his army for Scotland, "where," as he told the king, "there were no regular troops, except four regiments, which William had lately sent down; where his presence would fix the wavering, and intimidate the timid; and where hosts of shepherds would start up warriors at the first wave of his banner upon their mountains.” With the candor and plainness of a soldier and a faithful servant, he besought James to be content with the exercise of his own religion, and to leave in Ireland the Earl of Melfort, Secretary of State, between whom and himself some jealousy existed which might be prejudicial to a service in which they were alike devotedly sincere, however they might differ as to the best means of advancing it. James rejected his advice. "Dundee was furnished," says Burnet, "with some small store of arms and ammunition, and had kind promises, encouraging him, and all that joined with him."

Left now to his own discretion and his own resources, he displayed, together with the greatest military qualifications, and the most exalted generosity and disinterestedness, all the subtlety of a refined politician. On his arrival at Inverness he found that a discord had long subsisted between the people of the town and some neighboring chiefs, on an alleged debt from the one to the other, and that the two parties, with their dependants, had assembled in arms to decide the quarrel. IIe heard the allegations of the principals on each side, with an affectation of the exactness of judicial inquiry, and then, having convened the entire mass of the conflicting parties in public, reproached them with the most cutting severity, that they, "who were all equally friends to King James, should be preparing, at a time when he most needed their friendship, to draw those daggers against each other which ought to be plunged only into the breasts of his enemies." He then paid from his own purse the debt in dis pute; and the late litigants, charmed by the grandeur of his