of any mortal, he might have been the first
minister for Scotland."[1] After the Revolution, the Marquis retired
into the country, and relinquished all public business; thus signifying
his opinion of that event.

He bequeathed to his son, John second Marquis of Atholl, and the father
of Lord George Murray, as great a share of prosperity and as many
sources of self-exultation as ordinarily fall to the lot of one man. To
the blood of the Murrays, the marriage with Lady Amelia Stanley had
added a connection in kindred with the Houses of Bourbon and Austria,
with the Kings of Spain and Duke of Savoy, the Prince of Orange, and
most of the crowned heads in Europe. Upon the extinction of the
descendants of John the seventh Earl of Derby, commonly called the
loyal Earl of Derby, and of his wife Charlotte De La Tremouille, "all
that great and uncommon race of royal and illustrious blood," as it has
been entitled, centred in the descendants of the Marquis of Atholl. In
1726, the barony of Strange devolved upon the Duke of Atholl; and the
principality of the Isle of Man was also bequeathed to the same House by
William ninth Earl of Derby. This was the accession of a later period,
but was the consequence of that great and honourable alliance of which
the family of Atholl might justly boast.

The father of Lord George Murray adopted every precaution, as we have
seen,[2] to preserve the acquisitions of dignity and fortune which the
lapse of years had added to his patrimonial possessions. Sixteen coats
of arms, eight on the paternal side, and eight on the maternal side, had
composed the escutcheon of his father, John Marquis of Atholl. Among
those great names on the maternal side, which graced a funeral
escutcheon, which has been deemed the pattern and model of perfect
dignity, and the perfection of ducal grandeur, was the name of the
Prince of Orange.[3] This plea of kindred was not thrown away upon the
Marquis of Atholl; he declared himself for King William, and entered
early into the Revolution. For this service he was rewarded with the
office of High Commissioner to represent his Majesty in the Scottish
parliament. But subsequent events broke up this compact, and destroyed
all the cordiality which subsisted between William and the head of the
House of Atholl. The refusal of the King to own the African Company was,
it is said, the reason why the Marquis withdrew himself from Court, and
remained at a distance from it during the lif