Note 54 — Chapter XLII

Footnote 54: [Scott's old friend, John Richardson, who was from the first in the secret of the Waverley Novels, was a stanch Whig, as beseemed the descendant of an old Covenanting family. Some of his ancestral traditions suggested certain passages in Old Mortality, and he has recorded that during a visit to Abbotsford Scott gave him the proof sheets of the first volume to read, and how he lost a night's sleep in doing it. Twelve years later, in writing to Scott regarding The Tales of a Grandfather, he says that in this work,—"You have paid a debt which you owed to the manes of the Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew of Claverhouse in Old Mortality."