and
it is well worthy of its place among the other historical pictures in
the Commons' Corridor of the Houses of Parliament.

The nobleman who is the subject of the picture is not the great and
famous Marquis of Argyll, but his son, the ninth Earl of Argyll. The
Marquis was put to death in the year 1661, as one of the first victims
of the cruel government of King Charles II. after the Restoration. He
was the man who had placed the crown on the head of Charles at Scone,
when the Scottish people were loyal to him, though the English would
not own him as their king. When Charles came to the throne of both
countries, after ten years of exile, he showed his gratitude to his
faithful servant by sending him to the scaffold. The first words of
the Marquis, after he received the sentence of death, were, _I had the
honour to set the crown upon the king's head, and now he hastens me to
a better crown than his own_. And when he was leaving the prison to go
to the place of execution, he said to his friends, I could die like a
Roman, but choose rather to die as a Christian.

The Earl, his son, who appears in our picture, was executed in 1685,
the first year of Charles' successor, James II. It was the same year
in which John Brown, the carrier of Priesthill, was shot by Claverhouse
in front of his own house, and before his wife's eyes; the year also in
which Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson--the latter a maiden of
eighteen--were tied to stakes fixed in the sand, and drowned for
Christ's sake in the Solway tide. The Earl of Argyll was a man who
worthily followed the noble example of his father. He was condemned to
death on a charge of treason, because he would not swear a certain oath
called the _Test_. This oath was directed against the Scottish
Covenanters, and all the king's officers and servants were required to
take it. Argyll did not approve of all that was in the oath, and said
that he could only swear it in so far as it agreed with the Bible and
with itself. For this he was tried, and sentenced to die, a few years
before the end of the reign of Charles II. But he escaped from prison,
and fled to Holland, where he remained for a time in safety. When
James II. came to the throne on the death of Charles, the Earl took
part in a rebellion against him, and came back to Scotland at the head
of an army. The rebellion failed, and Argyll was taken prisoner at
Inchinnan, near Renfrew. He was brought to Edinburgh, a