At this moment of his existence, when it was certain ruin at Court and in the army, to befriend the Jacobite prisoner, a friend, the friend of his youth, came nobly forward to attend Lord Kilmarnock in his dying moments. This was John Walkinshaw Craufurd, of Craufurdland in the county of Ayr, between whose family and that of the House of Boyd, a long and intimate friendship of several centuries had existed; "so much so," observes a member of the present family of Craufurd,[386] "that a subterranean passage is said to exist between our old castles, of which we _fancy_ proofs; but these are fire-side legends." "The family of Craufurd," observes Mr. Burke, "is one of antiquity and eminence in a part of the empire where ancestry and exploit have ever been held in enthusiastic admiration." By marriage, in the thirteenth century, it is allied anciently with the existing house of Loudon; and its connection and friendship with the House of Boyd was cemented by the death of one of its heads, Robert Craufurd, in 1487, in consequence of a wound received at the Wyllielee, from attending James Boyd, Earl of Arran, in a duel with the Earl of Eglintoun. In the days of Charles the First and Second, the Craufurds had been Covenanters, as appears in the history of that time: and in the year 1745, they were stanch Whigs; and Colonel Walkinshaw Craufurd had, when called upon to pay a mournful proof of respect to Lord Kilmarnock, attained the rank of Colonel in the British army. Besides the ancient friendship of the family, there had been several intermarriages; and the father of Colonel Craufurd had espoused, after the death of Miss Walkinshaw, Elenora, the widow of the Honorable Thomas Boyd, the brother of Lord Kilmarnock. Colonel Walkinshaw Craufurd was a fine specimen of the true Scottish gentleman, and of the British officer. He was a very handsome, stately man, of high-bred manners, and portly figure, whom his tenantry both feared and honoured. He lived almost continually in the highest circles in London, except when in service, and also at the Court, visiting his Castle in Ayrshire only in the hunting season, for he kept a pack of hounds. To such a man the sacrifice of public opinion, then all against the Jacobites,--the sure loss of Court favour,--the risk of losing all military promotion, were no small considerations; yet he cast them all to the winds, and came nobly forward to pay the last respect to his kinsman and friend.