be less favoured than the minority in Buckinghamshire? Why should the minority at Bristol be left to an unaided struggle with the majority, while the minority at Liverpool can practically exclude the majority from the choice of one of its members? But the direct representation of minorities is unsound in principle. Minorities have no absolute rights, but it does not follow that they have no claim to consideration; and the majority in the exercise of its absolute right should be confined within due bounds. The majority in any place returning one member has a right to the representation, but it should not be allowed to exercise this right twice over in the same place. It may happen, and does happen, that one side of a county, and one ward of a borough, may be Liberal; and another side of a county, or the adjacent ward of a borough, may be Conservative. In such a case the dual vote operates to the entire extinction of the weaker party; and this is contrary to the true theory of representation. We are possibly on the eve of another Reform Bill, which must be accompanied or followed by a new distribution of electoral power. equitable adjustment of that power is to be made, minorities must have fair play; and they cannot have fair play so long as the duality of the vote is maintained as the basis of the suffrage. We have expressed our opinions frankly on these matters, because we are persuaded that in these times it behoves every friend of freedom to tend and foster English institutions, which have no open enemies, but may be in danger from insidious foes. And if we have criticised keenly the plans and projects of our friends for the advancement of the Liberal party and the consolidation of its resources, it is because we are anxious that no false step should be taken; and that no discredit should be brought upon that great party, of which this Journal has been for three-quarters of a century, through evil report and through good report, the consistent supporter.

If an

No. CCCVI. will be published in April.

THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

APRIL, 1879.

No. CCCVI.

ART. I.-The Lennox. By WILLIAM FRASER. Memoirs and Charters. 2 vols. 4to. Edinburgh: 1874.

WE

E are already indebted to the persevering and ingenious researches of Mr. William Fraser in the muniment chests of the great Scottish houses, and to the munificence of some members of the Scottish nobility, for several of the most interesting and important contributions to the family histories of this country which have ever issued from the press. The Stirlings of Keir' and the Colquhouns of Luss' have caused their records to be printed in the same magnificent manner an example which might well be followed by the Russells, the Cecils, and the Howards of South Britain. The Book of Caerlaveroc' and the Cromartie Papers' have been reviewed on previous occasions in the pages of this Journal, and thus made known to the world. For these splendid and costly works, being family property, are reserved for private distribution. The number of copies printed is extremely small, and the fortunate possessors of them may congratulate themselves on so rare and valuable an addition to their libraries. In fact they complete the work which was so well begun for Scotland fifty years ago by the Maitland and Bannatyne Clubs. England has produced nothing to compare with these publications, except Lord Clermont's reprint of the Fortescue papers. The volumes now before us form part of this remarkable series, and they are not inferior to any of their companions in typographical beauty or in historical interest. We propose, therefore, to lay before our readers an abridged account of them, the more so as they are inaccessible to the public, except in two or three of the principal libraries of the kingdom, where they are deposited for the purposes of reference.

VOL. CXLIX. NO. CCCVI.

T

The Lennox' differs, however, from its predecessors in one important particular. The memorials of the Maxwells and the Mackenzies are essentially family histories; they abound in personal and domestic details; and they carry the records of those well-known Scottish races down to the present day. The annals of the Earls of Lennox are more historical than domestic. Those great nobles filled, from the dawn of Scottish history, a prominent place in the State. They were nearly allied to royalty, and their titles ultimately merged in the person of the sovereign. They were feudal princes holding under the Crown rather than subjects. Their jurisdiction extended over the important province of Scotland which bore their name, or whose name they bore. One of the last direct heirs of the Lennoxes was the wilful and luckless Henry Darnley, who, as the husband of Mary Stewart, signed himself King of Scotland, and whose murder cost the queen her reputation and her throne. For although his brother succeeded to the title and held it for a short time, King James VI., as the son of Darnley himself, was the true representative of the race, and the collateral line expired in 1672, when Charles II. became the last of the Lennoxes. Mr. Fraser has summed up in the following paragraph their eventful career:—

once,

'In the history of the Lennox family, their rise and progress to royal rank will be traced. But throughout the entire history there appear many instances of the vicissitudes which sometimes befall great families. For many generations the earls of the old race prospered, and not only retained, but increased, their vast possessions. But all at when it seemed as if they would become more prosperous and powerful than ever, calamity fell upon Duncan, the eighth earl, who, to slake the vengeance of King James the First, was, when far advanced in years, beheaded with two of his grandsons and Murdoch Duke of Albany, his son-in-law. His daughter, the Duchess Isabella, after the melancholy fate of her father, her husband, and two sons, passed the remainder of her days in solitary widowhood in a lonely island, during which she possessed the Lennox estates only by sufferance, the Government apparently thinking that enough had been done to crush the illustrious house of Lennox. After her death the descendants of her sisters, the ladies Elizabeth and Margaret, who were coheiresses of the earldom, were kept out of their rightful possessions by the grasping injustice of Andrew Lord Avandale, who, being Chancellor of King James the Third, obtained a grant in life-rent of the entire earldom. John Stewart Lord Darnley, who was entitled to the half of the earldom and to the title of Earl of Lennox, did not obtain his rightful inheritance till after the death of Lord Avandale in 1488. Darnley was thus deprived of his Lennox rights for nearly twenty years.

The Stewart Earls of Lennox were even more unfortunate than the earls of the original Lennox family, and seemed like the Stewart

kings, the race from which they sprang, as if marked out for the shafts of calamity. Matthew, the son and successor of John the first Earl of Lennox of the Stewart line, fell at Flodden in 1513. John, his son and successor, was treacherously slain by Sir James Hamilton of Fynnart, at the battle fought near Linlithgow in 1526. Matthew, the son and successor of that John, had his honours and estates forfeited, and was banished from Scotland for twenty years. After his restoration, and after having enjoyed the high office of Regent of Scotland for little more than a year, he was assassinated in 1571, in an attempt to suppress an insurrection against his authority as Regent. The cruel murder of his eldest surviving son, King Henry Darnley, who had been raised to the highest dignity in the State by his marriage with Queen Mary, is one of the most tragic events in Scottish history of the sixteenth century. The only brother of Darnley, after becoming Earl of Lennox, died within four years, at the early age of twenty-one, leaving an only child, the Lady Arabella Stewart, whose brief life was very miserable, being a constant succession of disappointments, imprisonments, and sufferings, to which she at last succumbed. Robert, the fourteenth earl, enjoyed the earldom less than two years, and was afterwards involved in an unseemly contention with his wife, Lady Elizabeth Stewart, daughter of John Earl of Athole, from whom he was divorced. Esmé the first Duke of Lennox, after enjoying his high dignity of duke for the brief space of two years, and after having been a special favourite of King James the Sixth, was driven from Scotland by the popular feeling against him, and soon after died in France. The subsequent dukes seldom possessed their estates and honours long or happily. On the death of Charles the sixth Duke in 1672, the direct male descendants became extinct; and after King Charles the Second had revived the dukedom in the new line of Lennox and Richmond, the Lennox estates were sold, and his descendants, the later Dukes of Lennox, deservedly very popular noblemen, and none of them more so than the present representative, have possessed their Lennox title entirely separated from every acre of the Lennox territory.'

It appears, therefore, that the present English ducal family which bears the illustrious name of Lennox has no connexion with the ancient Earls and Dukes of Lennox, except that which it derives by an irregular descent from Charles II. and Louise de Quérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, and from the revival of the title by that sovereign in the person of one of his illegitimate offspring. The landed possessions which accompanied the Scottish title passed, early in the last century, by sales into other hands.

To find the nearest personal representative of the ancient Earls of Lennox, Mr. Fraser teaches us to look in a totally different direction; and, curiously enough, it is in the family of Oswald of Auchencruive that this heir is to be found. A member of that family, who was, we believe, originally a

merchant of Glasgow, has left some mark in the history of the last century, as the friend of Lord Shelburne, who opened the negotiations with Benjamin Franklin which led to the peace of 1783 and the close of the American war. His grandson, the late Mr. Oswald of Auchencruive, succeeded about twenty years ago in establishing, with the assistance of Mr. Fraser, his descent from the Haldanes of that ilk, the Haldanes being an ancient border race which long held a barony of that name in the county of Roxburgh. After the death of Isabella Countess of Lennox in 1460, the earldom of Lennox was, as we shall presently see, divided. John Lord Darnley claimed and ultimately obtained one-half of the earldom. The second heir-portioner was Agnes Menteith, a great-granddaughter of Duncan Earl of Lennox. This lady was married to John Haldane, then of Gleneagles, and at that period whatever devolved on the wife belonged to the husband. This John Haldane had the good fortune to be a favourite of King James III., and very nearly succeeded in obtaining from the king the principal part of the earldom. The contention between the Haldanes and Lord Darnley lasted for several years, and although it was ultimately decided in favour of the latter, it may be inferred that if the true Daruley line is extinct, that of the Haldanes is next in succession. The late Mr. Alexander Oswald succeeded in establishing by an interlocutor of the Lord Lyon of March 15, 1861, that he was the heirgeneral of the Haldanes, and he was authorised by letters patent to add the name of Haldane to his own, and to bear the arms of that family, including those of Lennox and Menteith. The book now before us was commenced by his liberality. Unhappily he did not live to witness the completion of it, for he died in 1868. His estates passed in 1871 to Mr. Richard Alexander Oswald, now of Auchencruive, by whom the work has been brought to a termination. It is a noble monument―ære perennius-raised by a remote descendant to an illustrious ancestry.

For, as may be inferred from the passage we have quoted from Mr. Fraser's Introduction, the history of the Lennoxes, which begins in the eleventh or twelfth century, ends with Henry Darnley in the sixteenth. In writing the lives of the Lennoxes, Mr. Fraser finds himself, more than once, rewriting a page or a chapter of the history of Scotland; and, indeed, his researches have enabled him to add to his work some unpublished letters of Queen Mary and of James VI., and some important acts of their reigns, to which we shall refer before we conclude.