[134] On the death of Jonathan's son, Colonel James Urquhart, in 1741, the shadowy honour of the headship of the family passed to the Urquharts of Meldrum, who were descended from the Tutor of Cromartie by a third marriage with Elizabeth Seton, only daughter of Alexander Seton of Meldrum, and ultimately heiress of that estate. The last male representative of this line was Major Beauchamp Colclough Urquhart, who closed a promising career by a heroic death at the battle of Atbara, in the Sudan, on 8th April, 1898. His sister, Isabel Annie, is wife of Garden Alexander Duff, Esq., Hatton Castle, Turriff.
[135] See p. 58.
[136] Pococke, in his Tour through Scotland (1761), says of the castle of Cromartie: "It has fallen into the hands of one Mr Urquhart, who had commanded a Spanish Gally, and died a Convert to Popery; which slip his son, now eighteen years old, has in some degree recovered, by conforming to the Church of England" (p. 176; Scottish History Society).
[137] In the old Statistical Account of Cromartie, and in the preface to the Maitland Club edition of Urquhart's Works, the estate is said to have passed into the hands of Sir William Pulteney.
[138] Mr Ross is mentioned in the Letters of Junius (see those of 29th November and 12th December, 1769). He was succeeded by his nephew, from whom the present proprietor of Cromartie, Major Walter Charteris Ross, is descended.
[139] Our Sir Thomas's memory should be cherished by defenders of the name and fame of Mary Queen of Scots, for he goes so far as to say that "ignorance, together with hypocrisie, usury, oppression, and iniquity, took root in these parts [Scotland], when uprightness, plain-dealing, and charity, with Astrœa, took their flight with Queen Mary of Scotland into England." Probably few of her admirers would be so daring as to assert this, though many of them doubtless would be glad to hear the assertion made.
[140] We take the liberty of extracting those few sentences from the letter of a friend, who has taken great interest in the execution of this work;—"Sir Thomas would have been an original character in almost any surroundings—a kind of literary Quixote, with what may be called a 'parenthetical' genius, branching off at every comma into the fresh images furnished by a teeming imagination. He was more than a translator of Rabelais—he seems to have been a kind of Rabelais himself."
[141] Sir Theodore Martin, Rabelais, p. xix.
[142] See p. 28.
[143] A different opinion is expressed in the preface to W. Harrison Ainsworth's capital novel of Crichton. "Sir Thomas," he says, "is a joyous spirit—a right Pantagruelist; and if he occasionally