Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight

by John Willcock

The most importunate of all the creditors, or, as Urquhart describes them, "the usurious cormorants," who harassed the unhappy proprietor of Cromartie, was a certain Robert Lesley of Findrassie. He held a mortgage upon the estate, and though he was indebted to its owner for many acts of kindness, he had been the first to foreclose upon the property, and had persuaded other creditors to join with him in taking this step. The annoyance and mortification caused by these proceedings hastened Sir Thomas's death. Two days before that event, animated by regret for the wrong he had done his heir by the impoverishment of the family property, he assembled his younger children, and bound them, "under pain of his everlasting curse and execration," to do all in their power to help their elder brother. The terms of this extraordinary bond, his son tells us, were these: "to assist, concur with, follow, and serve me, to the utmost of their power, industry, and means, and to spare neither charge nor travel, though it should cost them all they had, to release me from the undeserved bondage of the domineering creditor, and extricate my lands from the impestrements wherein they were involved; yea, to bestow nothing of their owne upon no other use, till that should be done; and all this under their own handwriting, secured with the clause of registration to make the opprobrie the more notorious in case of failing, as the paper itself, which I have in retentis, together with another signed to the same sense, by my mother, and also my brothers and sisters, Dunbugur [Dunlugas][62] only excepted, will more evidently testifie."[63] Sir Thomas Urquhart, the elder, died in April [?], 1642, after a long and lingering illness.[64]

Our author now returned home to enter on possession of his estates, and to attempt to reduce to something like order the chaos in which the family affairs were. He resolved to commit the management of his property to trustees, who, after paying his mother's jointure, were to devote the whole of the rest of the rents to the reduction of debt. He himself went to live on the Continent, in the hope that in a few years he would be able to return home and enjoy his inheritance unencumbered by debt. These proceedings, with the disappointing results that followed them, are related in a passage of his Logopandecteision, which is worth quoting. "Immediately after my father's decease," he says, "for my better expedition in the discharge of those burthens, having repaired homewards, I did sequestrate the whole rent (my mother's joynture excepted) to that use only, and, as I had done many times before, betook myself to my hazards abroad, that by vertue of the industry and diligence of those whom, by the advise and deliberation of my nearest friends, I was induced to intrust with my affairs, the debt might be the sooner defrayed, and the ancient house releeved out of the thraldome it was so unluckily faln into. But it fell out so far otherwayes, that after some few years residence abroad, without any considerable expence from home, when I thought, because of my having mortified and set apart all the rent to no other end then [than] the cutting off and defalking of my father's debt, that accordingly a great part of my father's debt had been discharged, I was so far disappointed of my expectation therin, that whilst, conform to the confidence reposed in him whom I had intrusted with my affairs, I hoped to have been exonered and relieved of many creditors, the debt was only past over and transferred from one in favours of another, or rather of many in the favours of one, who, though he formerly had gained much at my father's hands, was notwithstanding at the time of his decease none of his creditors, nor at any time mine; my Egyptian bondage by such means remaining still the same, under task masters different only in name, and the rents neverthelesse taken up to the full, to my no small detriment and prejudice of the house standing in my person. The aime of some of those I concredited [committed] my weightiest adoes [affairs] unto, being, as is most conspicuously apparent, that I should never reap the fruition nor enjoyment of any portion, parcell, or pendicle of the estate of my predecessors, unlesse by my fortune and endeavours in forrain countries, I should be able to acquire as much as might suffice to buy it, as we say, out of the ground. And verily," he concludes, "though not in relation to these ignoble and unworthy by-ends, it was my purpose and resolution to have done so, which assuredly, had not the turbulent divisions of the time been such as to have crossed and thwarted the atchievements of more faisible projects, I would have accomplished two or three severall ways ere now."[65]

One is inclined to wonder what the two or three lucrative undertakings were, which this Highland gentleman had in view when he spoke in this way of the practicability of making enough money to purchase back his estates. "What song the syrens sang," says Sir Thomas Browne, "or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture." But even as wise a man as Sir Thomas Browne might well pause before venturing on a conjecture in connection with this matter.

In one of the official records of the time,[66] there is an entry which shows that Urquhart was resident in London in 1644. On the 9th May of that year he is assessed for a forced loan at £1000; and, on the 16th of the same month, there is an order for him to be brought up in custody to pay his assessment; while, on the 21st, it is noted that his assessment is "respited till he shall speak with the Scottish committee and take further orders, be engaging to appear whenever required." He no doubt proved to the committee that he had no property in London, but was only a sojourner there, and was accordingly virtually discharged. His place of residence in London at this time was Clare Street,[67] then newly erected upon St Clement's Inn Fields, on the east side of Drury Lane, and called after John Holles,[68] second Earl of Clare, whose town-house was near by.

Sir Thomas Urquhart now resolved to take the management of his own affairs, and, if possible, so to conduct matters as to secure subsistence for himself, as well as satisfaction for his father's creditors; and, in the year 1645, he went to live in the ancestral home at Cromartie. His rental still amounted to £1000 Sterling a year, which represents about £7000 in our time, but a debt of twelve or thirteen years' income was a very serious burden upon such an estate.

There can be little doubt that the entanglement in which the financial affairs of the house of Urquhart were involved became none the less confused and confusing when the gallant knight applied himself to unravel it. That was scarcely a task for which he was fitted. Much more appropriate would it have been for him to draw the sword, like Alexander, and cut the Gordian knot. Perhaps his failure, as in another well-known case,[69] is partly to be attributed to his not having had a legal adviser, familiar with the intricacies of the law, and able to prevent his creditors getting more than their pound of flesh, if not to save even that from them. Charles I. once said that he knew as much law as a gentleman ought to know. Sir Thomas Urquhart seems to have had a somewhat similar acquaintance with the same subject, and this, like that of the person mentioned in the footnote on the preceding page, was probably acquired "as a defendant on civil process." There can be no doubt that he "made an effort" more than once. In vain did he have recourse to "pecunial charms, and holy water out of Plutus' cellar."[70] The charms were indeed potent, but they were not applied long enough; the holy water was composed of the right ingredients, but there was too little of it in the cellars at Cromartie. He could not, with all his struggles, succeed in curing what the Limousin scholar in Rabelais calls "the penury of pecune in the marsupie" [i.e. the want of money in the purse]—that complaint which is so mortifying to the pride of any gentleman, but which is specially exasperating to a Highland gentleman. His cares and distresses, or, as he calls them, his "solicitudinary and luctiferous discouragements," were enough "to appall the most undaunted spirits, and kill a very Paphlagonian partridge, that is said to have two hearts."[71]

Probably Sir Thomas Urquhart was harshly dealt with by his father's creditors, though, of course, it is possible that in the story as told by them they would appear in a more favourable light. They had to do with a man who was unpractical and fantastical in the highest degree, and morbidly sensitive in all matters that seemed to lower his dignity or to cast a slur upon his honour. His brains seethed with plans for the improvement of agriculture, trade, and education, but none of these did the importunity of his creditors permit him to carry into effect. "Truly I may say," he complains, "that above ten thousand severall times I have by these flagitators been interrupted for money, which never came to my use, directly or indirectly one way or other, at home or abroad, any one time whereof I was busied about speculations of greater consequence then [than] all that they were worth in the world; from which, had I not been violently pluck'd away by their importunity, I would have emitted to publick view above five hundred several treatises on inventions never hitherto thought upon by any."[72] Before his imagination there floated the dream of what he might have been, and his mind alternated between passionate remonstrances against his unfortunate circumstances and delusive hopes and anticipations.

The editor of the Maitland Club edition of Urquhart's works truly remarks that there is a melancholy earnestness, almost approaching insanity, in his wild speculations on what he might have done for himself and his country but for the weight of worldly incumbrances. "Even so," he says, "may it be said of myself, that when I was most seriously imbusied about the raising of my own and countrie's reputation to the supremest reach of my endeavours, then did my father's creditors, like so many millstones hanging at my heels, pull down the vigour of my fancie, and violently hold that under, what [which] other wayes would have ascended above the sublimest regions of vulgar conception."[73]

So convinced was he that the schemes and inventions with which his thoughts were occupied were of immense value, that he declared that he ought to have the benefit of that Act of James III. (36th statute of his fifth Parliament) which provides that the debtor's movable goods be first "valued and discussed before his lands be apprised." He claimed this as a right from the State; "and if," he says, "conform to the aforesaid Act, this be granted, I doe promise shortly to display before the world, ware of greater value then [than] ever from the East Indias was brought in ships to Europe."[74] But unfortunately the Philistines were too strong for him.