Note 374 — Chapter III

Among many illustrations with which contemporary memoirs abound, the following is by no means the worst. Burnet, as a Scotchman, thinks proper to say that those of his countrymen who were sent to parliament, ‘were persons of such distinction, that they very well deserved’ the respect and esteem with which they were treated. To which, Lord Dartmouth adds: ‘and were very importunate to have their deserts rewarded. A Scotch earl pressed Lord Godolphin extremely for a place. He said there was none vacant. The other said, his lordship could soon make one so, if he pleased. Lord Godolphin asked him, if he expected to have any body killed to make room? He said, No; but Lord Dartmouth commonly voted against the court, and every body wondered that he had not been turned out before now. Lord Godolphin told him, he hoped his lordship did not expect that he should be the person to propose it; and advised him never to mention it any more, for fear the queen should come to hear of it; for if she did, his lordship would run great risk never to have a place as long as she lived. But he could not forbear telling every where, how ill the lord treasurer had used him.’ Burnet's History of his own Time, vol. v. p. 349, Oxford, 1823. Compare the account, in 1710, in Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i. p. 293. ‘Argyle is both picked (i.e. piqued) at Marlburrou, and his brother Yla, for refusing him a regiment; and Godolphin should have said to the queen that my Lord Yla was not to be trusted with a regiment! The Earl of Marr was one of the greatest cronnies Godolphine had, till the matter of his pension, after the Secretary office was taken from him, came about. Godolphine caused draw it during pleasure; Marr expected it during life, which the Treasurer would not yield to, and therefore they brake.’ The history of the time is full of these wretched squabbles, which show what the Scotch nobles were made of. Indeed, their rapacity was so shameless, that, in 1711, several of them refused to perform their legislative duties in London, unless they received some offices which they expected. ‘About the midle of this moneth, I hear ther was a meeting of severall of our Scots Peers, at the Viscount of Kilsyth's, where they concerted not to goe up to this parliament till peremptorly writ for; and (also) some assurance be given of the places they were made to hope for last session and have missed.’ Wodrow's Analecta, vol. i. p. 365. In 1712, the same Scotchman writes (Analecta, vol. ii. p. 8): ‘Our Scots Peers' secession from the House of Peers makes much noise; but they doe not hold by it. They sometimes come and sometimes goe, and they render themselves base in the eyes of the English.’ See also a letter ‘concerning the Scots Peerage,’ in Somers' Tracts, vol. xii. p. 607, edit. Scott, London, 1814, 4to.