The homicide took refuge in Holland, but was soon enabled by a pardon to return to his own country.[[644]]
Aug. 9.
The correspondence of General Wade with the Secretary of State Townsend,[[645]] makes us aware that at this time several of the attainted gentlemen of 1715 had returned to Scotland, in the hope of obtaining a pardon, or at least of being permitted to remain undisturbed. The general humanely pleads for their being pardoned on a formal submission. Amongst them was Alexander Robertson of Struan, chief of the clan Robertson, a gentleman |1726.| who had fought for the Stuarts both at Killiecrankie and Sheriffmuir, and who is further memorable for his convivial habits and his gifts in the writing of pure, but somewhat dull English poetry.
In the year of the Revolution, being a youth of twenty at the university of St Andrews, Struan accepted a commission in some forces then hastily proposed to be raised for James VII.; and, keeping up this military connection, he joined the Highland army of Lord Dundee, but was taken prisoner by the enemy, September 1689, and thrown into the Edinburgh Tolbooth. Here a piece of Highland gratitude served him a good turn. Four years before, when the Perthshire loyalists were hounded out to ravage the lands of the unfortunate Argyle, the late Laird of Struan had, for humane reasons, pleaded for leave to stay at home and take care of the country. The now restored Earl of Argyle, remembering this kindness to his family, interceded for young Robertson, and procured his liberation in exchange for Sir Robert Maxwell of Pollock, who was in the hands of the Highlanders. Struan then passed into France, and joined the exiled king, hoping ere long to return and see the old régime restored; and in his absence, the Scottish parliament declared him forfaulted. He spent many years of melancholy exile in France, enduring the greatest hardships that a gentleman could be subjected to, having no dependence but upon occasional remittances from his mother. Being at length enabled to return to Perthshire, he once more forfeited all but life by joining in the insurrection of 1715. For nine years more he underwent a new exile in the greatest poverty and hardship, while, to add to his mortifications, a disloyal sister, hight ‘Mrs Margaret,’ contrived to worm herself into the possession of his forfeited estates.
In France, Struan had for a fellow in misfortune a certain Professor John Menzies, under whom he had studied at St Andrews, and who seems to have been an old gentleman of some humour. There is extant a letter of Menzies to Struan, giving him advice about his health, and which seems worthy of preservation for the hints it gives as to the habits of these expatriated Scotch Jacobites. It bears to have been written in answer to one in which Struan had spoken of being ill:
‘Paris, March 20.
‘D. S.—I have been out of town a little for my own health, which has kept me some days from receiving or answering your last, in which you speak of some indisposition of yours. I |1726.| hope that before now it is over of itself by a little quiet and temperance, and that thereby nature has done its own business, which it rarely fails to do when one gives it elbow-room, and when it is not quite spent. “When that comes, the house soon comes down altogether. This I have always found in my own case. Whenever I was jaded by ill hours and company, and the consequences of that, I have still retired a little to some convenient hermitage in the country, with two or three doses of rhubarb, and as many of salts. That washes the Augean stable, and for the rest I drink milk and whey, and sometimes a very little wine and water. No company but Horace and Homer, and such old gentlemen that drink no more now. I walk much, eat little, and sleep a great deal. And by this cool and sober and innocent diet, nature gets up its head again, and the horse that was jaded and worn out grows strong again, so that he can jog on some stages of the farce of life without stumbling or breaking his neck. This is a consultation I give you gratis from my own practice and never-failing experience, which is always the best physician. And I am satisfied it would do in your case, where I reckon nature is haill at the heart still, after all your cruel usage of it.
‘As to all those pricklings and startings of the nerves, they come from the ill habit of the blood and body, brought on by ill diet and sharp or earthy wine, as your Orleans wine is reckoned to be—for there are crab-grapes as there are crab-apples, and sloes as well as muscadines.
‘There are great differences of constitutions. Those of a sanguine can drink your champagne or cyder all their life, and old Davy Flood has drunk punch these fifty years daily. Whereas a short time of the lemons that’s in punch would eat out the bottom of my stomach, or make me a cripple. Much champagne, too, would destroy my nerves, though I like its spirit and taste dearly. But it will not do, that is, it never did well with me when I was young and strong; now much less. My meaning in this dissertation about wine and constitutions is plainly this, first, to recommend to you frequent retraites, in order to be absolutely cool, quiet, and sober, with a little gentle physic now and then, in order to give time and help to nature to recover. And when you will needs drink wine—that it be of the haill and old south-country wines, Hermitage, Coté Rotis, Cahors, &c., with a little water still, since there is a heat in them.
‘As to any external tremblings or ailings of the nerves, pray make constant usage of Hungary-water to your head and |1726.| nosethrills, and behind your ears—of which I have found an infinite effect and advantage of a long time, for I have been very often in the very same case you describe, and these have always been my certain cures. Repetatur quantum sufficit, and I will warrant you.