About four years after this time a great commotion took place in the county where Ellangowan is situated.

Those who watched the signs of the times had long been of opinion that a change of ministry was about to take place; and at length, after a due proportion of hopes, fears, and delays, rumours from good authority and bad authority, and no authority at all; after some clubs had drank Up with this statesman and others Down with him; after riding, and running, and posting, and addressing, and counter-addressing, and proffers of lives and fortunes, the blow was at length struck, the administration of the day was dissolved, and parliament, as a natural consequence, was dissolved also.

Sir Thomas Kittlecourt, like other members in the same situation, posted down to his county, and met but an indifferent reception.  He was a partizan of the old administration; and the friends of the new had already set about an active canvass in behalf of John Featherhead, Esq., who kept the best hounds and hunters in the shire.  Among others who joined the standard of revolt was Gilbert Glossin, writer in—­, agent for the Laird of Ellangowan.  This honest gentleman had either been refused some favour by the old member, or, what is as probable, he had got all that he had the most distant pretension to ask, and could only look to the other side for fresh advancement.  Mr. Glossin had a vote upon Ellangowan’s property; and he was now determined that his patron should have one also, there being no doubt which side Mr. Bertram would embrace in the contest.  He easily persuaded Ellangowan that it would be creditable to him to take the field at the head of as strong a party as possible; and immediately went to work, making votes, as every Scotch lawyer knows how, by splitting and subdividing the superiorities upon this ancient and once powerful barony.  These were so extensive that, by dint of clipping and paring here, adding and eking there, and creating over-lords upon all the estate which Bertram held of the crown, they advanced at the day of contest at the head of ten as good men of parchment as ever took the oath of trust and possession.  This strong reinforcement turned the dubious day of battle.  The principal and his agent divided the honour; the reward fell to the latter exclusively.  Mr. Gilbert Glossin was made clerk of the peace, and Godfrey Bertram had his name inserted in a new commission of justices, issued immediately upon the sitting of the parliament.

This had been the summit of Mr. Bertram’s ambition; not that he liked either the trouble or the responsibility of the office, but he thought it was a dignity to which he was well entitled, and that it had been withheld from him by malice prepense.  But there is an old and true Scotch proverb, ’Fools should not have chapping sticks’; that is, weapons of offence.  Mr. Bertram was no sooner possessed of the judicial authority which he had so much longed for than he began to exercise it with more severity than mercy,