rrival silenced, for a time, all
complaints; but again they revived. Lord Mar seems to have had some
misgiving of this, when he wrote, "Those that made a pretext of the
King's not being landed, are now left inexcusable, and if those kind of
folks now sit still and look any more on, they ought to be worse treated
than our worse enemies." Yet it appears by a subsequent letter, that the
grievances of which the General complained so bitterly, were not cured
even by the presence of the Chevalier; that those who had made a
pretext of his absence to complain and despond, desponded still, and
that, in fact, the malady was so deep-seated as to be incurable.

It may be urged, in vindication of the Master, who obviously aggravated
the spirit of the Grumblers, that the event proved that his
apprehensions were well founded. It was, indeed, natural for an
experienced officer who had served under Marlborough, to view with
dissatisfaction and suspicion the feeble and tardy movements of Lord
Mar. Yet a hearty well-wisher to any cause would have abstained from
infusing distrust into those counsels which, whether wise or foolish,
were destined to guide the adherents of the party. A man of honour will
enter, heart and soul, into what he undertakes, or not enter at all. The
conduct of Sinclair was that of a mean, morose spirit; and it is but
fair to conclude that his motives for adopting the name of Jacobite were
either those of personal advancement, or arose out of an enforced
compliance with the wishes of his father.

Whilst Sinclair was thus undermining the welfare of the party to which
he nominally belonged, his determined enemy, Sir John Schaw, after
assisting the Duke of Argyle in defending Inverness against the
insurgent troops, was marching with Lord Isla to rejoin the Duke of
Argyle in his march towards Perth. It so happened that Lord Isla and his
friends reached Sherriff Muir at the very moment when the Government
troops and the Jacobites were about to join in battle. "Sir John," says
Sir Walter Scott, "though he had no command, engaged as a volunteer; and
we may suppose his zeal for King George was heightened by the
recollection that the slayer of his brothers fought under the opposite
banners." He behaved himself with distinguished courage, receiving a
wound on his arm, and another in his side.[235] He was, at this time,
the only surviving brother out of four, his brother Thomas having been
slain at the siege of Mons a year aft