It would appear that Lord Pitsligo was not attainted for his share in Mar’s rebellion.  He returned to Scotland in 1720, and resided at his castle in Aberdeenshire, not mingling in public affairs, but gaining, through his charity, kindness, and benevolence, the respect and affection of all around him.  He was sixty-seven years of age when Charles Edward landed in Scotland.  The district in which the estates of Lord Pitsligo lay was essentially Jacobite, and the young cavaliers only waited for a fitting leader to take up arms in the cause.  According to Mr. Home, his example was decisive of the movement of his neighbours:  “So when he who was so wise and prudent declared his purpose of joining Charles, most of the gentlemen in that part of the country who favoured the Pretender’s cause, put themselves under his command, thinking they could not follow a better or safer guide than Lord Pitsligo.”  His Lordship’s own account of the motives which urged him on is peculiar:—­“I was grown a little old, and the fear of ridicule stuck to me pretty much.  I have mentioned the weightier considerations of a family, which would make the censure still the greater, and set the more tongues agoing.  But we are pushed on, I know not how,—­I thought—­I weighed—­and I weighed again.  If there was any enthusiasm in it, it was of the coldest kind; and there was as little remorse when the affair miscarried, as there was eagerness at the beginning.”

The writer whom I have already quoted goes on to say—­“To those friends who recalled his misfortunes of 1715, he replied gaily, ’Did you ever know me absent at the second day of a wedding?’ meaning, I suppose, that having once contracted an engagement, he did not feel entitled to quit it while the contest subsisted.  Being invited by the gentlemen of the district to put himself at their head, and having surmounted his own desires, he had made a farewell visit at a neighbour’s house, where a little boy, a child of the family, brought out a stool to assist the old nobleman in remounting his horse.  ‘My little fellow.’ said Lord Pitsligo, ’this is the severest rebuke I have yet received, for presuming to go on such an expedition.’

“The die was however cast, and Lord Pitsligo went to meet his friends at the rendezvous they had appointed in Aberdeen.  They formed a body of well-armed cavalry, gentlemen and their servants, to the number of a hundred men.  When they were drawn up in readiness to commence the expedition, the venerable nobleman, their leader, moved to their front, lifted his hat, and, looking up to heaven, pronounced, with a solemn voice, the awful appeal,—­’O Lord, thou knowest that our cause is just!’ then added the signal for departure—­’March, gentlemen!’