The intricacy of a wooing in which there does not seem to have been an excess of love-making, is made more puzzling by a letter addressed by Isabella, wife of Sir James Graham, to the Earl of Menteith. It was written about a month later than his own obsequious epistle to Montrose; and yet it shows that at that time a match between Claverhouse and Lady Helen was again under consideration. Lady Isabella informed his Lordship that she had so far complied with his desires as to waive the propositions of two matches, though the worse of the suitors had two thousand pounds a year, besides a troop of horse, and a fair prospect of many thousands more. At the same time, she bade him bear in mind that, unless he were very willing to assist as far as he could towards the recovering of such lands as formerly belonged to his ancestors, she would decline all thoughts of matching her daughter in Scotland, where she would be a daily spectator of the ruin of the noble family she came from. Her Ladyship’s very outspoken letter also referred to the dilatoriness that had so far marked the whole course of the negotiations, and let it be understood that, in her opinion, the responsibility for much of it lay with the Earl. The delay with which Lady Graham found fault may, in its most recent phase at least, have been due to rumours and reports which had reached Menteith, to the effect that Claverhouse had spoken disparagingly of him to the Duke of Lauderdale; for the next letter in the correspondence contains an energetic, almost passionate denial of such conduct. The writer swears before Almighty God, and upon his salvation, that he has never given either a good or a bad character of the Earl to Lauderdale, and that he has not even mentioned his person or affairs to him; he declares himself ready to spend his blood in revenge of so base and cowardly an injury on the ‘infamous liar’ who has traduced him, and to whom he begs his letter may be shown. From Claverhouse’s special insistence on the fact that he had never cast a doubt on the Earl’s capacity for affairs, it may be presumed that this was one of the points with regard to which he was charged with having ‘said things.’ Another letter to the Earl, written on the same day, but as a distinct and more confidential communication, suggests a suspicion that Menteith had been very near committing disastrous blunders in his efforts to urge Claverhouse’s suit. In answer, doubtless, to Lady Isabella’s pointed letter, the Earl had written both to her and to her daughter, and had commissioned the suitor himself to deliver these communications to the ladies. Claverhouse, however, thought it wiser to refrain from doing so, for reasons which he thus explained:—