The Duke knows what it is to have sons and nephews that follow not advice.  I have taken pains to know the state of the country’s guilt as to reset; and if I make it not appear that my Lord Dundonald is one of the clearest of all that country, and can hardly be reached in law, I am content to pay his fine.  I never pleaded for any, nor shall I hereafter.  But I must say I think it hard that no regard is had to a man in so favourable circumstances—­I mean considering others—­upon my account, and that nobody offered to meddle with him till they heard I was likely to be concerned in him....  Whatever come of this, let not my enemies misrepresent me.  They may abuse the Duke for a time, and hardly.  But, or long, I will, in despite of them, let the world see that it is not in the power of love, nor any other folly, to alter my loyalty.”

And again on the same day: 

“For my own part, I look upon myself as a cleanser.  I may cure people guilty of that plague of Presbytery by conversing with them, but cannot be infected.  And I see very little of that amongst those persons but may be easily rubbed off.  And for the young lady herself, I shall answer for her.  Had she not been right principled, she would never, in despite of her mother and relations, made choice of a persecutor, as they call me."[43]

The young lady seems to have been well-favoured, though it is not easy to learn much from the female portraits of those days, which are all very much of a piece.  What else she may have been it is impossible to say.  She is a name in her husband’s history and nothing more, and in the few stormy years that were yet to run for him she could not well have been much more.  However, she seems to have been well pleased with her handsome lover; and, in spite of her mother’s opposition, the marriage was pushed briskly forward.  The contract was signed at Paisley on June 10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same place.  Lady Catherine’s is not among the signatures; but there is to be seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross.  The bride’s eldest brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to follow, and her cousin John, son of the outlaw of Ochiltree, were also among the witnesses; and for the bridegroom, his brother-in-arms Lord Ross[44] and Colin Mackenzie, brother of the Lord Advocate, Sir George of Rosehaugh.  The lady’s jointure was fixed at five thousand merks Scots (something over two hundred and seventy pounds of English money), secured on certain property in Forfarshire and Perthshire; while she on her side brought her husband what in those days was reckoned a very comfortable fortune for a younger child.[45]