Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714; Montrose, James Graham, Marquis of, 1612-1650
The sudden death of the father in November, 1626, broke up the
establishment at Glasgow, and in the following January Montrose,
then only in his fifteenth year, was entered at the University of
St. Andrews, as was then the general custom of the young Scottish
aristocracy. The funeral ceremonies of the dead Earl give a curious
picture of the age. They lasted for one month and nineteen days,
during which time all the kinsmen and friends of the family were
entertained in the castle of Kincardine. There were Sir William Graham
of Braco, the only brother, and the Earl of Wigton, the nephew of the
deceased, with the sons-in-law Lord Napier and Sir John Colquhoun.
All the branches of the clan were represented; Grahams of Claverhouse
and Fintrie, of Inchbrakie, Morphie, Orchill, and Balgowan, with many
neighbouring nobles and lairds, some of them destined in no long time
to be the bitter foes of the House they were now assembled to honour.
Many of the guests brought with them contributions to the funeral
feast as though to a solemn picnic; and other provisions of all kinds
were purchased in quantities sufficient to have stocked the Black
Douglas's terrible larder many times over, while the wine and ale were
reckoned by puncheons and buckets.
Montrose's life at college seems to have been much the same as that
of any young man of rank and fortune to-day at Christ Church or
Trinity. He mixed freely in all the diversions of the place and time,
hunted, hawked, and shot, played golf on the links of St. Andrews and
tennis in the court at Leith. At archery he was especially skilful.
In the second year of his residence he won the prize annually shot
for by the students, a silver arrow with a medal bearing the name
of the winner, and this he held against all competitors while he
remained at the University. His walls were hung with his bows,
just as to-day the successful cricketers and oarsmen of Oxford and
Cambridge arrange round their rooms the instruments of their triumphs.
Eminent in those accomplishments which always secure the admiration
of the young, profuse in hospitality to his friends, liberal to the
poor, and especially to those needy professors of the fine arts who
were never slow in those days to scent out a generous patron, he
evidently began even in these early years to engage the attention of
his contemporaries. His own estates and tenants were not neglected;
but his vacations were mostly passed in visits to the houses of his
brothers-in-law and of the heads of the various branches of his clan,
each of whom, according to the custom of the time, was considered as
in some sort the guardian of his young chief, though Lord Napier,
Sir William Graham of Claverhouse, and Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie
seem to have had the largest share in an office which with a young
gentleman of such cheerful tastes and dispositions can have been no
sinecure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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