ance, Lord Pitsligo took his seat in the
Scottish Parliament, and his parliamentary career has thus been
characterised by a former writer.[3] "Here it is no discredit either to
his head or heart to say, that, obliged to become a member of one of the
contending factions of the time, he adopted that which had for its
object the independence of Scotland, and restoration of the ancient race
of monarchs. The advantages which were in future to arise from the great
measure of a national union were so hidden by the mist of prejudice,
that it cannot be wondered at if Lord Pitsligo, like many a
high-spirited man, saw nothing but disgrace in a measure forced on by
such corrupt means, and calling in its commencement for such mortifying
national sacrifices. The English nation, indeed, with a narrow, yet not
unnatural, view of their own interest, took such pains to encumber and
restrict the Scottish commercial privileges that it was not till the
best part of a century after the event that the inestimable fruits of
the treaty began to be felt and known. This distant period Lord Pitsligo
could not foresee. He beheld his countrymen, like the Israelites of
yore, led into the desert; but his merely human eye could not foresee
that, after the extinction of a whole race--after a longer pilgrimage
than that of the followers of Moses--the Scottish people should at
length arrive at that promised land, of which the favourers of the Union
held forth so gay a prospect.

"Looking upon the Act of Settlement of the Crown, and the Act of
Abjuration, as unlawful, Lord Pitsligo retired to his house in the
country, and threw up attendance on Parliament. Upon the death of Queen
Anne he joined himself in arms with a general insurrection of the
Highlanders and Jacobites, headed by his friend and relative the Earl of
Mar.

"Mar, a versatile statesman and an able intriguer, had consulted his
ambition rather than his talents when he assumed the command of such an
enterprise. He sunk beneath the far superior genius of the Duke of
Argyle; and after the undecisive battle of Sheriffmuir, the confederacy
which he had formed, but was unable to direct, dissolved like a
snow-ball, and the nobles concerned in it were fain to fly abroad. This
exile was Lord Pitsligo's fate for five or six years. Part of the time
he spent at the Court, if it can be called so, of the old Chevalier de
Saint George, where existed all the petty feuds, chicanery, and crooked
intrigues whic