generation, with their pleasant memories of the Cameron Highlanders, the Black Watch, the Seaforth Highlanders, and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who have in succession been quartered of late years in Parkhurst Barracks, will find the utmost difficulty in understanding Oglander's denunciations. No regiments are more welcomed in the Isle of Wight than those of the gallant and popular Highlanders. It must be recollected that the organization of the undisciplined Highland host of 1627 was very different from that of the citizen Scotch soldiers of our own days, whose feats of personal bravery and steady endurance in the Peninsula, Waterloo, the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, and elsewhere, fill so large a portion of British military history during the whole of the nineteenth century. What the Highlanders were in the earlier portion of the seventeenth century may be inferred from the brilliant sketch which Lord Macaulay, in the third volume of his History of England, has drawn of them at the time of the latter portion of that same century. When Oglander wrote, the people of the Isle of Wight knew as little of Scotland, or at least of the Highlands, as they did of Abyssinia or Japan. Like the other inhabitants of the South of England, they were unacquainted with the distinction between the Lowlanders and the Highlanders of Scotland, a distinction which, though politically and socially now merged, still continues, as the Highlander very accurately calls his Lowland neighbour Sassenach or Saxon, as the Lowlander really is. The very name of the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh, so called from the fortress which Edwin first king of Northumbria founded there, proves that the Teuton conquest of Strathclyde, the territory of the Northern British, which extended to the Firth of Clyde, was made at an early period. The Norman Conquest did not include that of the Saxon Lowlands, nor was this Saxon portion of the realm of Scotland large or powerful enough to subdue the Celts of the Highlands, whose mountain fastness constituted in geographical area the greater portion of the country. William the Conqueror was contented to restrain any invasion of the Lowland Scots upon his English subjects by the erection of a strong fortress at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Our minds require to be cleared up as to the idea we attach

to the words 'Scotland' and the Scotch people. At the opening of the fourteenth century the kingdom of the Scots was an aggregate of four different countries, each with its different people, its different tongue, and its different history. Gradually the land became divided between the Saxon Scot and the Celtic Highlander. Down to the Hanoverian times, the chain of the Grampians, which from the Castle of Stirling is seen rising like a wall from the rich plain, separated two nationalities, differing totally in ideas, institutions, habits, and costume, as well as in speech; the less civilized of which looked upon the more civilized as alien intruders, while the more civilized regarded the less civilized much in the same way that Baillie Nichol Jarvie regarded Rob Roy. It seems indeed in the case of the Highlands, as in that of Ireland, Saxon adventurers found their way into the domain of the Celts, but in becoming chieftains they became Celts. From A. D. 1411, when on the field of Harlow near Aberdeen it was finally decided whether Saxon or Celt-Lowlander or Highlander--should rule in Scotland, down to the time of Montrose and Claverhouse, that is for two centuries and a half, the Highlanders lay almost unheeded within their native mountains, except when by some marauding or avenging raid they made their existence for a moment felt before them. The first appearance of the clans in modern history took place when they rose in defence of the dethroned Stuarts, and enabled Montrose to triumph at Inverlochy and Viscount Dundee at Killiecrankie. When they arose again in the same cause, in the 'Fifteen' and the 'Forty-five,' especially in the latter, they so inflamed the minds of English politicians that in the bitterness of feeling after the victory of Culloden the Government and Parliament of England exacted from the helpless Gael a bloody vengeance, which is one of the darkest pages in the history of our country. The genius of Chatham-the elder William Pitt-and also, so tradition asserts, the keen soldierly eye of General Wolfe, the conqueror of Quebec, converted the irregular fighting qualities of the Celtic Highlanders into material which was to supply some of the most crack regiments in our service. Military tailors with improving hands have shaped the Highland plaid and kilt into the smartest

uniform of the Infantry in the English Army, while officers chosen from their own countrymen have moulded the wild Highlanders into a force which belongs to the very flower of the wonderful English Infantry which was the object of the first Napoleon's undisguised admiration. The Scotch soldiers, upon whom in 1627 our forefathers in the Isle of Wight gazed with loathing and disgust, were fifty years in civilization behind those of their countrymen of whom Lord Macaulay has drawn so revolting a picture in the thirteenth chapter of his history. The regiment, so Oglander reports, was under the command of the Earl of Morton. This nobleman, the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, was before the civil war broke out one of the richest and greatest subjects in the kingdom. These troops were on their way to the Isle of Rhé, but the Duke of Buckingham's return from that expedition unfortunately hindered their intentions. The consequence was that they had to be what is called 'billeted' in the Isle of Wight. The word is derived from billet, a short written document or official order requiring the person to whom it is addressed to provide board and lodgings for the soldier bearing it. The expression seems to have come into use about the date of Oglander's employment of it in his memoirs. This forcible way of quartering soldiers upon the community at large was one of the chief popular complaints against the administration of Charles I, and also one of the four grievances that formed the foundation of the famous Petition of Right,' which was presented by the Parliament of 1628 to the king in the shape of a declaratory statute. The clergy were, it appears, exempted from this burden, as Mr. Long gives the following extract from the Domestic State Papers of 1628. 'In February, 1628, fourteen ministers of the Island, with the concurrence of Sir E. Dennis, petitioned Conway for exemption from having soldiers billeted on them, except in time of actual danger; as freedom from billeting was an immunity enjoyed by all ministers in the land, except those in the Isle of Wight. Conway acknowledged the reasonableness of their request, and sent the petition to the Commissioners for billeting soldiers in the Island.' Oglander's account of their behaviour shows that they were not only unfit guests for

a parsonage but for any decent household, and proves the enormity of the grievance against which the House of Commons so justly protested. 'I hope,' writes Oglander, 'wee shall nevor be trobled with ye lyke; espetiollie ye red shankes, or ye Heylandors, beinge as barbarous in nayture as theyr cloathes.' They were guilty, he adds, of committing 'murthers, rapes, robbereys, bourglaryes,' and also the means of burdening the Island with a number of children not born in wedlock. A people insolent by reason of theyre unanimous holdinge togeather, and ye weaknesse of theyre commaundors, as malefactors, they became fearful to owre counterymen.' The Domestic State Papers of this year prove that this description of the disorders committed in the Island by the Scotch regiment is not overdrawn. In the beginning of April, 1628, Conway wrote to the Earl of Morton that the grievances suffered in the Isle of Wight through the insolence of the soldiers billeted there were 'so frequent, foul, and insupportable as redress must either be had or the Island be utterly spoiled.' A few days afterwards Conway sent to his deputy lieutenants a commission of Oyer and Terminer to enable them to proceed in a legal manner against the soldiers who committed offences in the Island and to inflict due punishment. The lieutenants were always to be ready with a sufficient number of soldiers to see justice executed; but if the soldiers could not be relied on in such cases, they were to certify the same to him. In the month of June, 1628, the son of James Hall, of Bembridge, was slain by a soldier of Sir W. Carr's company, stationed at Yaverland. On the 16th of the same month, Mr. R. Dillington, of Knighton, wrote to Conway saying that this was the second murder committed by the soldiers in the Island; and that all endeavours to apprehend the murderer were useless, as he was concealed by his comrades. The officers also would not allow the justices to punish crimes committed by their men, and the soldiers themselves threatened to inflict more injuries and outrages on the inhabitants on their departure. It shows the state of terror existing in the Island, that Dillington in the conclusion of his letter begs Conway not to disclose who sent him this information, lest it might bring upon the writer some great danger.

Sir John Oglander, public-spirited gentleman as he was, undertook at the request of the gentlemen of the Isle of Wight to draw up and present a petition on this grievance to the king, who was then at Southwick, near Portsmouth. Oglander and the deputation who accompanied him were received by the king with the usual civil speeches, and were told that he would discuss their application with the Duke of Buckingham, 'without whom nothinge coold be effected.' 'What ye end will be,' pathetically cries out Oglander, ‘God knoweth.' The upshot of all is, 'Nevor entertayn moor sowldiors into youre Island, beinge a thinge you maye refuse, and an unsupportable troble and miserye, espetiollie ye Scotchmen, for I maye trulye say, since ye Danes beinge here, theyre nevor wase a greator miserye hapened unto us then ye bilitinge of those Lordedanes.'

On September 1, 1628, the king came to the Isle of Wight purposely to review the Scotch regiment, when Oglander did his best to draw the attention of his Majesty to the grievance which the Isle of Wight was sustaining from the disorderly conduct of the soldiers, for whom they were compelled to find board and lodging. The result was that, as Oglander says, two days after, on September 3, 'wee weare freed from owre Egiption thraldome, or lyke Spayne from theyre Moores, for since ye Danische slauerie nevor weare these Islandors soe opressed. The Isle of Wyght had bene forced to entertayne ye Scottes att theyre cominge from Rochel, if by my paynes and travel bothe often att ye Cowncell table, and to ye Cownsellors in p'ticular (I beinge then in London) had not prevented itt.'

This narrative throws a side light upon that grievance of billeting soldiers, which, with other encroachments upon their ancient liberties, exasperated the people of England against their king and led to the great work of the House of Commons in drawing up the Petition of Right-that most important constitutional measure which confers so much glory on Charles's third Parliament.

March 2, 1889.