Ellangowan had sunk into subordinate accomplices. Their most fatal
exhibitions in this capacity took place in the seventeenth
century, when the foul fiend possessed them with a spirit of
contradiction, which uniformly involved them in controversy with
the ruling powers. They reversed the conduct of the celebrated
Vicar of Bray, and adhered as tenaciously to the weaker side as
that worthy divine to the stronger. And truly, like him, they had
their reward.

Allan Bertram of Ellangowan, who flourished tempore Caroli primi,
was, says my authority, Sir Robert Douglas, in his Scottish
Baronage (see the title 'Ellangowan'), 'a steady loyalist, and
full of zeal for the cause of His Sacred Majesty, in which he
united with the great Marquis of Montrose and other truly zealous
and honourable patriots, and sustained great losses in that
behalf. He had the honour of knighthood conferred upon him by His
Most Sacred Majesty, and was sequestrated as a malignant by the
parliament, 1642, and afterwards as a resolutioner in the year
1648.' These two cross-grained epithets of malignant and
resolutioner cost poor Sir Allan one half of the family estate.
His son Dennis Bertram married a daughter of an eminent fanatic
who had a seat in the council of state, and saved by that union
the remainder of the family property. But, as ill chance would
have it, he became enamoured of the lady's principles as well as
of her charms, and my author gives him this character: 'He was a
man of eminent parts and resolution, for which reason he was
chosen by the western counties one of the committee of noblemen
and gentlemen to report their griefs to the privy council of
Charles II. anent the coming in of the Highland host in 1678.' For
undertaking this patriotic task he underwent a fine, to pay which