articular woes and wrongs.

CHAPTER XLV

It has been seen, by what I have told concerning the part my grandfather
had in the great work of the Reformation, that the heads of the house of
Argyle were among the foremost and the firmest friends of the
resuscitated Evangil. The aged Earl of that time was in the very front
of the controversy as one of the Lords of the Congregation; and though
his son, the Lord of Lorn, hovered for a season, like other young men of
his degree, in the purlieus and precincts of the Lady Regent's court,
yet when her papistical counsels broke the paction with the protestants
at Perth, I have rehearsed how he, being then possessed of the
inheritance of his father's dignities, did, with the bravery becoming
his blood and station, remonstrate with her Highness against such
impolitic craft and perfidy, and, along with the Lord James Stuart,
utterly eschew her presence and method of government.

After the return of Queen Mary from France, and while she manifested a
respect for the rights of her covenanted people, that worthy Earl was
among her best friends; and even after the dismal doings that led to her
captivity in Lochleven Castle, and thence to the battle of Langside, he
still acted the part of a true nobleman to a sovereign so fickle and so
faithless. Whether he rued on the field that he had done so, or was
smitten with an infirmity that prevented him from fighting against his
old friend and covenanted brother, the good Regent Murray, belongs not
to this history to inquire; but certain it is, that in him the
protestant principles of his honourable house suffered no dilapidation;
and in the person of his grandson, the first marquis of the name, they
were stoutly asserted and maintained.

When the first Charles, and Laud, that ravenous Arminian Antichrist,
attempted to subvert and abrogate the presbyterian gospel worship, not
only did the Marquis stand forth in the van of the Covenanters to stay
the religious oppression then meditated against his native land, but
laboured with all becoming earnestness to avert the pestilence of civil
war. In that doubtless Argyle offended the false counsellors about the
King; but when the English parliament, with a lawless arrogance, struck
off the head of the miscounselled and bigoted monarch, faithful to his
covenants and the loyalty of his race, the Marquis was amongst the
foremost of the Scottish nobles to proclaim the Prince of Wales king.
With hi