On the 7th August, while the minute-guns boomed from the dark portholes of the ancient half-moon battery of the castle, his body, in a magnificent hearse, drawn by plumed horses, and having six pieces of brass cannon, his led charger, his suit of armour, and his many trophies, sword, spurs, helmet, and gauntlets, and his general's bâton, all borne by officers of rank, and escorted by all the standing forces in Edinburgh, with drums muffled, standards craped, and arms reversed, was slowly conveyed through the western gate of the city to Linlithgowshire, and interred in the family vault of the Dalyells at Binns, in the parish of Abercorn.
There the persecuting Cavalier rests in peace, though the superstitious peasantry still aver that his tall, thin, and venerable figure, in buff coat and head-piece, with his vast white beard floating from his grim visage to his military girdle, is seen "in glimpses of the moon," flitting, like an unquiet spirit, about the old manor house, or in the avenues and parks which were formed by himself around it.
He died in his eighty-fifth year.
The hearts of the Covenanters gathered hope, and held jubilee at his death; and if all be true that is recorded of him, it can scarcely be a matter for wonder that his name and memory are still execrated in Scotland, and that the reputation he has left behind him is not one to be envied.
General Drummond, his old Russian comrade, succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief of the Scottish army; Charles, Earl of Dunmore, was appointed Colonel of the Scots Greys, and the Laird of Livingstone filled the seat left vacant by him, as Commissioner in Parliament for the shire of Linlithgow.
His son Thomas, who succeeded him, was created a baronet of Nova Scotia, and left a daughter, Magdalene Dalyell, who, by her marriage with James Menteith, of Auldcathie, transmitted the property to her son, who thus represented the ancient line of the Earls of Menteith.
In reviewing the life of this singular officer, I cannot do better than quote the words of one of the most temperate and popular of Scottish writers:—
"There are two ways of contemplating the character even of so blood-stained a persecutor as Dalyell. He had, it must be remarked, served royalty upon principle in its worst days, and seen a monarch beheaded by a small party of his rebellious subjects, and a great part of the community, including himself, deprived of their property, and obliged to fly for their lives to foreign lands; and all this was on account of one particular way of viewing politics and religion. When the usual authorities of the land regained their ascendancy, Dalyell must naturally have been disposed to justify and support very severe measures, in order to prevent the recurrence of such a period as the Civil War and the Usurpation. Thus all his cruelties are resolved into an abstract principle, to the relief of his personal character, which otherwise, we do not doubt, might be very good. How often do we see, even in modern times, actions justified upon general views, which would be shuddered at if they stood upon their naked merits, and were to be performed upon the sole responsibility of the individual!"
Such was the chequered military career of the first colonel of the old Scots Greys, certainly one of the most remarkable men of a time replete with bloodshed and cruelty.
The persecuted and the persecutor—the fiery Cavalier and the stern Covenanter—are alike in their quiet graves, and the grass of nearly two hundred years has grown and withered over them. Their strife is becoming, indeed, a tale of the times of old; yet few Scotsmen can look back without emotions of sorrow and compassion to those dark days of religious madness and political misrule when, with all their bravery, their forefathers perpetrated such deeds as made "the angels weep." But, happily for us, time and the grave mellow the memory of all things.