scomfiture and cruel death. The present edition of _"The Gallant
Grahams"_ is given from tradition, enlarged and corrected by an ancient
printed edition, entitled, _"The Gallant Grahams of Scotland"_ to the
tune of _"I will away, and I will not tarry,"_ of which Mr Ritson
favoured the editor with an accurate copy.

The conclusion of Montrose's melancholy history is too well known. The
Scottish army, which sold king Charles I. to his parliament, had, we may
charitably hope, no idea that they were bartering his blood; although
they must have been aware, that they were consigning him to perpetual
bondage.[A] At least the sentiments of the kingdom at large differed
widely from those of the military merchants, and the danger of king
Charles drew into England a well appointed Scottish army, under the
command of the duke of Hamilton. But he met with Cromwell, and to meet
with Cromwell was inevitable defeat. The death of Charles, and the
triumph of the independents, excited still more highly the hatred and
the fears of the Scottish nation. The outwitted presbyterians, who saw,
too late, that their own hands had been employed in the hateful task
of erecting the power of a sect, yet more fierce and fanatical than
themselves, deputed a commission to the Hague, to treat with Charles
II., whom, upon certain conditions they now wished to restore to the
throne of his fathers. At the court of the exiled monarch, Montrose also
offered to his acceptance a splendid plan of victory and conquest, and
pressed for his permission to enter Scotland; and there, collecting the
remains of the royalists to claim the crown for his master, with the
sword in his hand. An able statesman might perhaps have reconciled these
jarring projects; a good man would certainly have made a decided choice
betwixt them. Charles was neither the one not the other; and, while he
treated with the presbyterians, with a view of accepting the crown from
their hands, he scrupled not to authorise Montrose, the mortal enemy of
the sect, to pursue his separate and inconsistent plan of conquest.

[Footnote A: As Salmasius quaintly, but truly, expresses it,
_Presbyterian iligaverunt independantes trucidaverunt_.]

Montrose arrived in the Orkneys with six hundred Germans, was furnished
with some recruits from those islands, and was joined by several
royalists, as he traversed the wilds of Caithness and Sutherland: but,
advancing into Ross-shire, he was surprised, and totally def