This rebuff is attributed by Heylin to the intrigues of Hamilton. James, Marquis of Hamilton, was then some six years older than Montrose. From boyhood he had been about the person of Charles, and was now in his most intimate confidence. Few liked him, and fewer still trusted him; but with the unfortunate King he was all-powerful, especially in matters of Scottish policy, on which at this time he alone was consulted. He had done nothing, that any one could discover, to merit this position. A few years before this date he had led a body of troops to the assistance of Gustavus Adolphus, but had reaped no laurels in that service, though on his return he discoursed so learnedly on the art of war that he persuaded some people to take him for a great soldier, just as by his grave look and reserved manner he persuaded some to take him for a great statesman. He was not without parts and knowledge of affairs, but incurably shifty; and though never convicted of downright treachery, was perhaps only saved from it by his inability to be downright in anything. None of all Charles's evil counsellors, not even the Queen herself, wrought more mischief; and of him, if of any man, it may be said that nothing in his life became him so well as his leaving it. To this dangerous man Montrose had been advised to pay his court. Hamilton received him with every appearance of cordiality, but had no mind to introduce so likely a rival into his master's good graces. He therefore warned Montrose that the King was at that time much prejudiced against Scotsmen, adding that only his love for his country and his hopes to serve her enabled him to endure the indignities to which he was daily subjected. At the same time he warned the King that Montrose was a dangerous young man, very ambitious, very powerful and popular in Scotland, and not unlikely in the event of any national rising to be set up as king by virtue of an old strain of royal blood in his family. This last insinuation would not fall on deaf ears. Hamilton, indeed, had himself been accused of a similar design, for which his descent from a daughter of James the Second, who had married the first Lord Hamilton, gave at least as much colour as any that Montrose's pedigree could supply; and though Charles had refused to listen to the accusation, and was probably right in refusing, many people still remembered it, and some in Scotland at any rate believed it. Moreover, there was a member of the House of Graham whose claims to the Scottish crown had lately been the subject of much wild talk. This was William Graham, Earl of Airth and Menteith, a man of considerable ability who had filled places of high trust in Scotland, and had been allowed by Charles to resume the older earldom of Stratherne, which had been cancelled two centuries ago in consequence of its inconvenient relations with royalty. It is unnecessary to entangle ourselves in the intricate mazes of Scottish genealogy. It