ng pedigree and a short
rent-roll, like many lairds of that period. His list of forefathers
ascended so high that they were lost in the barbarous ages of Galwegian
independence, so that his genealogical tree, besides the Christian and
crusading names of Godfreys, and Gilberts, and Dennises, and Rolands
without end, bore heathen fruit of yet darker ages--Arths, and Knarths,
and Donagilds, and Hanlons. In truth, they had been formerly the stormy
chiefs of a desert but extensive domain, and the heads of a numerous
tribe called Mac-Dingawaie, though they afterwards adopted the Norman
surname of Bertram. They had made war, raised rebellions, been defeated,
beheaded, and hanged, as became a family of importance, for many
centuries. But they had gradually lost ground in the world, and, from
being themselves the heads of treason and traitorous conspiracies, the
Bertrams, or Mac-Dingawaies, of Ellangowan had sunk into subordinate
accomplices. Their most fatal exhibitions in this capacity took place in
the seventeenth century, when the foul fiend possessed them with a spirit
of contradiction, which uniformly involved them in controversy with the
ruling powers. They reversed the conduct of the celebrated Vicar of Bray,
and adhered as tenaciously to the weaker side as that worthy divine to
the stronger. And truly, like him, they had their reward.

Allan Bertram of Ellangowan, who flourished tempore Caroli primi, was,
says my authority, Sir Robert Douglas, in his Scottish Baronage (see the
title 'Ellangowan'), 'a steady loyalist, and full of zeal for the cause
of His Sacred Majesty, in which he united with the great Marquis of
Montrose and other truly zealous and honourable patriots, and sustained
great losses in that behalf. He had the honour of knighthood conferred
upon him by His Most Sacred Majesty, and was sequestrated as a malignant
by the parliament, 1642, and afterwards as a resolutioner in the year
1648.' These two cross-grained epithets of malignant and resolutioner
cost poor Sir Allan one half of the family estate. His son Dennis Bertram
married a daughter of an eminent fanatic who had a seat in the council of
state, and saved by that union the remainder of the family property. But,
as ill chance would have it, he became enamoured of the lady's principles
as well as of her charms, and my author gives him this character: 'He was
a man of eminent parts and resolution, for which reason he was chosen by
the western