Note 743 — Chapter XXVI

It is presumed this is the letter alluded to in a conversation between Lockhart of Carnwath and Captain Dougall Campbell, who is represented by him as “a person of great worth and loyalty, and a bosome friend of Argyle’s.” “Being with me (says Lockhart) at my country house, he (Campbell) asked me if I heard Argyle blam’d for having received and given no answer to a letter writt to him by the king whilst he was at Perth. I told him I had, but could not agree with those who censured him, for I had such an abhorrence of breach of trust, that had I been the duke’s adviser, it should have been to doe as he did; for tho there was nothing I so much desired as to see him engaged in the king’s cause, I wisht it done in a way consistent with his honour. Captain Campbell smiled and told me, he was to acquaint me of a secret which he must previously have my solemn word I would communicate to none, which he had given when it was revealed to him, having however obtained liberty afterwards to speak of it to me. After giving him the assurance he demanded, he told me that the letter was not delivered to the duke, for in his late Highland progress, he saw it and another to Lord Isla in the hands of the person to whose care they were committed, (but who that person was he would not tell me), who receiving them unseal’d, did not, after perusal, think it for the king’s service to deliver them, that to the duke being writt in a style by no means to be approved of; ‘and, indeed,’ added Campbell, ‘when I read them, I was entirely of the same mind, and could not but think that Mar or some other person, with a view of rather widening than healing the breaches, had prevail’d with the king to write after that manner.’ The letter to Isla was writt as to a man of business, insisting on the unhappy state of Scotland, and that nothing but a dissolution of the union by the king’s restoration, could prevent the utter ruin of that country. That to the duke did invite him to return to his loyalty and duty, threatening him, if he neglected, with revenge and the utter extirpation of his family, for what he and his predecessors had done in this and the last century. I doe not pretend to narrate the precise words of this letter, nor did Campbell mention them as such to me; however, I have narrated what he said was the aim and purport of the letter.”—Lockhart Papers, vol. ii. pp. 14, 15.