lliam the Third, was appointed to the command
of a regiment by that Monarch, and entrusted with several posts of
great importance, which he retained in the time of Queen Anne, until a
plot was formed to ruin him by Lord Lovat, who endeavoured to implicate
the Duke in the affair commonly known by the name of the Queensbury
plot. The Duke of Athole courted inquiry upon that occasion; but the
business having been dropped without investigation, he resigned the
office of Privy Seal, which he then held, and became a warm opponent of
the Act of Union which was introduced into Parliament in 1705.

After this event the Duke of Athole retired to Perthshire, and there
lived in great magnificence until, upon the Tories coming into power, he
was chosen one of the representatives of the Scottish peerage in 1710,
and afterwards a second time constituted Lord Privy Seal.

It is singular that, beholding his father thus cherished by Government,
the Marquis of Tullibardine should have adopted the cause of the
Chevalier: and not, as it appears, from a momentary caprice, but, if we
take into consideration the conduct of his whole life, from a fixed and
unalienable conviction. At the time of the first Rebellion, the Marquis
was twenty-seven years of age; he may therefore be presumed to have been
mature in judgment, and to have passed over the age of wild enthusiasm.
The impulses of fanaticism had no influence in promoting the adoption of
a party to which an Episcopalian as well as a Roman Catholic might
probably be peculiarly disposed. Lord Tullibardine had been brought up a
Presbyterian; his father was so firm and zealous in that faith, as to
excite the doubts of the Tory party, to whom he latterly attached
himself, of his sincerity in their cause. According to Lord Lovat, the
arch-enemy of the Athole family, the Duke had not any considerable
portion of that quality in his character, which Lord Lovat represents as
one compound of meanness, treachery, and revenge, and attributes the
hatred with which Athole persecuted the brave and unfortunate Duke of
Argyle, to the circumstance of his having received a blow from that
nobleman before the whole Court at Edinburgh, without having the spirit
to return the insult.[44]

It appears, from the same authority, that the loyalty which the Duke of
Athole professed towards King William was of a very questionable
description. It becomes, indeed, very difficult to ascertain what were
really the Duke of A