to Sir Hugh Paterson
of Bannockburn, in Stirlingshire.

The Earl of Mar succeeded to the possession and management of estates,
heavily encumbered, in 1696.[10] His qualities of mind and person, at
this early period of his life, were not eminently pleasing. His
countenance, though strongly marked, had none of the attributes of
intellectual strength. In person he is said to have been deformed,
although his portrait by Kneller was skilfully contrived to hide that
defect; his complexion was fair: he was short in stature. In his early
youth the Earl is declared by historians who were adverse to the
Stuarts, to have been initiated into every species of licentious
dissipation, by Neville Payne: and the young nobleman is characterized
as "the scandal of his name."[11] Although his ancestors had been
devotedly attached to the interests of the exiled family, yet, it was to
be shewn how far Mar preferred those interests to his own, or upon what
principles he eventually adopted the cause of hereditary monarchy, which
had already brought so much inconvenience, and so many losses to his
father and grandfather.

The first political prepossessions of the young Earl must certainly have
been those of the Cavaliers; such was the name by which the party
continued to be called who still desired the restoration of James the
Second, and fervidly believed in the fruition of their hopes. His
father had indeed, to use the words of Lockhart of Carnwath, "embarked
with the Revolution;" but had given tokens of his deep contrition for
that act, so inconsistent with his hereditary allegiance. But the
unformed opinions of the young are far more easily swayed by events
which are passing before their eyes than by the cool reasonings of the
closet; and the inclinations of the Earl of Mar's childhood were likely
soon to be effaced by the state of public affairs. The later occurrences
of the reign of William the Third were calculated not only to repress
the spirit of Jacobitism, but to shame even the most enthusiastic of its
partisans out of a scheme which the sagacity of William had defeated,
and which his wisdom had taught him to forgive. It was in the year 1696,
just as the Earl of Mar succeeded to his title, that the projected
invasion of the kingdom, and the scheme of assassinating the King, were
defeated:--that William, hastening to the House of Commons, gave to the
nation an account of the whole conspiracy. The House of Commons, without
rising fro