As the year waned through the autumn quarter, the Jacobites upheld the divinity, as it were, of their king, James, by referring to his having touched, and healed, by the touching, a score of diseased persons. The Whigs laughed at the story as fabulous. One Whig lady, following the example of a predecessor, asserted the divinity in the touch of her own sovereign, King George, in a singular way. She made known to the Secretary of State that she was in a condition of health which would make no progress to any issue, till she had kissed the king’s hand. The secretary informed the sovereign of this womanish caprice, and the good-natured monarch laughingly said, she might meet him in the gallery of St. James’s, and have her wish gratified. She hung two minutes with her lips to the royal hand, King George looking down on her, the while, in the greatest good humour. But what the issue was is not noted in contemporary history. [Sidenote: _ROB ROY AND THE DUKE OF MONTROSE._] In this year, the ultra-Whig Duke of Montrose (the first of that degree), one of the king’s principal Secretaries of State, pleaded hotly at the Privy Council, at St. James’s, for suppressing the Jacobite Rob Roy. A halo of romance has been thrown round this Robert Campbell Macgregor, by which he has acquired a measure of respect and admiration of which his memory is totally undeserving. He was a semi-savage, without any principle of honour or honesty; his courage was that of the wolf; and his sense of loyalty was so unstable that he was traitor to his own supposed side――the Jacobites――without being intentionally serviceable to the Hanoverians. Montrose was charged by the outlaw as having had (at the London Council Board) ‘the impudence to clamour at Court for multitudes to hunt me like a fox, under pretence that I am not to be found above ground.’ For this insult to dignity, Rob circulated a mock challenge, from Argyle to the Duke in London. It was simply intended to bring him to whom it was addressed, ‘ane High and Mightie Prince, James, Duke of Montrose,’ into contempt. It was composed in a flow of coarse and vulgar bluster. [Illustration: Scrollwork] [Illustration: Decorative banner] CHAPTER XVII. (1720-’21-’22.)