GRAHAM, JAmus, Marquis of Montrose, an eminent soldier in the reigns of Charles I. and C lit IOS II. and dis tinguished by his enterprises against the Covenanters in Scotland.
Having been treated with some disrespect by the King, Charles I. he was at first attached to the cause of the Pres byterians, and supported them in their endeavours to se cure the civil and religions liberties of the nation. It has been questioned, indeed, whether he was sincere in this at tachment ; and it must be owned, that, in the early part of his life, his conduct had every mark of duplicity and per fidy. Even his panegyrists have allowed, that his inter course with the Presbyterians was that of convenience, not of inclination ; that he enrolled himself in their armies, and held conferences with their divines, in order to be admit ted into their secret counsels ; and that, having obtained the intelligence which he required, he made use of this intelligence against the very party whose confidence he had enjoyed. The facts are certainly strong. At one time he was entrusted with a high military command among the Covenanters, and actually passed the Tweed at the head of their troops ; and the historian of England assures us, that, at this very time, he had entered into a close cor respondence with the partizans of the king. At length, after a course of perfidiousness, unworthy of his illustrious birth, and, it must be acknowledged, altogether at variance with his general character, which appears to have been that of manliness and heroism, he disclosed all he knew of the purposes of the Presbyterians, and openly declared his attachment to the royal cause. Such, however, was his va cillation, to give it no other name, that Charles himself was for some time unwilling to trust him ; but having suc ceeded in detaching the Hamiltons, who were his political antagonists, from the confidence of the monarch, he rose in the royal estimation, and was at length appointed lieu tenant-general of the king's forces in Scotland.
Yet he who deserted the cause of liberty and of true re ligion, and betrayed his countrymen, proved faithful to his king. He had taken upon him, however, as Burnet ex presses it, the post of a hero too much. With very in adequate means, and relying chiefly on his personal prow ess, he undertook to subdue the Presbyterians by force of arms. And, at this time, the Presbyterians were not, in strict language, a party in Scotland ; they constituted the strength and the talent, the energy, physical and intellec tual, of nearly the whole nation ; they were united in the cause of religion and of liberty, bound by a public and solemn engagement to adhere to it with their fortunes and their lives, supported by the English parliament, confident in the purity of their intentions, and not without encou ragement from previous success. Yet while all this must
he allowed, the progress of Montrose, temporary and par tial as it was, may serve to show how much may be atchiev ed by the enterprise of one man's mind, and the effort of a single arm.
his first concern was, to draw around him those of the Scottish nobility, who were either more attached to the king, or less intimately connected with the Presbyterians. Among the persons of distinction who joined him on this occasion, historians have not failed to mention the Lord Napier of Merchieston, son of the celebrated inventor of the logarithms ; the Earl of Antrim, a nobleman of Scotch extraction, and who brought into the field a body of the Macdonalds who had served in Ireland, and the two sons of the Marquis of Huntly. To these we might have added the Marquis himself, the chieftain of the powerful clan of the Gordons ; but the Marquis had studied astrology, and had learned from the stars, that neither the king, nor the flamiltons, nor Montrose should prosper. According to Burnet he was naturally a gallant man, but the stars had so subdued him, that he made a poor figure during the whole course of these wars. Discouraging as the prospect ap peared, Montrose, or as he was usually called, " the Gra ham," was in haste to take the field. Joining himself to the Macdonalds, and about eight hundred of the men of Athol, who had flocked to Iris standard, he prepared, with incre dible activity and expedition, to attack the Lord Dello, who lay with a considerable body of troops in the neighbourhood of Perth. No general, either of ancient or of modern times, was ever more rapid in his marches, or more fierce in his onset, than the :Marquis of ;Montrose. Though in ferior in numbers, destitute of cavalry and of artillery, and so ill furnished with ammunition that he was obliged to answer the discharges of the enemy by a volley of stones, lie assailed the Covenanters with such unexpected fury, that he threw them into disorder, pushed his advantage, and gained the victory ; he himself combating with his broad-sword among the foremost of his troops, and ani mating them by his example. The slaughter of the Pres byterians was great, amounting, by some accounts, to two thousand men ; and the town of Perth opened its gates to Montrose, in consequence of the battle. On this occasion, he had an opportunity of proving his clemency, a quality which entered largely into the formation of his character, and to which he made a consoling allusion when about to prepare for the scaffold ; for he took possession of the town without injuring its inhabitants, and restrained even the Highlanders from their well known propensity to plunder.