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KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE

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FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES

The following Volumes are now ready:—

THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson.
ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton.
HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask.
JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes.
ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun.
THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie.
RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless.
SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson.
THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garde Blaikie.
JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask.
TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By Oliphant Smeaton.
FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. Omond.
THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir George Douglas.
NORMAN MACLEOD. By John Wellwood.
SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor Saintsbury.
KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. By Louis A. Barbé.

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PREFACE

The materials available for a biography of Sir WilliamKirkcaldy of Grange are very unequally distributed overthe two portions into which his life naturally dividesitself. For the first of them, I have been obliged tocontent myself with the rather meagre and fragmentaryinformation to be gathered from the old chroniclers. Asregards the incidents that occur during those earlier years,I cannot, therefore, claim much novelty for my sketch.By looking closely into dates, however, I have been ableto rectify some minor details, and to set forth events intheir proper sequence.

On the second part of Sir William’s public career, thedocuments preserved in the Record Office throw considerablelight. Some of them have been utilised, to acertain extent, in connection with the general history ofthe time; but, so far as I know, no attempt has yet beenmade to base on them a connected narrative of thisimportant period of Grange’s life, or to draw from theman explanation of his policy. By using his own correspondence—boththe letters which he wrote, and thosewhich were addressed to him—I have endeavoured torepresent the man as he wished to be understood by hiscontemporaries.

It has not been my special object to justify Kirkcaldy’s[6]conduct; but I am not without the hope that the impartialaccount of it which I have striven to give, may show howunfair it is to form an estimate of him from a considerationof the bare fact that he was, in turn, the champion oftwo conflicting parties.

L. A. B.

8 Wilton Mansions, Glasgow,

October 1897.

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