Ruthven Correspondence. Letters and Papers of Patrick Ruthven, Earl of Forth and Brentford, and of His Family, AD 1615
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#^% RUTHVEN CORRESPONDENCE y ttthuen Ojiflrmpndmtt. LETTERS AND PAPERS OF PATRICK RUTHVEN, EARL OF FORTH AND BRENTFORD, AND OF HIS FAMILY: A.D. 1615-A.D. 1662. WITH AN APPENDIX OF PAPEES RELATING TO SIR JOHN URRY. EDITED, PROM THE ORIGINAL MSS., REV. WILLIAM DUNN MACRAY, M.A. LONDON: J. B. NICHOLS AND SONS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET. MDCCCLXVIII. €i)t 3&oj:burg!)e Club. MDCCCLXVIII. THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH MB QUEENSBERRY, K.G., PRESIDENT. HIS EXCELLENCY MONSIEUR VAN DE WEYER. MARQUIS OP LOTHIAN. EARL OP CARNARVON. EARL OP POWIS, V.P. EARL BEAUCHAMP. EARL OF CAWDOR. LORD DUFFERIN, K.C.B. LORD HOUGHTON. LORD ORMATHWAITE. SIR STEPHEN RICHARD GLYNNE, BART. SIR EDWARD HULSE, BART. SIR JOHN SIMEON, BART. SIR WILLIAM STIRLING MAXWELL, BART. SIR JAMES SHAW WILLES. HENRY BRADSHAW, ESQ. REV. WILLIAM EDWARD BUCKLEY. PAUL BUTLER, ESQ. REV. WILLIAM GEORGE CLARK. REV. HENRY OCTAVIUS COXE. FRANCIS HENRY DICKINSON, ESQ. GEORGE BRISCOE EYRE, ESQ. CHARLES GRIFFITH WYNNE FINCH, ESQ. THOMAS GAISFORD, ESQ. HENRY HUCKS GIBBS, ESQ. GRANVILLE LEVESON GOWER, ESQ. RALPH NEVILLE GRENVILLE, ESQ. Treasurer. JOHN BENJAMIN HEATH, ESQ. KIRKMAN DANIEL HODGSON, ESQ. ROBERT STAYNER HOLFORD, ESQ. ALEX. JAMES BERESFORD HOPE, ESQ. HENRY HUTH, ESQ. JOHN COLE NICHOLL, ESQ. EVELYN PHILIP SHIRLEY, ESQ. CHRISTOPHER SYKES, ESQ. SIMON WATSON TAYLOR, ESQ. GEORGE TOMLINE, ESQ. CHARLES TOWNELEY, ESQ. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from National Library of Scotland http://www.archive.org/details/ruthvencorrespon1868roxb TO She JJHemlrm of tlu gUxhttnglu Ojlitb THIS VOLUME OF PAPERS RELATING To PATRICK RUTHVEN, EARL OF BRENTFORD, NOW FIRST PRINTED, IS DEDICATED AND PRESENTED BY THEIR OBEDIENT SERVANT BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY, President. December, 1868. INTRODUCTION. The life of Patrick Ruthven, Earl of Forth and Brentford, with which the present volume is chiefly concerned, possesses interest of a threefold character. Firstly, from his connection with the un- fortunate family of Gowrie, all whose kith and kin were by the crime of its head in 1603 involved in a common disgrace, while their very existence became covered with obscurity. Secondly, from his forming one of the gallant Scottish band who, being trained to arms in the great military school of the Lion of the North, Gustavus Adolphus, played such a conspicuous part in the wars of that monarch, and won fame and fortune in a service which, happily for them, seemed to sanction and sanctify by a zeal for religion what would else have been mere military ardour and love of adventure. Thirdly, and chiefly, from the distinguished part he subsequently played in our own great Civil War, wherein, with no mercenary spirit, but, forgetting old family sufferings, with true unswerving loyalty, he adhered to his royal master to the last, although thereby old associations were dissevered, and old friends in arms, like Leslie of Leven, were turned into new foes. And yet the same obscurity which hangs over his family and the early part of his own career seems to attach, more or less, to his history throughout ; a few bare and leading facts, gleaned chiefly from the scanty notices in Clarendon's Histo?y of the Rebellion, Dugdale's Baronage, and Douglas's Peerage, comprise all the information a — 11 INTRODUCTION. which could, without great and varied search, be hitherto obtained. But the MS. from which the greater part of the contents of this volume are drawn, and which will be described in a subsequent page, furnishes, for the first time, materials for a more connected account, and of itself sketches an outline which notes, gathered from other and widely-scattered sources, can help to fill up. Circa 1572. Patrick Buthven was the second son of William Buthven of Ballendean, or Bandean, Perthshire, and great-grandson of William first Lord Ruthven by his second wife Christian Forbes, from which William, through the first wife, the Buthvens of Gowrie descended. His mother was Katherine Stewart, daughter of John lord Stewart, of Innermeth. His name occurs under very various forms of spel- ling, e.g. Bitwen, Beuthen, Buthen, Bythen, Biven, Budwen, Biuthven, Beuen,—variations that are most probably due, not so much to the unsettled state of orthography at the period at which he lived, or to foreign corruptions (which exhibited it under other forms), as to the proscription of the very family name itself (like that of the Macgregors in after years) in the Act of Attainder passed against the Gowries in 1603, and which, though it may soon have become practically a dead letter, no doubt necessitated for a time the adoption of some form of semi-disguise. The proscription of the name was repealed, so far as it affected the Ballendean branch, in 1639. The date of Patrick's birth has not been ascertained with cer- tainty, for, although he is known to have been far advanced in years at the time of his death, his actual age is nowhere mentioned, and the baptismal register of the parish of Inchture, in which the estate of Ballendean is situated, commences only at the year 1627. But a note in Harte's Life of Gustavus Adolphus (1759, vol. ii. p. 116) enables us to approximate very nearly and certainly to the actual date, and to infer that his birth must have occurred either in 1572 or 1573, by mentioning that the appointment of Buthven (then Sir Patrick) to the governorship of Uhn, in Peb. 1632, was owing to his arriving towards the age of sixty, an age which the INTRODUCTION. Ill Swedish monarch never liked to see exceeded in any of his generals who were employed in active service. And hence the charge of Ulm was committed to him by way of an honourable sinecure and superannuation. Of the early years of his manhood absolutely nothing is known ; Ruthven's we can only gather that as his daughter Elspeth was married to her niarr i age . first husband, "William Lundie, before the year 1623 (that being the year of Lundie's decease), his own marriage to his first wife must have taken place before the year 1600. The fact that there was such a first marriage at all has hitherto been generally unknown, and, while several of the Earl's children have in consequence been altogether unrecorded in the notices of him and his family, those whose names were preserved have been supposed to have been the children of the wife of his later years. But the name of his first wife has now been ascertained. Monteith, in his History of the Troubles, 1 mentions that Colonel John Henderson, who commanded Dumbarton Castle in 1640, was the Earl of Eorth's brother-in-law, and searches commenced during the summer of 1866 among the archives at Stockholm by Alexander Pringle, Esq. of Whytbank, have brought her to light as one Johanna, or Jean, Henderson. 2 Eour children at least, if not more, long survived her as the fruit of this union : viz. 1. Alexander, afterwards Lord Ettrick, who died during his father's lifetime ; 2. Elspeth, first the wife of William Lundie of that ilk, and afterwards of George Pringle ; 3. Jean, or Janet, wife of Lord Forrester ; and 4. Christian, first the wife of Sir Thomas Kerr of Eairnallie, Selkirkshire, and afterwards of Sir Thomas Ogilvie, who is thought to be the daughter called Patricia by Guthry in his Memoirs, and, from him, by Douglas in his Peerage. The cause of Ruthven's betaking hhnself to foreign service may 1 Lond. 1735, transl. by Ogilvie, p. 56. 2 It is, of course, very probable that much bearing on the early career and life of Ruthven may be found amongst the State Papers of Sweden. a 2 IV INTRODUCTION. possibly have been, not merely the fact that the peaceful disposition of James I. left no way open for the display of military talents or gratification of military ardour, but also the finding that all avenues to honourable employment were closed against him at home, and that all of his name and kindred were objects of aversion and suspicion with his jealous King, in consequence of the Gowrie plot. It may well have been that it was therefore and then that he betook himself abroad to a service which was alike congenial to his feelings, stimulating to his ambition, and rendered attractive by the companionship, already at that time, of hundreds of bold brother Scots. 1 The fact that King James certified Gustavus of Sweden (p. 3 infra) not merely of the nobility of Kuthven's descent ~ but of his possessing also in himself the virtues of his progenitors, does not disprove the supposition that Ruthven had previously suffered from the ill fame of his kindred of Gowrie, when even so late as 1625 it seems that Gustavus Adolphus deemed it necessary to inter- cede on Ruthven's behalf with James's successor, (see p. vii.) But at that time (1618) the hatred entertained by James towards all of the name appears to have somewhat subsided, for we find, for example, that from the year 1616 and onwards the liberal allowance of 200Z. per annum for apparel, books, physic, &c. was granted to Patrick Ruthven, brother of the Earl of Gowrie, 3 although he was 1 There were thirteen Scottish regiments, subsequently, in the service of Sweden during the German wars, each containing one thousand and eight men (Grant's Memoirs of Sir John Hepburn, 1851, pref. p. viii.) The levies of these mercenaries commenced with a few troops in the year 1609, and continued until 1637. 4 It is strange that, notwithstanding the evident proofs of the noble descent of Euthven, Lloyd should remark, in his biographical notice of him, that " the weight of his mean birth depressed not the wings of his great mind." {Memoirs of Royalists, fol.