Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland

by Hugh Miller

SIR ROBERT MUNRO.

The eldest son of the family was Sir Robert Munro, twenty-seventh baronet of Fowlis, a man whose achievements, as recorded by the sober pen of Doddridge, seem fitted to associate rather with ideas derived from the high conceptions of poetry and romance, than with those which we usually acquire from our experience of real life. He was a person of calm wisdom, determined courage, and unassuming piety. On quitting the university, which he did when very young, he passed into Flanders, where he served for several years under Marlborough, and became intimate with the celebrated James Gardiner, then a cornet of dragoons. And the intimacy ripened into a friendship which did not terminate until death; perhaps not even then. On the peace of 1712 he returned to Scotland; and the Rebellion broke out three years after. At the head of his clan, the Munros, in union with the good Earl of Sutherland, he so harassed a body of three thousand Highlanders, who, under the Earl of Seaforth, were on the march to join the insurgents at Perth, that the junction was retarded for nearly two months—a delay which is said to have decided the fate of the Stuarts in Scotland. In the following year he was appointed one of the commissioners of inquiry into the forfeited estates of the attainted; and he exerted himself in this office in erecting parishes in the remote Highlands, which derived their stipends from the confiscated lands. In this manner, says his biographer, new presbyteries were formed in counties where the discipline and worship of Protestant Churches had before no footing. It is added, that by his influence with Government he did eminent service to the wives and children of the proscribed. He was for thirty years a member of Parliament, and distinguished himself as a liberal consistent Whig—the friend both of the people and of the king. In the year 1740, when the country was on the eve of what he deemed a just war, though he had arrived at an age at which the soldier commonly begins to think of retiring from the fatigues of the military life, he quitted the business of the senate for the dangers of the field, and passed a second time into Flanders. He now held the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and such was his influence over the soldiers under him, and such their admiration of his character, that his spirit and high sense of honour seemed to pervade the whole regiment. When a guard was granted to the people of Flanders for the protection of their property, they prayed that it should be composed of Sir Robert’s Highlanders; and the Elector-Palatine, through his envoy at the English court, tendered to George I. his thanks for this excellent regiment; for the sake of whose lieutenant-colonel, it was added, he would for the future always esteem a Scotchman.

The life of Sir Robert resembled a well-wrought drama, whose scenes become doubly interesting as it hastens to a close. In the battle of Fontenoy he was among the first in the field, and having obtained leave that his Highlanders should fight after the manner of their country, he surprised the whole army by a display of extraordinary yet admirable tactics, directed against the enemy with the most invincible courage. He dislodged from a battery, which he was ordered to attack, a force superior to his own, and found a strong body of the enemy, who were stationed beyond it, preparing to open on him a sweeping fire. Commanding his regiment to prostrate itself to avoid the shot, he raised it when the French were in the act of reloading, and, sword in hand, rushed at its head upon them with so irresistible a charge as forced them precipitately through their lines. Then retreating, according to the tactics of his country, he again brought his men to the charge as before, and with similar effect. And this manœuvre of alternate flight and attack was frequently repeated during the day. When after the battle had become general, the English began to give ground before the superior force of the enemy, Sir Robert’s regiment formed the rearguard in the retreat. A strong body of French horse came galloping up behind; but, when within a few yards of the Highlanders, the latter turned suddenly round, and received them with a fire so well directed and effectual, that nearly one-half of them were dismounted. The rest, wheeling about, rode off, and did not again return to the attack. It was observed, that during the course of this day, when the Highlanders had thrown themselves on the ground immediately as the enemy had levelled their pieces for firing, there was one person of the regiment who, instead of prostrating himself with the others, stood erect, exposed to the volley. That one was Sir Robert Munro. The circumstances of his death, which took place about eight months after, at the battle of Falkirk, were adapted to display still more his indomitable heroism of character. He had recently been promoted to the command of a regiment, which, unlike his brave Highlanders at Fontenoy, deserted him in the moment of attack, and left him enclosed by the enemy. Defending himself with his half-pike against six of their number, two of whom he killed, he was not overpowered, though alone, until a seventh coming up shot him dead with a musket. His younger brother, who accompanied the regiment, and who had been borne along by the current of the retreat, returned in time only to witness his fate and to share it.

It has been told me by a friend, who, about forty years ago, resided for some time in the vicinity of Fowlis, that he could have collected, at that period, anecdotes of Sir Robert from among his tenantry sufficient to have formed a volume. They were all of one character:—tints of varied but unequivocal beauty, which animated into the colour and semblance of life the faint outline of heroism traced by Doddridge. There was an old man who used to sit by my friend for hours together narrating the exploits of his chief. He was a tall, upright, greyhaired Highlander, of a warm heart and keen unbending spirit, who had fought at Dettingen, Fontenoy, Culloden, and Quebec. One day, when describing the closing scene in the life of his almost idolized leader, after pouring out his curse on the dastards who had deserted him, he started from his seat, and grasping his staff as he burst into tears, exclaimed in a voice almost smothered by emotion, “Ochon, ochon, had his ain folk been there!!”

The following anecdote of Sir Robert, which I owe to tradition, sets his character in a very amiable light. On his return from Flanders in 1712, he was introduced to a Miss Jean Seymour, a beautiful English lady. The young soldier was smitten by her appearance, and had the happiness of perceiving that he had succeeded in at least attracting her notice. So happy an introduction was followed up into an intimacy, and at length, what had been only a casual impression on either side, ripened into a mutual passion of no ordinary warmth and delicacy. On Sir Robert’s quitting England for the north, he arranged with his mistress the plan of a regular correspondence, and wrote to her immediately on his arrival at Fowlis. After waiting for a reply with all the impatience of the lover, he sent off a second letter complaining of her neglect, which had no better success than the first, and shortly after a third, which shared the fate of the two others. The inference seemed too obvious to be missed; and he strove to forget Miss Seymour. He hunted, fished, visited his several friends, involved himself in a multiplicity of concerns, but all to no purpose; she still continued the engrossing object of his affections, and, after a few months’ stay in the Highlands, he again returned to England, a very unhappy man. When waiting on a friend in London, he was ushered precipitately into the midst of a fashionable party, and found himself in the presence of his mistress. She seemed much startled by the rencounter; the blood mounted to her cheeks; but, suppressing her emotion, she turned to the lady who sat next her, and began to converse on some common topic of the day. Sir Robert retired, and beckoning on his friend, entreated him to procure for him an interview with Miss Seymour, which was effected, and an explanation ensued. The lady had not received a single letter; and forming at length, from the seeming neglect of her lover, an opinion of him similar to that from which she herself was suffering in his esteem, she attempted to banish him from her affections;—an attempt, however, in which she was scarcely more successful than Sir Robert. They were gratified to find that they had not been mistaken in their first impressions of each other, and parted more attached, and more convinced that the attachment was mutual, than ever. And in less than two months after Miss Seymour had become Lady Munro.

Sir Robert succeeded in tracing all his letters to one point, a kind of post-office on the confines of Inverness-shire. There was a proprietor in the neighbourhood, who was deeply engaged in the interests of the Stuarts, and decidedly hostile to Sir Robert, the scion of a family which had distinguished itself from the first dawn of the Reformation in the cause of civil and religious liberty. There was, therefore, little difficulty in assigning an author to the contrivance; but Sir Robert was satisfied in barely tracing it to a discovery; for, squaring his principles of honour rather by the morals of the New Testament than by the dogmas of that code which regards death as the only expiation of insult or injury, he was no duellist. An opportunity, however, soon occurred of his avenging himself in a manner agreeable to his character and principles. On the breaking out of the Rebellion of 1715, the person who had so wantonly sported with his happiness joined the Earl of Mar, and, after the failure of the enterprise, was among the number of the proscribed. Sir Robert’s influence with the Government, and the peculiar office to which he was appointed, gave him considerable power over the confiscated properties, and this power he exerted to its utmost in behalf of the wife and children of the man by whom he had been injured. “Tell your husband,” said he to the lady, “that I have now repaid him for the interest he took in my correspondence with Miss Seymour.”

BABBLE HANAH.

Sir Robert’s second brother (the other, as has been related, died with him at Falkirk) was killed, about seven months after the battle, in the Highlands of Lochaber. His only sister survived him for nearly twenty years, “a striking example (I use the language of Doddridge) of profound submission and fortitude, mingled with the most tender sensibility of temper.” She was the wife of a Mr. Gordon of Ardoch (now Pointzfield), whom she survived for several years; and her later days were spent in Cromarty, where there are still a few elderly people who remember her, and speak of her many virtues and gentle manners with a feeling bordering on enthusiasm. There was a poor half-witted girl who lived in her neighbourhood, known among the town’s-people by the name of Babble Hanah. The word in italics is a Scottish phrase applied to persons of an idiotical cast of mind, and yet though poor Hanah had no claim to dispute the propriety of its application in her own case, her faint glimmering of reason proved quite sufficient to light her on the best possible track of life. She had learned from revelation of the immortality of the soul, and the two states of the future; and experience had taught even her, what indeed it would teach every one, did every one but attend to its lessons, that there is a radical depravity in the nature of man, and a continual succession of evil in the course of life. She had learned, too, that she was one of the least wise of a class of creatures exceedingly foolish at best, and that to escape from evil needed much wisdom. She was, therefore earnest in her prayers to the Great Spirit who was so kind to her—and to even those feeble animals who, though they enjoy no boon of after life, have a wisdom to provide for the winter, and to dig their houses in the rocks—that in this world He would direct her walk agreeably to His own will, and render her wiser in the world to come. Socrates could have taught all this to Xenophon and Plato, but God only could have taught it to Hanah. The people of the place, with dispositions like those of the great bulk of people in every place, were much more disposed to laugh at the poor thing for what she wanted, than to form right estimates of the value of what she had. Not so Lady Ardoch;—Hanah was one of her friends. The lady’s house was a place where, in the language of Scripture, “prayer was wont to be made;” and no one was a more regular attendant on the meetings held for this purpose, than her friend the half-witted girl. The poor thing always sat at her feet, and was termed by her, her own Hanah. Years, however, began to weigh down the frame of the good lady; and after passing through all the gradations of bodily decay, with a mind which seemed to brighten and grow stronger as it neared to eternity, she at length slept with her fathers. Hanah betrayed no emotion of grief; she spoke to no one of the friend whom she had lost; but she moped and pined away, and became indifferent to everything; and a few months after, when on her deathbed, she told a friend of the deceased who had come to visit her, that she was going to the country of Lady Ardoch.

CHAPTER XXX.

“Rise, honest muse, and sing the man of Ross.”