called the "Cabal," from the initials of their names, by which the whole empire
for a time was governed. But he soon became odious to his colleagues, who
were weary of his arrogance; to the people, who regarded him as an upstart and
an alien; and to the Duke of York, who thought he had not gone far enough in
severity, and suspected him of being a trimming Presbyterian and secret enemy
to the divine right of kings. Thus mistrusted and forsaken by all parties, he
was deprived of all his offices and pensions in the beginning of 1682, and thrown
aside as a worn-out political tool, that could be serviceable no longer. These
bitter reverses, combined with old age and gross unwieldiness of body, hastened
his death, which occurred at Tunbridge, in the summer of the same year. It
was recorded by Burnet, and eagerly noticed by the Covenanters of Scotland,
whom he had so cruelly betrayed and persecuted, that when he died, "his heart
seemed quite spent; there was not left above the bigness of a walnut of firm
substance; the rest was spungy; liker the lungs than the heart."
Such is but a brief sketch of the political life of one with whose proceedings so large a portion of Scottish biography is more or less connected. The character of the Duke of Lauderdale is thus severely but truthfully limned by Bishop Burnet, who knew him well, but was no admirer of his proceedings: "He was very learned, not only in Latin, in which he was a master, but in Greek and Hebrew. He had read a great deal of divinity, and almost all the historians, ancient and modern, so that he had great materials. He was a man, as the Duke of Buckingham once called him to me, of a blundering understanding. He was haughty beyond expression; abject to those he saw he must stoop to, but imperious to all others. He had a violence of passion that carried him often to fits like madness, in which he had no temper. If he took a thing wrong, it was a vain thing to study to convince him; that would rather provoke him to swear he would never be of another mind . . . . He at first despised wealth; but he delivered himself up afterwards to luxury and sensuality, and by that means he ran into a vast expense, and stuck at nothing that was necessary to support it . . . . He was in his principles much against Popery and arbitrary government; and yet, by a fatal train of passions and interests, he made way for the former, and had almost established the latter; and whereas some, by a smooth deportment, made the first beginnings of tyranny less discernible and unacceptable, he, by the fury of his behaviour, heightened the severity of his ministry, which was liker the cruelty of an inquisition, than the legality of justice. With all this he was a Presbyterian, and continued his aversion to King Charles I. and his party to his death." So unfavourable a disposition and character was matched by his personal appearance. "He was very big," says the same authority; "his hair red, hanging oddly about him. His tongue was too big for his mouth, which made him bedew all that he talked to; and his whole manner was rough and boisterous, and very unfit for a court."
Although twice married, the Duke of Lauderdale left no male issue; and his sole heir was Anne, his daughter, married to John Hay, second Marquis of Tweeddale, while he was succeeded in the title of his earldom by his brother, whose son Richard was the author of a poetical translation of VirgiL
MALCOLM III., or Canmore, King of Scotland.—Few sovereigns in the obscure and barbarous periods of nations have been more fortunate in their chances of posthumous renown than Malcolm Canmore. He has had Buchanan for his historian, and Shakspeare for his eulogist. What the former learned of
