1914-15.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 377 



date of the warrant appointing the latter being 30th June 

 1716. The short period of some thirteen and a half months 

 covers that of Arthur's official life, and during it I imagine 

 he performed few or none of its professional or other 

 administrative duties, and the silence of botanical tradition 

 is therefore readily accounted for. 



But if Dr. William Arthur is unknown as an exponent 

 of Botany and is unnamed in botanical history as a teacher 

 and administrator, he is not without claims to notoriety, 

 for the Professor became a political conspirator, and is no 

 other than the physician in Edinburgh through whom, 

 according to the historians, the Jacobite plot to capture 

 the Castle of Edinburgh in 1715 was brought to disaster. 

 From the published accounts of this enterprise I select to 

 reproduce here for the purposes of my narrative of Dr. 

 William Arthur the story as given by Sir Walter Scott in 

 Tales of a Grandfather : — 1 



" James Lord Drummond, son of that unfortunate Earl 

 of Perth, who, having served James VII as Chancellor of 

 Scotland, shared the exile of his still more unfortunate 

 master, and been rewarded with the barren title of Duke 

 of Perth, was at present in Edinburgh ; and by means of 

 one Mr. Arthur, who had been formerly an ensign in the 

 Scots Guards, and quartered in the Castle, had formed a 

 plan of surprising that inaccessible fortress, which resembled 

 an exploit of Thomas Randolph, or the Black Lord James 

 of Douglas, rather than a feat of modern war. This Ensign 

 Arthur found means of seducing, by money and promises, 

 a sergeant named Ainslie, and two privates, who engaged, 

 that, when it was their duty to watch on the walls which 

 rise from the precipice looking northward, near the sallv- 

 port. they would be prepared to pull up from the bottom 



1 The story will be found elsewhere with varying details in : — 



Memoirs of the life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Baronet. 



Edited by John M. Gray for the Scot. Hist. Soc, 1892. 

 John. Master of Sinclair. Memoirs of the Insurrection in 



Scotland in 1715. 

 Patten. History of the Rebellion in the Year 1715. 3rd ed., 



p. 135. 

 Rae. History of the late Rebellion, 1718. 

 Mahon. Historv of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the 



Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, vol. i (1836), p. 220. 

 Hogg. The Jacobite Relics of Scotland, 1821, p. 230. 

 Grant. Old and New Edinburgh, vol. i, p. 67. 



TRANS. BOT. SOC. EDIX. VOL. XXVI. 27 



