Field Meetings. 227 



Viscount (cousin of the first) took part, with the Earl of Glen- 

 cairn and others, in a rising in the north against Cromwell ; but 

 seeing the hopelessness of the enterprise he accepted an offer of 

 indemnity and withdrew from the rebel army. Subsequently, he 

 had again become involved, for siege was laid to Kenmure by 

 some of the Commonwealth troops ; and there is a story that the 

 Viscount, driven to hide in the hills, watched from the Lowran 

 Glen his castle given to the flames. A huge stone with rough 

 back is still pointed out in the glen as "the Viscount's Chair;" 

 and Barbour of Bogue, in his "Unique Traditions," converted 

 the natural rock seat into a chair of sawn oak. But there is 

 apparently as much truth in the story the one way as the other, 

 for the Viscount was himself in the castle when it surrendered, 

 and signed the deed of capitulation. What reason there could be 

 in the circumstances for destroying the house by fire is not 

 apparent. But if that story has any foundation in fact, it is cer- 

 tain that the phrase. " destroyed by fire ' ' must be read with a 

 modification as great as we need apply to the language of a com- 

 mandant of the Regent Alurrav, who reported to his employers 

 after Queen Mary's defeat at Langside that he had .sought for 

 Gordon of Lochinvar, and having failed to find him he had 

 "razed " his residence of Kenmure. During the persecution of 

 the Covenanters, Claverhouse (in 1682) occupied Kenmure Castle 

 with a garrison of his troopers, with which he sought to overawe 

 the district. The Viscount's sympathies were with the hunted 

 hillmen, but he does not seem to have actively compromised him- 

 self; and if Claverhouse himself is to be accepted as a credible 

 witness the lady at least was not a\'erse to lending the castle to 

 the Government, for he reported that she had said to him if the 

 King would spend two or three hundred jjounds in repairing it, 

 she would be pleased that the soldiers should occupv it. Subse- 

 quently, in the pass of Killiecrankie, the Viscount, as an officer in 

 King William's army, faced his old acquaintance Claverhouse, 

 now blos.somed into the Viscount Dundee, and saw the wonder of 

 Otterbourne repeated, when "a dead man won a fight." 



It is in the career of William, the sixth Viscount, that the 

 most romantic interest centres. When the Earl of Mar raised the 

 standard of rebellion in the north in 1715, on behalf of the 

 Chevalier de St. George, who claimed to be King James VIII. 

 of these realms, Kenmure was made commander of the forces 



