I never more may see the babe,
That smiles upon thy knee.
LORD KENMURE.
Viscount Kenmure—‘the bravest Lord that ever Galloway saw’—was beheaded as soon as the body of Lord Derwentwater had been removed. He too had confessed his guilt, and, in return for the mercy which he prayed for, had promised to show himself the most dutiful of the subjects of King George. On the night before his execution, he wrote to a friend in quite a different spirit. He disavowed all he had said to the Lords. He now knew no king but the one to whom he offered the devotion of a dying man—King James III.! On the scaffold—whither he was accompanied by his eldest son!—he did not follow Lord Derwentwater’s example of making a public profession of his principles, but Lord Kenmure prayed audibly for King James, for whose sake he sacrificed his life. That life perished under two blows of the axe. The unfortunate lord did full justice to the bard who said that there never was a coward of Kenmure’s blood, nor yet of Gordon’s line. He left, weeping for him, the widow who had counselled him neither to go into, nor to refrain from going into, the struggle that ended so fatally for him and her. That she approved what her lord had resolved is suggested in the Jacobite song, which says:—
His lady’s cheek was red, Willie,
His lady’s cheek was red,
When she his steely jupes put on,
Which smell’d o’ deadly feud.
Lady Kenmure, however, was a woman of good sense. She had friends around her in London, and it will be presently seen how she turned them to account.
TAKING THE OATHS.