, died, leaving the title which he had
enjoyed for so short a period, to the brother, who was then engaged in
so perilous a course. This accession of honour brought with it little
increase of fortune, but rather the responsibility of succeeding to
encumbered estates. Of these most had, indeed, passed into other
families. To the first Lord Balmerino charters of numerous lands and
baronies had been given; Barntoun, Barrie, Balumby, Innerpeffer,
Balgregie, Balmerino, Dingwall, &c., were among his possessions. In
1605, the barony of Restalrig, in South Leith, was sold to Lord
Balmerino by the noted and profligate Robert Logan, Baron of Restalrig,
to whose family that now valuable property, including the grounds lying
near the river, had belonged, until the days of the Queen Regent, Mary.
This estate, on which Lord Balmerino's father resided, appears to have
been almost the only vestige of the former opulence of this branch of
the Elphinstone family.[358] His embarrassed circumstances are deemed by
some writers to have had a considerable share in deciding Lord Balmerino
to join in a contest in which he had so little to lose; but it appeared,
in the hour of trial, that his principles of allegiance to the Stuarts
had been unaltered since the days of his youth, and that they were alone
sufficient to account for the part which he adopted. At the battle of
Culloden Lord Balmerino was made prisoner by the Grants, to whom, as one
of the witnesses on his trial affirmed, he surrendered himself. He was
conveyed to Castle Grant, and from thence to London, to the same dreary
fortress in which Lord Kilmarnock was likewise immured. The fate of
these two unfortunate men, hitherto but little dependant on each other,
was henceforth associated, until the existence of both was closed on the
scaffold.

George, the third Earl of Cromartie, was the only one of their
fellow-prisoners who was arraigned and tried with Kilmarnock and
Balmerino. He had taken even a more decided part in the insurrection
than Balmerino, having raised four hundred of his clan, who were with
him in the battle of Falkirk. His son, the young Lord Macleod, was also
in the Jacobite army, and both father and son were surprised at
Dunrobin, by a party of the Earl of Sutherland's militia, on the
fifteenth of April, and taken prisoners. Lord Cromartie had, as well as
Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino, strong ties to life, strong claims upon
his reason to have withheld him from a haz