ARCHIBALD, NINTH EARL OF ARGYLL.*

* A Scots Earl is Covesasiing Times : being the 14. and Times of Archibald, Ninth Earl of Argyll, 1629-1685. ByJohat Wilcock. Edinburgh : Andrew Elliot. [105.]

IT was perhaps inevitable that the biographer of the "great Marquess" should follow up his valuable work with a volume on the second martyr of the house of Argyll. Between them, the Marquess and his son represent at once what is weakest and what is strongest in their family,—that astuteness which sometimes passes muster for statesmanship, and that courage which is exhibited oftener on the scaffold than on the field.

Nearly all the apologists of the father admit that, in the physical sense at least, he was a coward; while they say that at his death he displayed "the dignity of a true nobleman and the meekness of a Christian." His son, on the other hand, is generally allowed to have borne himself bravely on the field of Dunbar, where he commanded a Presby- terian regiment in the decisive conflict with CromwelL After the Restoration, however, he showed a lack of purpose, and perhaps even weakness of conscience, as when in 1681 he voted against Donald Cargill in Council, and yet in the same year declined to sign the new "test."

Nor can it be said that when he was confronted with the results of his own acts in defying James IL he exhibited quite the bravery or the ingenuity that a man of the type of Montrose would have shown. But his death in 1685, after the failure of his badly devised scheme for co-operating in Monmouth's rebellion, was quite as edifying as that of his father twenty-four years earlier. He wrote his own epitaph, and as an expression of the faith that was in him, and sustained him in the last extremity, these lines are peculiarly adequate :—

" On my attempt, though Providence did frown, His oppressed people God at length shall own. Another hand by more successful speed Shall raise the remnant, bruise the serpent's head. Though my head fall, that is no tragic story, Since going hence I enter endless glory."

Had Mr. Wilcock been content to give one volume instead of two to the Marquess and the Earl, he would probably have discharged his self-imposed duty as a resuscitator of a most interesting period of Scottish history more effectively than he has done. For his verdict upon both sums up all that he has to say by way of vindication :—

"He had not the intellectual power of his father, nor did he play BO commanding a part in the national history as his father had done; for, while the Marquess was a statesman with enlightened views and with ability to mould the national policy, his son belonged to the order of politicians who so far from con- trolling are often the victims of the forces at work in the society about them. But though he did not dominate the public life of Scotland as the Marquess had done in the reign of Charles I., and as Lauderdale did in the reign of Charles II., he had strength of character which kept him from being the mere humble adherent

of any prevalent party in the State The great mistake of his life was his invasion of Scotland in 1685. His failure on that occasion was based upon a twofold error—a miscalculation of the condition of public feeling in Scotland, and his making common cause with persons who called him their general but disobeyed his orders. His conduct from the moment when he was bound a prisoner down to that of his death was singularly beautiful. His kindly references to his captors and to his gaolers and to his disorderly associates, who had squandered his military stores and mocked at his authority, his affectionate solicitude for his clan and for the family, whom his ill-advised action had so seriously endangered, and his simple faith and self-possession and unquenchable spirit in the presence of death are beyond all praise."

The author of this volume has been able to add a good deal to the information already in possession of historical students in regard to the ninth Earl of Argyll, the beet presentments of which have up till now been the article on the subject which appears in the Dictionary of National Biography and a notable

chapter in Lord Mae-aulay's history. Not only are Argyll's trial in 1681, his association with Shaftesbury and the Rye

House conspirators, and his hapless invasion of Scotland in 1685 given at greater length and with more detail than before, but for the first time his adventures during the Royalist rising under Glencairn and Middleton at the time of the Commonwealth, his share in the Pentland Hill rising, and his relations with Lauderdale have complete justice done them. Mr. Wilcock, while seeking to be impartial, still admits that his sympathies "most certainly are with those who were deceived and ill-treated by the government of the Restoration,

and especially with that section of them who did what they could to remedy matters and restore peace by accepting the terms offered by Lauderdale in the various Acts of Indulgence brought in by him." In regard to his hero while still he was Lord Lorne, he has the usual biographer's weakness of a too strong inclination to play the apologist. Lorne may not have sought during the reign of Charles II. to "fish on both sides of the water," but the almost Uriah Heepieh tendency of the times to "be 'umble and make terms" seems to have exhibited itself in him as in almost every politician of this morally unsettling period. Monk's lieutenant during the Commonwealth period, General Middleton, did undoubtedly place implicit reliance on Lorne's honour and integrity, and declined to believe stories to his discredit which hinted that, after he had agreed to accept 'terms from the Protector, he had become a rebel and an active partisan of Charles. It is not surprising perhaps that Lorne should, after the Restoration, have played the traitor to the Sovereign he bad served too well. To some extent he was made the means by

which his father was entrapped into the visit to Whitehall which led to his arrest and execution. Mr. Wilcock is for once not too strong in his language when he says : "The detestable treachery in which Lord Lorne was unconsciously involved as a decoy to secure the entrapment of his own father was a crime which would have left an ineffaceable stain

upon the character of Charles II. had there been any back- ground of virtue to act as a foil to it." .

The private life of the ninth Earl of Argyll was quite un- eventful, and mainly noteworthy as bringing into bold relief that public life of Scotland in which he played his part. Mr. Wilcock's volume will be found most valuable for the light he is enabled to throw in it on those old politico-ecclesiastical controversies of which the results are to be seen in the present day. Thus he seems to have common-sense on his

side when he maintains that the disastrous effect of combining religion and politics was never more disastrously displayed than in Scotland during the generation which witnessed the drawing up of the National Covenant of 1637 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643. It split the Churce of Scotland into two warring factions,—the Rernonstrants or Protesters on the one hand, and the Resolutioners on the other. Mr. Wilcock lays down the doctrine that,

"while the members and officials of the Church in their capacity as subjects should form judgments in political affairs that shall be in accordance with the principles of religion, and should use all lawful means for carrying these judgments into effect, the Church as a Church should have no connection with any political party, and should have no recourse to those 'carnal weapons' which the very authority on which her existence depends has explicitly forbidden her to use."

This principle was not observed after the Restoration, and hence Mr. Wilcock has no sympathy with the idea that the Government of Charles II. wantonly attacked a Church which otherwise would have remained at peace and in the enjoyment of hardly won liberties. The Rernonstrants maintained as their symbol and flag the Remonstrance of the Covenanting Army after the battle of Dunbar, in which they. refused to fight any longer in the cause of Charles IL The Resolu- tioners were the more moderate party who accepted him as a Covenanted King, and they derived their name from their support of certain resolutions passed in the Parliament and General Assembly for the admission of Royalists to office under special conditions. The two parties were played off against each other during the Commonwealth period, and resumed their fights after the Restoration. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the Restora- tion Government should have done its best to bring abont

peace by utilising both sections, or even by using such an instrument as the too astute gentleman whom Cromwell styled "Sharp of that ilk." Sharp, as is well known, is mainly

notable for the part he played in the restoration of episcopacy in Scotland. Argyll—as Lorne became some time after the execution of his father—was rather an observer of than a participant in the struggle between episcopacy and presbytery,

which did not come to an end till the Revolution. As Mr. Wilcock points out, he cannot be described BA having been at any time a champion of the Covenant. He acquiesced without a murmur in the repudiation of that document which the

Restoration Government had ordered as a condition of public employment. Sharp on one occasion thanked him for " carrying himself to biehops like a gentleman though he was a Presbyterian." He replied that he had been for a while brought up under a Presbyterian system, but that his opinions had been modified by his experience of life in other countries where Church government was not regarded as a matter of so much importance as people in Scotland thought it to be. When the revolt of the Presbyterian irreconcilables against Charles broke out, Argyll threw himself energetically into the task of preventing it from spreading into his own country. While the rebellion was still on foot he kept all suspected persons under strict surveillance, and did his beet to capture Colonel Wallace, the hero of Rullion Green. He seems to have been deeply mortified at the failure of an elaborate scheme to capture the rebel commander and his son.

Whatever may have been Argyll's weaknesses of head or heart, there can be no question of the gross injustice which marked his trial for treason in 1681. As Mr. Wilcock says with even more than his usual vehemence, "the mere fact that Argyll's enemies secured a death-sentence by such an abominable travesty of justice reduces their proceedings to the level of those of a set of brigands who might insult their victim by a mock trial before stripping him of his property." Halifax, who never spared the Duke of York, when speaking of him to his brother said only too truly : "I know nothing of the Scotch law, but this I know, that we should not hang a dog here on the ground on which my Lord Argyll has been sentenced." The Duke himself tried to maintain that it was never intended to extcute the death-sentence; but considering what happened in the ease of his father, Argyll was amply justified in escaping from Edinburgh Castle. The trial, moreover, had the effect of ruining both Argyll and his wife. His property was forfeited, and he was saved from absolute want by the kindness of his friends and tenants during his exile in Holland. That he made a great mistake in invading Scotland in 1685 must now, after Mr. Wilcock's investiga- tions, be taken for granted. The expedition was weakly planned and badly carried out. It is possible that if the Earl had kept to his own country and waited his time he might have been able to fight what is now popularly termed "a sort of a war," and so have created a diversion in favour of his fellow-conspirator, Monmouth; but his attempt to invade the Lowlands was merely a counsel of despair. As for Argyll himself, one can only too readily believe that his "nerves were thoroughly shaken, and he seems to have been merely a helpless and stupefied spectator, when the ill-advised rebellion, in which he had played so prominent a part, heavily vanished from the stage, with a 'strange, hollow and confused noise.'" Mr. Wilcock's biography differs in its last portion but slightly, except, of course, in amount of detail, from the narrative of Macaulay. Argyll had a melancholy life, and a melancholy, though not ignoble, death ; but the sadness of his tragedy lies mainly in the fact that it was quite unnecessary. "Had he but had patience, and remained for a few years longer in exile, none can doubt that at the Revolu- tion he would have been recalled with honour, and have taken the highest place in the Kingdom at the right hand of the Throne."