Those who looked back with feelings of sympathy and pride to the sufferings of the patriots under the late reigns, must have had some painful feelings when they reflected on the present doings of some of them and their descendants. The Argyle of this day, though a man of both ability and spirit, highly qualified to serve his country, was now living in circumstances which certainly formed a marked contrast with the history of his grandfather and [Sidenote: 1698.] father. Being married unhappily—his wife was a daughter of the Duchess of Lauderdale—he was induced to associate himself with another lady, for whose sake he seems to have in a great measure abandoned public life. Purchasing a house called Chirton, near Newcastle (which he bequeathed to his mistress), he was content to spend there in inglorious self-indulgence the days which ought to have been consecrated to the service of his country. Sad to say, this representative of pious martyrs died of bruises received in a house of evil fame at North Shields (September 1703). Even worse was the story of his Grace’s brother, James, who carried off Miss Wharton, an heiress of thirteen, and forcibly married her (November 1690)—a crime, the proper consequences of which he escaped, while his instrument and assistant, Sir John Johnston of Caskieben, paid the penalty of an ignominious death at Tyburn. Worse still, the actual Gordon of Earlstoun, so renowned for his resolute conduct in the evil days, fell, more than twenty years after, under censure for a lapse in virtue of the highest class, and underwent the higher excommunication; ‘but,’ says Wodrow, ‘they find the intimation of it will not be for edification, and people will still converse with him, do as they will; so the sentence is not pronounced.’ [Sidenote: FEB. 22.] We have seen something of an old clan-feud between the Laird of Mackintosh and his vassal, Macdonald of Keppoch. The Keppoch who had overthrown the chief at Inverroy in 1688, and afterwards burned down his house of Dunachtan, was now dead; but in his son, Coll Macdonald, he had left a worthy successor. Coll was as defiant of the Mackintosh claims as his father had been, and, though he lived within ten miles of the well-established garrison of Fort-William, he seemed as utterly beyond the reach of the law as if he had haunted the wilds of Canada. It now became necessary to take sharp measures with him, in order to make good the rights of his superior.