imaginary, but always implicitly believed in by Lauder, and the expeditions
of Monmouth and Argyll, met with Lauder's unqualified disapproval and
condemnation.

[21] It has been said that there is no sufficient evidence of this
honourable incident in Fountainhall's career. But Sir Thomas Dick
Lauder (MS. Genealogical Roll, _supra_) reproduces it in a poem to
the Memory of Sir John Lauder, published in 1743, and attributed
to Blair, the author of 'The Grave,' in which the following lines
occur. He

'Saw guiltless blood poured out with lavish hand,
And vast depopulated tracts of land;
And saw the wicked authors of that ill
Unpunished, nay, caressed and favoured still.
The power to prosecute he would not have,
Obliged such miscreants overlooked to save.'

[Sidenote: H.O. 148]

[Sidenote: H.O. 6]

[Sidenote: Decisions, p. 232.]

I shall cite some passages in illustration. When Charles II. died and James
was proclaimed, Lauder writes that 'peoples greiff was more than their joy,
having lost their dearly loved king'; then after a gentle reference to 'his
only weak syde,' he says, 'he was certainly a prince indued with many
Royall qualities, and of whom the Divine providence had taken a speciall
care by preserving him after Worcester fight in the oak.' ... 'A star