“Another of the Bradwardine character is still remembered by the Highlanders with a degree of admiration bordering on enthusiasm. This was John Stewart, of the family of Kincardine, in Strathspey, known to the country by the name of John Roy Stewart, an accomplished gentleman, an elegant scholar, a good poet, and a brave officer. He composed with equal facility in English, Latin and Gaelic; but it was chiefly by his songs, epigrams, and descriptive pieces, that he attracted the admiration of his countrymen. He was an active leader in the rebellion of 1745, and, during his ‘hiding’ of many months, he had more leisure to indulge his taste for poetry and song. The country traditions are full of his descriptive pieces, eulogies and laments on friends, or in allusion to the events of that unfortunate period. He had been long in the service of France and Portugal, and had risen to the rank of colonel. He was in Scotland in 1745, and commanded a regiment, composed of the tenants of his family and a considerable number of the followers of Sir George Stewart of Grandtully, who had been placed under him. With these, amounting in all to 400 men, he joined the rebel army, and proved one of its ablest partizans.”—Sketches, vol. ii. notes.
Diligent research, however, has enabled us to point out a much nearer original.
The person who held the situation in the rebel army which in the novel has been assigned to the Baron, namely, the command of their few cavalry, was Alexander, fourth Lord Forbes of Pitsligo. This nobleman, who possessed but a moderate fortune, was so much esteemed for his excellent qualities of temper and understanding, that when, after the battle of Prestonpans, he declared his purpose of joining Prince Charles, most of the gentlemen in that part of the country put themselves under his command, thinking they could not follow a better or safer example than the conduct of Lord Pitsligo. He thus commanded a body of 150 well mounted gentlemen in the subsequent scenes of the rebellion, at the fatal close of which he escaped to France, and was attainted, in the following month, by the title of Lord Pitsligo, his estate and honours being of course forfeited to the crown. After this he claimed the estate before the Court of Session, on account of the misnomer, his title being properly Lord Forbes of Pitsligo; and that Court gave judgment in his favour, 16th November, 1749; but on an appeal it was reversed by the House of Lords, 1750.
Like Bradwardine, Lord Pitsligo had been out in 1715 also—though it does not appear that much notice was then taken of his defection. His opposition to the whiggery of modern times had been equally constant, and of long standing; for he was one of those staunch and honourable though mistaken patriots of the last Scottish Parliament, who had opposed the Union.
He could also boast of a smattering of the belles lettres; and probably plumed himself upon his literary attainments as much as the grim old pedant, his counterpart. In 1734, he published “Essays, Moral and Philosophical;” and something of the same sort appeared in 1761, when he seems to have been in the near prospect of a conclusion to his earthly trials. He died at Auchiries, in Aberdeenshire, December 21, 1762, at an advanced age, after having possessed his title, counting from his accession in 1691, during a period of seventy-one years.
It is not unworthy of remark, that the supporters of Lord Pitsligo’s arms were two bears proper; which circumstance, connected with the great favour in which these animals were held by Bradwardine, brings the relation between the real and the fictitious personages very close.
SCOTTISH FOOLS.
(Davie Gellatley.)
It appears that licensed fools were customary appendages of the Scottish Court at a very early period; and the time is not long gone by when such beings were retained at the table and in the halls of various respectable noblemen. The absence of more refined amusements made them become as necessary a part of a baronial establishment as horses and hounds still continue to be in the mansions of many modern squires. When as yet the pursuits of literature were not, and ere gaming had become vicious enough to be fashionable, the rude humours of the jester could entertain a pick-tooth hour; and, what walnuts now are to wine, and enlightened conversation to the amusements of the drawing-room, the boisterous bacchanalianism of our ancestors once found in coarse buffooneries and the alternate darkness and radiance of a foolish mind.
In later times, when all taste for such diversion had gone out, the madman of the country-side frequently found shelter and patronage under the roofs of neighbouring gentlemen; but though the good things of Daft Jamie and Daft Wattie were regularly listened to by the laird, and preserved in the traditions of the household, the encouragement given to them was rather extended out of a benevolent compassion for their helpless condition than from any desire to make their talents a source of entertainment. Such was the motive of Bradwardine in protecting Davie Gellatley; and such was also that of the late Earl of Wemyss, in the support which he gave to the renowned Willie Howison, a personage of whom many anecdotes are yet told in Haddingtonshire, and whose services at Gosford House were not unlike those of Davie at Tully-Veolan.