Immediately after the Queen's death, Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, proposed to Lord Bolingbroke to proclaim James at Charing Cross, and offered, himself, to head the procession in lawn sleeves. But Bolingbroke shrank from the enterprise; and, with an exclamation of passion, Atterbury exclaimed,—"There is the best cause in Europe lost for want of spirit." The boldness of the proposition, and the ardent temper from which it originated, recall, with regret, the remembrance of one who, as Lord Hailes in his notes on Atterbury's Correspondence has remarked, was "incapable of dark conspiracies."[57]

The Chevalier was then residing at Barleduc, with a suite of sixty persons; some of whom boasted of having taken part in the conspiracies against William the Third, and were proud of having compassed the death of that Sovereign. From time to time, Englishmen of distinction travelled from Paris to Barleduc, under pretext of seeing the country, but in fact to proffer a secret allegiance to the Prince. The individual to whom these attentions were addressed, is described by an anonymous emissary of the English Court, as leading a regular life,—hunting when the weather permitted, and hearing mass every day with great precision and devotion. "Il est fort maigre," adds the same writer, "assez grand; son teint est brun, son humeur et sa personne ne sont pas désagréables." In another place, it is added, "Il paroit manquer de jugement et de résolution:" an opinion, unhappily, too correct.[58] On the question being put by Bolingbroke to the Duke of Berwick, whether the Prince was a bigot, the answer was in the negative. "Then," said Bolingbroke, "we shall have no objection to place him on the throne." This anecdote, which was told by the Chevalier himself to Brigadier Nugent, probably gave countenance to the rumour spread in England, that James was likely to renounce the Catholic faith, and conform to the English Church.[59]

The Earl of Mar and his brother, Lord Grange, were now the two most considerable men in Scotland. Lord Grange had been made Lord of Session in 1707, and afterwards Lord Justice Clerk, during the three last years of Queen Anne's reign. His character presents traits even more repulsive and more dangerous than the time-serving and duplicity of the Earl of Mar. Lord Grange was one of those men whom the honest adherents to either party would, doubtless, gladly have turned over to the other side. His abilities, if we judge of the high appointments which he held, must have been eminent; but he was devoid of all principle, and was capable, if the melancholy and extraordinary history of his unhappy wife be true, of the darkest schemes.

It would be difficult to reconcile, in any other man, the discrepancy of Lord Grange's real opinions and of his subsequent efforts to restore the House of Stuart; but, in a brother of the Earl of Mar, the difficulty ceases, and all hopes of consistency, or rather of its origin, sincerity, vanish. Lord Grange is declared to have been a "true blue republican, and, if he had any religion, at bottom a Presbyterian;" yet he was deeply involved in transactions with the Chevalier and his friends.[60]

Lord Grange was united to a lady violent in temper, of a dauntless spirit, and a determined Hanoverian. Their marriage had been enforced by the laws of honour, and was ill-omened from the first; therefore, where respect has ceased, affection soon languishes and expires. The daughter of Cheisly of Dalry, a man of uncontrolled passions, who shot Sir George Lockhart, one of the Lords of Session, for having decided a law-suit against him, Mrs. Erskine of Grange, commonly called Lady Grange, inherited the determined will of her father. It was said that she had compelled Lord Grange to do her justice by marrying her, and "had desired him to remember, by way of threat, that she was Cheisly's daughter." For this menace she suffered in a way which could only be effected in a country like Scotland at that period, and among a people held in the thraldom of the clans. Her singular history belongs to a later period in the annals of those events in which so much domestic happiness was blasted, never to be recovered.[61]

With his brother, Lord Mar was in constant correspondence, during his own residence in London; and although Lord Grange was skilful enough to conceal his machinations, and to retain his seat on the bench as a Scottish judge, there is very little reason to doubt his secret co-operation in the subsequent movements of the Earl.

Acting as if "he thought that all things were governed by fate or fortune,"[62] George the First remained a long time to settle his own affairs in Hanover, before coming to England. This delay was employed by the Earl of Mar, in an endeavour to extenuate the tenor of his political conduct of late years in the eyes of the Sovereign, and in placing before the King the merit of his services and his claims to favour. The letter which he addressed to George the First, when in Holland, was printed by Tonson, during the year 1715, with prefatory remarks by Sir Richard Steele, whose comments upon this production of a man who, scarcely a year after it was written, set up the standard of the Pretender at Braemar, are expressed in these terms:

"It gives me a lively sense of the hardships of civil war, wherein all the sacred and most intimate obligations between man and man are to be torn asunder, when I cannot, without pain, represent to myself the behaviour of Lord Mar, with whom I had not even the honour of any further commerce than the pleasure of passing some agreeable hours in his company: I say, when even such little incidents make it irksome to be in a state of war with those with whom we have lived in any degree of familiarity, how terrible must the image be of rending the ties of blood, the sanctity of affinity and intermarriage, and the bringing men who, perhaps in a few months before, were to each other the dearest of all mankind, to meet on terms of giving death to each other at the same time that they had rather embrace!" Thus premising, and declaring that he could with difficulty efface from his mind all remains of good will and pity to Lord Mar, Sir Richard Steele subjoins a document, fatal to the reputation of Lord Mar—the following letter, which Lord Mar addressed to the King, in explanation of his conduct.

LORD MAR TO THE KING.

"Sir,