ps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of
Lady Jean Douglas, and thus the rightful heir to the estates of his
ducal uncle; the other, protesting with equal warmth and conviction that
he was nothing of the sort.

Dr Johnson was a stalwart in one camp; Boswell in the other. "Sir, sir,"
Johnson said to his friend and biographer, "don't be too severe upon the
gentleman; don't accuse him of a want of filial piety! Lady Jane Douglas
was _not_ his mother." "Whereupon," Boswell says, "he roused my zeal so
much that I took the liberty to tell him that he knew nothing of the
cause, which I most seriously do believe was the case." For seven years
the suit dragged its weary length through the Courts; the evidence for
and against the young man's claim covers ten thousand closely-printed
pages; but although Archibald won the Douglas lands, his paternity
remains to-day as profound a mystery as when George III. was new to his
throne.

Forty years before the curtain rose on this dramatic trial which,
Boswell declares, "shook the security of birthright in Scotland to its
foundation," the Lady Jean, only daughter of James, second Marquess of
Douglas, was one of the fairest maids north of the Tweed--a girl who
combined beauty and a singular charm of manner with such abounding
vitality and strength of character that she did not require her high
rank and royal descent to make her desirable in the eyes of suitors. She
was, moreover, the only sister of the head of her family, the Duke of
Douglas, who seemed little disposed to provide an heir to his vast
estates; and these there seemed more than a fair prospect that she would
one day inherit.

It was thus but natural that many a wooer sought Lady Jean's hand; and
had she cared for coronets she might have had her pick of them. On the
evidence of the man who ultimately became her husband she refused those
of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch and Atholl, the Earls of Hopetoun,
Aberdeen and Panrnure, _cum multis aliis._ However this may be, we know
that she had several love romances; and that one at least nearly led to
the altar while Jean was still a "wee bit lassie." The favoured suitor
was the young Earl of Dalkeith, heir to the Buccleuch Dukedom, a young
man who may have been, as Lady Louisa Stuart described him, "of mean
understanding and meaner habits," but who was at least devoted to her
ladyship, and in many ways a desirable _parti_. The Duchess of Buccleuch
was frankly delighte