John, Lord Kinpont, the Lord Menteith of the “Legend of Montrose,” was the eldest son of William, seventh Earl of Menteith, and first Earl of Airth, who rendered himself remarkable in the reign of Charles I. by saying that he had “the reddest blood in Scotland,” alluding to his descent from Euphemia Ross, then supposed the first wife of Robert II.,—in consequence of which expression he was disgraced and imprisoned by his offended Sovereign. Lord Kinpont married, in 1632, Lady Mary Keith, a daughter of Earl Marishal; consequently he could not be the hero and lover which he is represented to have been in the fiction, and the story of Allan Macaulay’s rivalry, which prompted him to the wicked deed, must be entirely groundless. Kinpont joined Montrose in August, 1644, with recruits to the amount of 400 men, and was present at the battle of Tippermuir, immediately following. A few days thereafter, James Stewart, of Ardvoirlich, basely murdered his Lordship at Colace, in Perthshire. A different colour is given to this circumstance by different narrators. A citizen of Perth, who wrote a manuscript giving an account of some remarkable events in his own time, (quoted in “_The Muse’s Threnodie_,”) says simply that Stewart committed the murder “because Lord Kinpont had joined Montrose.” But, in Guthrie’s Memoirs, we find, that “Stewart having proposed to his Lordship a plan to assassinate Montrose, of which Lord Kinpont signified his abhorrence, as disgraceful and devilish, the other, without more ado, lest he should discover him, stabbed him to the heart, and immediately fled to the Covenanters, by whom he was pardoned and promoted.[62] The Marquis of Montrose, deeply affected with the loss of so noble a friend, gave orders for conveying his body in an honourable manner to Menteith, where he was interred.” In the “Staggering State of Scots Statesmen,”[63] we find the following passage:—“The Lord Kinpont, being with James Graham in the time of the late troubles, was stabbed with a dirk by one Alexander Stewart, and his lady, daughter of the Earl of Marishal, was distracted in her wits four years after.” Here a remarkable discrepancy is observable. The assassin is termed _Alexander_, whereas every other authority gives _James_ as his Christian name. Yet this discordance in names is not more worthy of remark than another of the same description, which we are about to point out to the amateurs of the Scotch Novels, as occurring in the Tale before us. In the first edition of this Tale (1819) at the 321st page of the third volume, the Great Unknown, for once, forgets the fictitious appellation Macaulay, and terms the visionary brother Allen _Stuart_, which, we think, completely serves to identify the above story with the dreadful one in the “Tale.”