Capture of Covenanting Town of Dumfries. 31 



The contents of the news-sheet, so far as they relate to the 

 capture of Dumfries, are here presented entire. It is the key to 

 the situation. The narrative appears to be exact, and it supplies 

 some interesting details which lend variation of colour to the 

 latest historian's picture. According to Dr Andrew Lang, 

 " Montrose with a very ragged regiment and broken down horses 

 now crossed the Border, and had reached Annan Water when his 

 English levies deserted him (April 13)."* On the 13th, if our 

 authority is correct, they had not reached Annan, and no hint or 

 place is to be found in it for such a circumstance taking place. 

 Moreo\er it will appear that it was the English levies who took 

 the town. Dr Lang's authority is Wishart, Montrose's chaplain, 

 of whom Sir Walter Scott remarks that he had always been re- 

 garded as a partial historian and a very questionable authority. 



The name of the Provost concerned in the surrender of the 

 town is a point not without interest. It is not mentioned in the 

 news-sheet. Dr Lang, in continuation of the above statement 

 respecting the desertion at Annan Water, proceeds : — " Never- 

 theless Montrose pushed on to Dumfries, where the Provost, Sir 

 James Maxwell, received him well ; for this crime he was executed 

 by the Covenanters." This amazing averment, put forward with 

 assurance, is made on the authority of Spalding, a royalist 

 chronicler in Aberdeen. Mr M'Dowall and Sir Herbert Maxwell 

 also accept of the name of Sir James Maxwell, a zealous rovalist, 

 as the Provost, and allow that his election to the office proves 

 that a reaction had taken place against the Covenant. On the 

 other hand, in a list of Provosts appended to M'Dowall 's history, 

 collected chiefly from the Town Council records, the name of 

 John Cor.sane stands opposite the year 1644; and that Corsane 

 held the office at this time and was the person concerned in the 

 surrender of the town is a fact which will be established bevond 

 any doubt as we proceed. 



More than one person of the name of James Maxwell was 

 concerned in this affair, the most prominent being James Maxwell 

 of Breconside, second son of the Earl of Nithsdale, of whom and 

 the negotiators of the surrender further notice will be taken later. 



Regarding the character of Montrose, we learn that, while 

 yet a Covenanter, he was represented by the royalists as inhuman, 



* History of Scotland, IIL, 114. 



