Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VI

But I have forgotten to explain Broughton's Saucer. We read of Mr. Saunders Fairford, that though "an elder of the kirk, and of course zealous for King George and the Government," yet, having "many clients and connections of business among families of opposite political tenets, he was particularly cautious to use all the conventional phrases which the civility of the time had devised as an admissible mode of language betwixt the two parties: Thus he spoke sometimes of the Chevalier, but never either of the Prince, which would have been sacrificing his own principles, or of the Pretender, which would have been offensive to those of others: Again, he usually designated the Rebellion as the affair of 1745, and spoke of any one engaged in it as a person who had been out at a certain period—so that, on the whole, he was much liked and respected on all sides."[85] All this was true of Mr. Walter Scott, W. S.; but I have often heard his son tell an anecdote of him, which he dwelt on with particular satisfaction, as illustrative of the man, and of the difficult time through which he had lived.