rl of Mar to head the
friends of the Chevalier in the South, he had ties which perhaps were
among some of the considerations which led him to hesitate and to accept
the proffered honour unwillingly. On his trial he referred to his wife
and "four small children," as a plea for mercy. But Lady Kenmure,
sanguine and resolute, did not view these little dependent beings as
obstacles to a participation in the insurrection. If she might be
considered to transgress her duty as a mother, in thus risking the
fortunes of her children, she afterwards compensated by her energy and
self-denial for her early error of judgment.

It had been arranged that the insurrection in Dumfriesshire was to break
out in conjunction with that headed in Northumberland by Mr. Forster. To
effect this end, numbers of disaffected, or, as the Jacobite writers
call them, well-affected noblemen and gentlemen assembled in parties at
the houses of their friends, moving about from place to place, in order
to prepare for the event.

It was on the twelfth of October, 1715, that Viscount Kenmure set out in
the intention of joining the Earl of Wintoun, who was on his road to
Moffat, and who was accompanied by a party of Lothian gentlemen and
their servants. It is said by the descendants of Viscount Kenmure, on
hearsay, that his Lordship's horse three times refused to go forward on
that eventful morning; nor could he be impelled to do so, until Lady
Kenmure taking off her apron, and throwing it over the horse's eyes, the
animal was led forward. The Earl of Carnwath had joined with Lord
Kenmure, and rode forwards with him to the rencontre with Lord Wintoun.
Lord Kenmure took with him three hundred men to the field.[38]

At the siege of Preston, in which those who fell dead upon the field
were less to be compassionated than the survivors, Lord Kenmure was
taken prisoner. His brother-in-law, the Earl of Carnwath, shared the
same fate. They were sent with the principal state prisoners to London.
The same circumstances, the same indignities, attended the removal of
Lord Kenmure to his last earthly abode, as those which have been already
related as disgracing the humanity of Englishmen, when the Earl of
Derwentwater was carried to the Tower.

The subsequent sufferings of these brave men were aggravated by the
abuses which then existed in the state prisons of England. The condition
of these receptacles of woe, at that period, beggars all description.
Corruption and ex