known of the place or time of Montrose's birth, except that he was fourteen years old when his father died in 1626, and must consequently have been born some time in the year 1612. The Grahams had long been conspicuous figures in Scottish history. In 1298 Sir John Graham, the chosen comrade of Wallace, had fallen, more fortunate than his friend, at the battle of Falkirk, in the churchyard of which town his tomb may still be seen. In 1304, at the capitulation which seemed for the moment to have closed the Scots' struggle for independence, Sir David, the first proprietor of Old Montrose, had been specially marked by the English king as a dangerous man. Through the wars of Bruce and his immediate successors the Grahams had stood stoutly by the national cause. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had three times intermarried with the royal blood of Scotland. A son of Sir William Graham and the Princess Mary, daughter of Robert the Third, was the first Primate of Scotland; and as a Graham of a later generation had held the see of Dunblane, the indifference expressed for bishops by their illustrious descendant should at least not have been hereditary. One of Sir William's grandsons, Patrick, was raised to the peerage as Lord Graham in 1451, and in 1505 his grandson William was made Earl of Montrose by James the Fourth, only to fall a few years later by his sovereign's side at Flodden, where he commanded a division of the Scottish van. His grandson fell with equal glory at Pinkie, a field only less disastrous to his country than the field of Flodden. But the most conspicuous of the ancestors of the Great Marquis was his grandfather John, who held in succession the offices of Treasurer, Chancellor, and Viceroy of Scotland. He seems to have possessed his full share of the turbulent spirit which marked the Scottish aristocracy then and for long after an era of milder manners had dawned upon the South. When nearly fifty years old he was engaged in a memorable brawl on the High Street of Edinburgh between a party of his own men and the followers of Sir John Sandilands, by whom one of his clan had been murdered three years previously. In this affair Lord Graham fought by his father's side, and according to one account had been the first to begin the fray. But the general tenor of his life seems to have been unusually peaceful. He bore the part expected of a young Scottish nobleman in the State ceremonies and pageants of the time, and after his succession to the title performed such duties as his position imposed on him with credit if with no particular ability. But his tastes evidently led him rather to the life of a country gentleman than of a man of affairs, and after his wife's death he seems to have devoted himself almost entirely to the care of his children and his estates. His letters show him to have been an affectionate and indulgent father, and the precision of his accounts proves him an exact but not illiberal manager. His