Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/234

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262
LORD JOHN ERSKINE.


does not seem to have been so particularly concerned, which may have set him on those other methods of advancing his own interest, to which he shortly afterwards resorted, fly this time, indeed, his influence with the Chevalier, who was almost compelled by his situation, to manifest a disposition to favouritism, had excited the enry of every Jacobite, for every Jacobite reckoned his own merit so great as to deserve the special and particular attention of his divinely consecrated master; yet every one wondered at the unreasonableness of another for aiming at the same things as himself; hence Lockhart of Carmvath, one of the most zealous of them at that day, speaking of the troubles and crosses the Chevalier met with, describes them as "the natural consequences of having to deal with a set of men whom no rules of honour or ties of society can bind." Lockhart had planned a new scheme of managing the Chevalier's affairs in Scotland, by a number of persons, whom he called trustees, and of which he himself was named one. This gave offence to not a few of the Chevalier's friends, and to none more than the earl of Marr, whose ambition from the beginning of his career was to be sole director of the affairs of Scotland. He began also about this time to be supplanted in the affections of his master by James Murray, afterwards created by the Chevalier earl of Dunbar and made tutor to the young prince Charles; in consequence of which he left the Chevalier at Rome, and took up his residence at Paris, where he appears to have been as restless and as mischievously employed as ever ; sometimes appearing to be diligent for the one side and sometimes for the other. He obtained money from the earl of Stair, under the pretence of friendship, and liberty from the British government to reside for his health in France, provided he kept himself free of any plots against the government of Britain; likewise, on a renewal of the same promise, an offer of the family estate to be restored to his son, and in the interim, till an act of parliament could be procured to that effect, he himself was to receive a yearly pension of two thousand pounds sterling, over and above one thousand five hundred pounds sterling of jointure paid to his wife and daughter. The Chevalier now began to withdraw his confidence from him, and a general suspicion of his fidelity seems to have been entertained among one party of his Jacobite associates, who charged him with betraying, not only the interests of individuals, but the cause in general, by a system of deep laid and deliberate villany. By Atterbury he was abhorred and charged as the person who discovered his correspondence with the Chevalier to the British government, which procured his banishment A laboured scheme for the restoration of James, presented by Marr without his authority, to the regent of France, the duke of Orleans, a little before his death, was also by the same personage charged as a deep laid design to render him odious to the English people, and so to cut o'ff all hopes of his ever being restored. He was also said to have embezzled two thousand pounds sterling, which he had collected for general Tillon, for the purpose of purchasing arms at the time of Atterbury's conspiracy. He was by the same party charged with being the author of that schism in the king's family, which exposed him to the pity or to the contempt of all Europe, by stirring up the queen against colonel Hay and his lady, a daughter of the earl of Stormont, and sister to James Murray, created about this time earl of Dunbar. This colonel Hay was brother to the earl of Kinnoul, and on Marr's loss of favour was by James promoted to his place in the cabinet, and created earl of Inverness, which was supposed sufficient to excite his utmost malice. Possessing the ear of Mrs Sheldon, mistress to general Dillon, who was wholly at his devotion, and who had acquired an entire ascendancy over the queen, James's wife, he BO operated upon her feelings, that when she found her authority insufficient to enforce the dismissal of Inverness and his lady, and to retain Mrs Sheldon,