Note 7 — Chapter V · THE SECOND BISHOPS' WAR

See Memoirs of Montrose, chap. xv., and Professor Masson's Drummond of Hawthornden, pp. 272-287 and 343-348. The Irene was not published in Drummond's lifetime, but copies were freely circulated in manuscript towards the latter end of 1638. Mr. Masson thinks that the Noble Lord to whom one of the copies was sent, with a note containing the significant words, "Force hath less power over a great heart than duty," may have been Montrose; and Mark Napier thinks that the Noble Sir to whom Montrose addressed his state-paper may have been Drummond. The paper was found by Napier in a volume of transcripts in Wodrow's handwriting in the Advocates' Library, where it must have lain for many years unread and apparently unsuspected. Wodrow himself has made no allusion to it in his Analecta, nor has any subsequent writer noticed it on either side. In short, from the time it was written (1640-1641) till Napier published his biography, it has never entered history.