He might
not then have had opportunity to commit himself so deeply; and there
might have been a romantic and pathetic figure the less in the doleful
history of that unhappy period. As it was, he had time to get clear
away, and was able to lie securely hid, partly in farmhouses, partly
near Shaftoe Crags, till the news reached him that Forster had raised
the standard of rebellion. On 6th October 1715, at the head of a little
company of gentlemen and armed servants, he joined Forster at Greenrig.
A poor affair at the best, this muster in Northumberland; and though the
county was seething with excitement, and a few notable men went out with
the Earl, his personal following did not exceed seventy in all. Then
followed the march which ended so disastrously in pitiful surrender at
Preston that fatal November day. However gallant personally, Forster was
an incapable soldier, no leader of men, and General Wills had but to
spread wide his net to sweep in the bulk of the insurgents--Forster,
Derwentwater, Kenmure, Nithsdale, Carwath, Wintoun, and men less exalted
in rank by the score and the hundred. The bag was a heavy one, that day
of disaster to the Stuart cause; and alas, for many of those who filled
it! Alas, too, for the wives and the mothers who sat at home, waiting!
Not to everyone was given the opportunity to dare all for husband or
son; to few came such chance as was seized by the Countess of Nithsdale,
who so contrived that her husband escaped from the Tower disguised in
woman's clothing.
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