386 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [Sess. lxxix. 



patience I have ever express't, to which if I had the lest 

 contributed I had been so far from ever having the Con- 

 fidence of putting your Grace in mind of me that I should 

 have counted it my greatest happyness as I would have 

 made it my endeavour to be forgot for ever. And I must 

 confess I had such a reluctance to that infamy which 

 weakness I know your Grace will easily pardon that I was 

 resolv'd as weel as others to doe myself Justice as to those 

 points tho' by way of digression whatever way I was to 

 make my exit out of the world. Your Grace remembers 

 that from time to time we were forc't to alter our first 

 Scheme according to the changes made in the Castle, till 

 at last by confineing the numbers of the visitors there to 

 three only at once we were oblig'd to think on the Scalad. 

 My brother, 1 and I waited on Dr. Smith 2 severall times for 

 that purpose but he was grown so peevish that his secret 

 had been at first neglected that we could get him to doe 

 nothing. On which there was no time lost to let my Lord 

 Drummond 3 know where we stuck who took immediate care 

 to send one who was accounted ane ingenious workman i 



was an Arthur, and a lady, that it was through Mrs. Thomas Arthur 

 the plot was discovered. 



In this connection it may be said also that if the references to " Lady 

 Arthur" in the Ormonde letters (see " The Jacobite attempt of 1719," 

 Scot. Hist. Soc, 1895) are to the Professor's widow, they show that she 

 was a Jacobite and, therefore, that she would not be likely to act in a 

 way that would ruin alike her husband and the cause. 



1 My brother. Thomas, a younger brother. Ensign, Third Regiment 

 of Foot Guards, 14th April 1712 ; out of regiment 24th March 1714 (see 

 Dalton, vi, pp. 60, 62). Probably the Major Arthur mentioned in 

 Cal. Stuart Papers, iii, pp. 195, 215 : — 



" William Gordon to John Pater sou. 



"1716, November 9. Paris. 



" I am glad Major Arthur has written. His friends are in great pain 

 about him, for they have had him dead in Scotland as well as his 

 brother." 



2 Dr. Smith. Is this a cypher name ? On p. 396 there is a reference 

 to Mr. Smith, which was the cypher name of Lord Stormont. 



3 Lord Drummond. James Drummond (1675-1720), afterwards fifth 

 Earl and second titular Duke of Perth. 



4 "My Lord Drummond, who amongst the many good qualities he 

 has inherited from his familie, has that of imagining nothing can be 

 well done except he has the management of it, would undertake the 

 direction of all ; and for that effect made choice of a little broken 

 merchant, Charles Forbes, a man according to his own heart, who was 

 to be principall engineer and conductor of the affair." — Master of 

 Sinclair's Memoir, p. 29. 



