Note 37 — BOOK IV.

“Through excessive blood-letting and other detestable means used by his wicked physician, Doctor Bates, who they say was hired either to poison or distract him, and partly through melancholy, he had in a manner wholly lost his memory.” Kirkton’s Hist. p. 170. Mr C. K. Sharpe, the editor, thinks his mental imbecility was occasioned in some measure by fear, and quotes a passage from one of Lord Middleton’s letters to Primrose. “He pretends to have lost his memory,” &c. “He is the most timorous person ever I did see in my life,” &c. Note. But it was not to be expected that Middleton would allude in the most distant manner to any thing that could be supposed to countenance in the least the then general belief.