helped it; but this
extraordinary manoeuvre of the enemy made it absolutely necessary.
A finger must be cut off to save the whole body. I have ordered some
copies of a proclamation to be sent you. There is about two of the
places burnt, and there's another ordred about the rest. Adieu.

"It was not amiss that this proclamation were sent to London."

In pursuance of the cruel and impolitic commands to which Lord Mar
refers, three thousand Highlanders were sent forth to the act of
destruction. Auchterarder, Crieff, Blackford, Denning and Muthel, were
mercilessly burned; and the wretched inhabitants turned out at that
inclement season to destitution without a roof to shelter them. Many
decrepid people and children perished in the flames.[141] Had James
sought, in truth, to prepare a way for the Government in the hearts of
the people, he could not have adopted a more suitable means. In the Duke
of Argyle, he had a generous and humane adversary to deal with,--one
whose forbearance laid him under the imputation of a want of zeal for
the cause of the Government, and rendered him no favourite at the
English Court. The fashion at the Court of St. James's, according to a
letter in the Mar Papers, was, to rail against the Duke, and even George
the First and those about him joined in the unjust and ungrateful abuse.

Even so late as Sunday, the twenty-ninth of January, when Argyle's
troops left Stirling and advanced to Braco Castle, Lord Mar appears to
have been in ignorance of their actual movements. Perhaps, like the busy
world of London politicians, he regarded the project of an attempt upon
Perth in such weather as impracticable. Such was the opinion at St.
James's. "Argyle's friends here," writes one near the Court, "speak of
the march and the attempt at present as madness." And another individual
writes, that "one half of their people must die of cold, and the other
be knocked o' the head. So it seems Argyle is dragg'd to this matter. We
cannot perceive, by all the letters that come up, any particular
certainty as to Lord Mar's number and his designs. The Court are
positive he will not stand; and they, as well as Ridpeath, assert
strongly that the Pretender is gone already as far as Glammis. The
Jacobites fancy that if he went thither, it was to meet and assemble
these officers that were landed."[142]

Whilst in this state of perplexity Lord Mar thus writes: