My Lord, No. XCIX. M' Duncan Forbes [probably to the Duke of Argyll.] THE choice your Grace has been pleased to make of me to represent your Borrows * I take to be a very uncommon mark of your favour. That you have agreed I should not attend when my Business tyes me necessarly to this place, I look upon as a proof of your sincere friendship for me; and that, in this particular, your Grace has considered my interest more than your own. During the whole course of my past life till this moment, I never wifhed for riches. But now, when I perceive that my narrow Circumstances will not, without a manifest Indiscretion (which your Grace would readily blame), permit me to fling aside all regards, and to follow you wherever your service requires, I begin to wifh I had an Estate. My fears, and a more familiar acquaintance I have with myself than any body else has, tell me that I shall not answer the expectations your Grace may have of my service in Parliament. However, since I am thoroughly satisfied that the same friendship which moved you to entertain those expectations will incline you to make allowances for my failours, I submit to your Grace's Resolutions. I hope your Grace will not believe I think the less of the honour you have done me, that I assure you it neither has augmented, nor cannot, the affection with which I formerly was Your Grace's Edin' 18th July 1721. most faithful Servant, D. F. No. C. My dear Lord Provost, Lord Lovat to the Laird of Culloden. IT'S needless to me to give you ane account of the attack y those impudent vil lains make on you; since Tom. Rob. W. B. & Jo. Hosak, will give you a full account of it. It's a fine design, & very proper for King George's Officers of State, to offer to the Tory Jacobits of Inverness to restore them to their old Magistracy, if they will concur with them to turn out the Whigs who have been so zealous for King George. I want to know mightily what pension ye D. of R- has from the Pretender for serving his friends so faithfully. I am sure he gets more than ever I did for my services in 1703. I must that say, you are all good natured, yt can every day see those Rafkals w'out telling them they are so. But if the E. & Knight come to Inverness, they will certainly be drum'd out of town, & followed by all the dogs, fisherwifes, whores, & boys of the town; as the Peer would have been in 1715 if I had not protected him. I intend to go to Inverness, & show at least my zeal to serve you. Adieu. am eternally John Forbes of Colodin's faithfull Slave, LOVAT. My service to Sir Rob. Gordon, & the Laird of Brodie. My Wife gives you her kind service. Beaufort, the 7th of Debre 1721. * Mr. Forbes was chosen in 1722 for the Inverness district of boroughs. No. CI. No. CI. My dear Lord Provost, Lord Lovat to the Laird of Culloden. THO' I am tender, & yt ye weather is very bad, I came in here to do all the service I can. I refer to Mr. Baillie to give you ane account of what is doing here. * * * & other old Frds are only to be trusted. But I hope we will blow up all their Plot very soon. However, I think, w'out losse of tyme, you should come home: you know y' your presence would check a great many trimmers; but in your absence we will do what we can; & I hope y' is to beat them to pieces, tho' their contrivances is very malicious; & you may be sure that Duncan will not act with more earnestnes & affection for your concerns than I will, and yt wt ye rifk of life & fortune if it was usefull. I am my dear John Forbes's Inverness, ye 9 of Dec. 1721. My dear Lord Provost, Most faithfull Slave, No. CII. From the same to the same. LOVAT. I Am heare this eight days doing what I can to serve you & your Interest. I hope I have not been useless; for I left no stone unturn'd that I could think of to knock the last ridiculous Plot in the head; & I think it is better for you y' they invented y' piece of malice; for it only shows the world y all Inverness is yours, Whig and Tory & yt you can order any yt dares call themselves Squade to be whip'd out of it. I refer to B Hos Hos and Mr. Baillie, to give you ane account of my affection & zeal for you; which I believe you are convinc'd is all the business I have, or ever will have, to do with the Politicks of Inverness. I wish you a happy new year & a merry Christmass; but I wish it was at Inverness. I am eternally, My d' La Provost, Your most faithful Slave, Inverness, y 15 of Debre 1721. LOVAT. No. CIII. Dear Brother, Mr Duncan Forbes to his Brother Mr John Forbes. WE are frightned out of our witts here, that Peter Haldane will be made Lord of Session in place of Fountainhall, who has demitted. If this happen, we have no more to say in the Session; and, for ought I know, the ridiculous process against you and your Magistrates may be determined against you, at a Season when there can be no Appeall. I am hopefull the Duke will look to his own Interest in this particular; which will be mortally wounded, if not killed quite dead, by such a Judge; and I cannot help thinking, that if the Ministers put such a Judge upon him, he has very litle to look to from their promises. I expect to hear particularly from Inverness, in a day or two, what have been the Springs of our Tory friends' actions, and then you shall know. I heartily regrate our friend Sandy's loss; I hope heel bear it, and get another son. Edr 19th Decer 1721. I am Yours. Note.-Mr. Haldane was not appointed. No. CIV. My Lord, No. CIV. M' Duncan Forbes to the Duke of Argyll. Ed 29th Aug 1723. THIS Morning your Grace's Letter was sent me by Com. Campbell, under whose cover it came. Observing it to be dated the 13th, and that, consequently, it ought to have come to hand ten days ago, I enquired somewhat carefully to discover where the stop had been. I found by the Cover, directed by C. Poter to the Commissar, that he folded it up at Sudbrook only on the 17th; and by the London Postmark that it was put into the Office there no sooner than the 24th. These things I remark to satisfy your Grace, that this Answer is not delayed throw any fault of mine; because you seemed disposed to take some resolutions, upon the failour of ane answer, in the course of the Post, from the date of your Grace's Letter. I am heartily sorry that what I wrote your Grace, sometime agoe, in excuse of my friend George's delay of Payment, did not prove satisfactory. If that delay proceeded from unwillingness, there could be no excuse for it; but if it proceeded truly from unability at the time, I imagined your Gr. would have been as forward as I to have covered it. Had I not been absolutely sure that he was then unable to answer the demand, I should not have offered the proposition that I then made; but since I cannot safely, in this method of distant correspondence, hope to offer arguments that shall convince your Gr. that I was in the right, I shall at least give you the most substantial proof that I think I was so; for I shall forthwith do what I can to find the Money, and cause pay it up, to save my friend from Ruin. If it is remitted to J. Cockburn, I believe it will Answer your Grace's intention; and I hope in a very few Posts to lodge it in his hands. If the mistake of your Letters having come so late to hand has not occasioned your Gr. doing somewhat cross to poor. George before this reaches you, I flatter myself you will lay aside all thoughts of hurting a Man who, joined to more merite, has as great a love for justice and for your Gr. Service, as your most f. H. Serv1t DUN. FORBES. No. CV. The Duke of Argyll to M' Duncan Forbes, Dated Sudbrook, Sept' y 7th, 1723. I PROTEST, I never was half so much surpriz'd in my life as I am at y way in which you take this affair of George Drummond's. I have not as y told M' Wal'pool the Story; but I have told it to some of our friends, that I might see whether any Man thought upon the subject as you doe; & upon my word they are astonish'd; & I am confident all mankind will be so that hears it ; & one time or other you may chance to be convinc'd that you have misjudg'd in your extream passion for M' Drummond; who, I confess, I with pain see prefer'd to me. I take it, by what you say, that he is in a few days to be pleas'd to part with ye Money that he has thought to fit to retain eight years in his hands. I desire, to whoever he sends the Bills, he will condescend to confess having receiv'd the value out of the ten thousand pound, or some such discription. That done, to please you, I shall not hurt him; & to serve myself, I shall never trust him. I am, Duncan, Your faithfull Servant, ICH. No. CVI. Mr Duncan Forbes to the Duke of Argyll, Dated Inverness, 21" Sept 1723. My Lord, I AM at present under the greatest concern that ever possest me, when I sit down to answer your Grace's Letter of the 7th, which I received in this place. That your Grace's opinion, and that of your friends, concerning G. D. is a wrong one, I dare not take upon me absolutely to say; because you may be acquainted with facts concerning him, to which I am a Stranger; but if there was no more in the matter than I know; viz. that he, tho' willing, was unable to advance the Money for some months, without risquing ruin to himself and his friends; I cannot think that my entreating in his behalf with your Grace, or interposing to procure him the money, is a Crime unpardonable; tho', as I had the honor formerly to observe, his faultiness or innocence cannot well be explained in this manner of Correspondence. But that which touches me the most sensibly is, the Opinion your Grace is pleased to express concerning me, as if I preferred G. D. (of whom you seem to entertain very unfavourable Sentiments) to your Grace: the consequence whereof may be, that one time or another I may chance to be convinced that I have misjudged. To one whose Actions, in so far as they reguarded your Grace, flowed from the most sincere Love and affection; whose conduct never was influenced by views of interest or the least hopes of reward; and who flattered himself your Grace considered him in that light, the Censure is pretty severe. The study of my Life, since ever I had the honour to be known to your Grace, was, to merit your good will by honest actions. I was fond enough to believe that I had gained some share of it; and I do assure your Grace, nothing in nature can affect me more than the loss of it, excepting only the deserving to lose it. The Consequences which, one time or another, I may chance to feel, Your Grace will do me the justice to believe, make no impression on me. Were I capable of dreading these, I should be unworthy of that place which I so earnestly courted in your Grace's Esteem. But I must confess, the reflexion that it should be in the power of chance, or industry, to give your Grace a jealousy of me, when my conscience bears witness to my sincerity, is a circumstance that brings me abundance of pain. Your Grace will, I hope, pardon my complaining in this manner; since you are the only person living to whom I dare utter my complaint. Your justice will doubtless dispose you to examine more narrowly, whether there was any cause for suspecting my truth; and in the mean time, till, upon such Enquiry, I'am found Guilty, I take the liberty to continue to subscribe myself, as formerly, Your Grace's most faithfull and most humble Servant, D. F. I have written to Mr. Drummond, to acquaint Ja. Cockburn, that the Money remitted him by Bill was in satisfaction of so much Money which had remained in his Mr. Drummond's hands of the £10,000. since the late Rebellion. The Letter to Kilmahew, which came North, unluckily being under the same cover with your Grace's, I have directed for him. No, CVIL. No. CVII. The Duke of Argyll to Mr. Duncan Forbes. My Dear Duncan, Sudbrook, y 10 of Oct. 1723. I RECEIV❜D your Letter out of ye North, by which I find you have strangly mistaken mine. The Opinion I have, you know, always had of you, cannot but have made it a pain to me to find you think me in ye wrong, & George Drummond in the right. It is wonderful to me, how you could conceive that I intended, by what I said, to threten you. If you can think well of me, you should think that I am sensible of the obligations I lye under to you, and sorry that I have had no opportunity to return them. I have, God knows, too little power to be such a fool as to threten my enemys; and, I think, too much Honesty to dream of hurting my friend. Man is, questionless, not perfect; and I am, no doubt, less so than I might be; but if you meet, Duncan, with many, either with regard to publick or private life, much better than myself, you may be said to have good fortune. I goe in two or three days into Oxfordshire, where ye Dutchess will be toward the end of the month, and shall remain there till a few days before His Majestie's return. Mr Walpole tells me, every thing will goe well; & I have reason to be perswaded, that he will sincerly doe the best he can to serve us. Give my Service to all our friends; and doe me ye justice to believe that I am Your faithfull friend & Servant, No. CVIII. ARGYLL & GREENWICH. Mr John Forbes to his Brother Mr. Duncan Forbes, Lord Advocate; dated Culloden, 28th January 1725. Dear Brother, WE have the strongest strugle about Elections in this Countrie, all over, was ever heard of, especially anent our Borrowes: so that I cannot yett say that Stewart is secure. I wish the writts were here; for till then, or rather till the Minute of Election is over, It is not possible to say who will be the Man; because Stewart, Killravock, and Collonell ***** McKynzie, by Tom. Robertsones (and his associats) ther bambusiling measures, doe all of them reckon themselves equally secure. As to my Election, our Cousine Foulls is now here. He assures, Sir Donald will not come North; but Fraserdeall, who is also in this Countrie, asserts he will, and all his oy South Countrie friends. If he speaks trueth, tyme mest try who will be returned. I am glad to hear the Address for dissolving the Union is throwen out by your Faculty; tho' its well knowen I was not for it. Yet a very thinking Man may easily belive this is not the proper tyme to propose such ane affair. I am truely sorrie to hear the litle Recabite was violently opposite to you and his oy' friends in this matter; and as sorrie to hear that he is lyke to follow Jacobite measures at the Elections. If this be true, please show him this Lyne; and tell him, I take his apearing so, att this Jouncture, to be not only the greatest act of folly he can committ against his interest, but also the greatest affront he can possibly doe me, and all concern'd in me. in plain terms, a giveing up all friendship with me. Yett still, insignificant as I am, it were more kyndly for him to wish me well, and to expect friendship from me, then to depend It is, |