"Your Majestie may find many more capable, but never a more faithful servant than him who is with all duty and esteem, Sir, your Majestie's most dutiful, most faithfull and most obedient subject and servant,
"Mar."
"From the Camp of Perth, Nov. 24, 1715."
A fortnight previously the Earl of Mar had addressed the following curious letter to Captain Henry Straiton,[113] at Edinburgh, to whom many of Lord Mar's epistles are written. The allusion to Margaret Miller refers to Lady Nairn, the sister-in-law of the Marquis of Tullibardine, and wife of Lord Nairn, who, in compliance with a Scottish custom, took his wife's title, she being Lady Nairn in her own right. The allusion to "a dose" which will require the air of a foreign country to aid it, seems to offer some notion of the Earl's subsequent flight.
"Novemb. 8th, 1715.
"Sir,
"I had yours of the fourth this forenoon, which was very wellcome. And I hope we shall soon see the certainty of what the accounts makes us expect of these folks' arivall. I sent of a pacquet yesterday with an answer to Margaret Miller's of the second, and in it I sent a copie of my last to Mr. H——n, which was dated the second and third, of which I sent him copies two different wayes, so I hope he'll get one of them at least. They were pressing them to go into England; and now that they are actually gone their, and in so good a way, I am easie as to that. I hope God will direct and assist them.
"I thought to have marcht from this to-day. The foot are mostly gone, and I march with the horse to-morrow morning. Our generall revew is to be at Auchterardor on Thursday morning, and then to march forward immediately. It is of great use to hear often from you, and to have accounts of our friends in the north of England, and what is doing in England beside; so I know you'll write as often as you can find occasions. I fancie I may hear to-day from our friends in the north of England, for I hope they had some days ago a way of sending directly. It seems the Duke of Argyll's absence from London is not like to do his own court of interest there much good. I hope our manifesto's being disperced at London, will have good effect; and I long to see what the prints call the Pretender's declaration, and the declaration of the people of England. The run upon the bank, I hope, will not lessen. The public credit must not be once ruined to make it raise again, and I hope that time may be sooner than we think of. We have rainy weather, but that is an inconveniencie to the enimie as well as to us. My humble service to Margaret Miller: I thank her for the information she gives me, of one about me giving intelligence; but other friends may be easie about it, for I am sure there is nothing in it; and I know what made them belive, which I confess had colour enough. I wish she would get the Doctrix to send a new dose to the patient she knows of, for there was a little too much of one of the ingredients in the last, which toke away the effect of the whole. It is the ingredient that has the postponeing quality in it; and the patient's greatest distemper is the apprehentions he has of a perfect cure being long of comeing, and that it is not to be til he get the air of another country. The dose must be carefully made up, and no appearance of its comeing from any other hand but the Doctrix' own. Ther's some copies herewith sent of a paper printed on this side the water, of which I hear severall are at Stirling. The other two papers I got to-day are given to revise, and are to be printed soon. I send you a copie of a letter was wrote t'other day, and sent to the Cameronians in the west. I wish you could send this one to some of them in the south. This is all I will trouble you with; but I hope both to get from you and give you good news soon, and I ever am, with all sincerity and truth, yrs. &c.
"Perhaps Capt. R——n will not be found to have done so much hurt as was thought he designed; but this is not to bid trust him yet."
By two manuscript letters among the Mar papers, it appears, however, that the account soon afterwards published by Lord Mar was not so full of artifice and untruths as his enemies represented. "He kept the field of battle until it was dark," says one writer, in a letter dated from Perth (November the 19th, 1715); "and nothing but want of provisions prevented us from going forward the next day. We hear the Whigs give various accounts of the battle, to cover the victory; but the numbers of the slain on their part being eleven or twelve hundred, and ours not above fifty or sixty, and our keeping the field when they left it, makes the victory incontestable. Your friends that I know here mind you often, and they and I would be glad to have the opportunity to drink a bottle with you beyond the Forth."