ritanni!) insigne levamen.
Ad summos Martis dignitates gradatim assurgens,
Gloriae nobilis metae appetens,
In medio cursu, improvisa lethi vi raptus,
28 Septemb. A.D. 1747, AEt. 33.
In Angl. monach. Sacello Antwerpiae jacet.

The preceding narrative is given to the reader without any further
comment, except upon the general improbability of the story. It might
not appear impossible that the Duke may have taken refuge in the then
wild county of Durham for a time, but that two credible historians,
Maxwell of Kirkconnel, and Lord Elcho, assert positively that he sailed
for Nantes in a vessel which went by the north-west coast of Ireland;
Lord Elcho and Maxwell being themselves on board, seems decisive of the
entire failure of the case before quoted. It seems also wholly
incredible, that the Duke of Perth, whose rank was still acknowledged in
France, and whose early education in that country must have familiarised
him with its habits, should have remained contentedly during the whole
of his life, associating with persons of the lowest grade, in an obscure
village in Durham.

At the time of the Duke of Perth's death in 1747, one brother, Lord John
Drummond, was living. This brave man, whose virtues and whose fate are
recorded in the epitaph, survived his amiable and accomplished brother
only one year, and died suddenly of a fever, after serving under Marshal
Saxe at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. His services in the insurrection of
1745 were considerable; like his brother, he escaped to France after the
contest was concluded. He died unmarried; and two sisters, the Lady
Mary, and the Lady Henrietta Drummond, died also unmarried. The mother
of James Duke of Perth long survived him, living until 1773. It is said
in the case of Thomas Drummond, that she never forgave her son for what
she considered his lukewarmness in the cause of the Stuarts, and refused
to have any intercourse with him after the failure of the rebellion; but
those who thus write, must have formed a very erroneous conception of
the Duke's conduct: if he might not escape such a charge, who could
deserve the praise of zeal, sincerity, and disinterestedness?

The duchess was one of the most strenuous supporters of the Stuarts, and
suffered for her loyalty to them by an imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle.
She was committed to prison on the eleventh of February, 1746, and
liberated on