a paper printed on this side the water, of
which I hear severall are at Stirling. The other two papers I got
to-day are given to revise, and are to be printed soon. I send you a
copie of a letter was wrote t'other day, and sent to the
Cameronians in the west. I wish you could send this one to some of
them in the south. This is all I will trouble you with; but I hope
both to get from you and give you good news soon, and I ever am,
with all sincerity and truth, yrs. &c.

"Perhaps Capt. R----n will not be found to have done so much hurt as
was thought he designed; but this is not to bid trust him yet."

By two manuscript letters among the Mar papers, it appears, however,
that the account soon afterwards published by Lord Mar was not so full
of artifice and untruths as his enemies represented. "He kept the field
of battle until it was dark," says one writer, in a letter dated from
Perth (November the 19th, 1715); "and nothing but want of provisions
prevented us from going forward the next day. We hear the Whigs give
various accounts of the battle, to cover the victory; but the numbers of
the slain on their part being eleven or twelve hundred, and ours not
above fifty or sixty, and our keeping the field when they left it, makes
the victory incontestable. Your friends that I know here mind you often,
and they and I would be glad to have the opportunity to drink a bottle
with you beyond the Forth."

Another eye-witness gives a still more detailed account.[114] "I have
yours of the seventeenth, with the paper inclosed, wherein that
gentleman has taken the liberty to insert many falsehoods relative to
the late action, a true and impartial account of which I here send you,
which is but too modest on our side, and many things omitted that will
be afterwards made publick, particularly their murdering Strathmoir,
after he had asked quarters, and the treatment they gave to Panmuir and
several others, who, I hope, will be living witnesses against them. The
enclosed is so full that I have little to say, only that we have not
lost a hundred men in the action, and none of note, except Strathmoir,
and the Captain of Clan Ronald."

The cruel spirit of party destroyed the generous characteristics of the
soldier, during the excitement of the combat: but how can we palliate
the conduct of one of the King's generals, Lord Isla, after the
fierceness of the encounter was over? The letter referred to disclos