Note 253 — MEMORIAL CONCERNING THE HIGHLANDS WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER MACBEAN, A.M. MINISTER OF INVERNESS

This Mr. Gilchrist is scathingly treated in The Lyon (iii. 36). He went ‘to Edinburgh and thence to London to misrepresent and asperse the bulk of the Caithness gentry as enemies to the present establishment.’ He is further said to have collected 250 guineas for himself and to have made his friends ‘believe that he could not continue in Caithness for the wicked Jacobites who had threatened to take away his life and destroy his family.’ The writer, a non-juring minister, who had been a prisoner in London, adds sententiously ‘Honest Whigry that never thinks shame of lying for worldly interest!’