586 ARTILLERY COMPANY IN SCOTLAND AT TOE TIME OF TUE UNION. 
necessary repairs. Whether Slezer overstepped the limit allowed by 
the Treasury, or whether the latter were short of funds, certain it is 
that they only paid 2 of the account, which was a large one, for these 
repairs. Added to his other debts, and heavy outgoings, Slezer now 
found himself obliged “ for his personal safety ”’ to betake himself “ to 
the sanctuary of Holyrood House; here he had remained thirteen 
years at the time his Case was printed.’ 
Nothwithstanding the Act of Parliament passed in his favour, con- 
jointly with John Adair, F.R.S., the map maker, Slezer appears to have 
‘benefited very little. Nor did Adair, in whose favour a tonnage act 
had been passed as early as 1686, fare any better, and the latter, in a 
memorial to the Prioy Council, stated that his losses were “ three times 
more than ever was gotten from the collectors upon the accompt 
of tonnage.”* Comment on these facts is needless and it is not sur- 
prising to find that Adair, like Slezer, died in obscurity, and in debt, 
before the completion of his able work. 
Harly in 1699 Slazer had the misfortune to lose his eldest son who 
was a Master-Gunner at one of the Scottish fortresses. This event, 
small in itself, except to the bereaved parents, was followed by a violent 
quarrel between Viscount Teviot, who was Major-General and Com- 
mander-in-Chief in Scotland, and the Harl of Argyll who was Captain 
and Colonel of the Scots Troops of Life Guards. The bone of con- 
tention between these two noblemen was the appointment of a successor 
to Slezer’s son as a Master-Gunner, and it is both instructive and en- 
tertaining for officers of the Royal Artillery, in the present day, to 
read of the storm of angry passions that swept round the little Artillery 
Company in Scotland nigh 200 years ago, because two exalted per- 
sonages—one Colonel of the Scots Troop of Life Guards and the other 
Colonel of the Royal Scots Dragoons—had each a protégé ready to fill 
the comparatively insignificant post of a Master-Gunner vacant by 
.young Slezer’s death, and each declared emphatically that “his man 
should stand.”” The facts are as follows :—Lord Teviot, as General 
‘Commanding the Forces in Scotland, had, by virtue of the authority 
given to him, power to grant certain commissions in Scotland. This 
power he exercised when Slezer’s son died, and he appointed one Crecutt, 
late a Lieutenant in Sir William Douglas’s regiment of foot (which had 
been disbandoned in 1697) to succeed young Slezer. The latter was 
hardly cold in his grave before the Harl of Argyll, without saying any- 
thing to Lord Teviot, procured a commission direct from the King 
granting young Slezer’s place to his (Argyll’s) nominee. In due 
course Argyll’s protégé reported himself in Edinburgh to Captain 
Slezer and exhibited his commission signed by William III. Slezer 
was placed in a very awkward position as Lieutenant Crecutt had 
already taken over the duties of Master-Gunner, but as Lord Teviot 
was in London, and the Marl of Argyll was in Edinburgh, Slezer 
thought it best to go by the King’s commission and so Lieutenant 
Crecutt was displaced and Lord Argyll’s man (whose name does not 
appear) took over the coveted appointment. The displaced officer lost 
1 Dr. Jamieson’s preface to the 1874 edition of Theatrum Scotia. 
? Memoir of John Adair, Surveyor and Map Maker, in Dictionary of National Biography. 
