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CHAPTER XIII. 



THE Jacobite rising of 1715 had its inception in dis- 

 appointed ambition on the one hand, and an act of 

 incivility on the other, although its roots lay deeper than 

 both. John Erskine, eleventh Earl of Mar, was Secretary 

 of State for Scotland at the time of Queen Anne's death 

 in 1714, having succeeded the Earl of Cromartie in that 

 office. A Whig at the time of the Union, he had found 

 no difficulty in changing his political views when his 

 opinions formed a barrier to his advancement. When 

 King George, on his arrival in England, threw himself 

 into the arms of the Whigs, Mar was ready to adapt 

 himself to the altered circumstances. His position, as 

 dispenser of the late Queen's bounty to the Highland 

 chiefs, provided him with a means of influence in the 

 North of Scotland which he sought to turn to good 

 account. He procured the signature of a number of 

 the chiefs to a letter, professing loyalty to the person 

 of George; and endeavoured to deliver to the King an 

 address by the Highlanders, of like import to that which 

 his brother, Lord Grange,* had prepared. By thus hint- 

 ing, not obscurely, that he had the clans at his back, who 

 were prepared to be the friends or the foes of the new 

 regime at his dictation, Mar hoped to secure the Royal 

 favour. But the King refused to receive the address, on 

 the ground that it had been concocted at the Court of 

 the "Pretender." Mar's advances were rudely repelled, 

 and he was unceremoniously dismissed from office. As 



* This Lord Grange was the husband of the unfortunate lady who was 

 abducted from her home and kept concealed in St. Kilda, Uist, and else- 

 where for a number of years. Her sufferings ultimately affected her reason, 

 and she died in Waternish in 1745 in a state of poverty and idiocy. 



