India 2001 books

One of the marginal notes ascribed to William Dunlop applies to the
above lines. "She had betrothed herself to Lord Rutherfoord under horrid
imprecations, and afterwards married Baldoon, his nevoy, and her mother
was the cause of her breach of faith."
The same tragedy is alluded to in the following couplet and note:
What train of curses that base brood pursues, When the young nephew weds
old uncle's spouse.
The note on the word "uncle" explains it as meaning "Rutherfoord, who
should have married the Lady Baldoon, was Baldoon's uncle." The poetry
of this satire on Lord Stair and his family was, as already noticed,
written by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw, a rival of Lord Stair
for the situation of President of the Court of Session; a person much
inferior to that great lawyer in talents, and equally ill-treated by the
calumny or just satire of his contemporaries as an unjust and partial
judge. Some of the notes are by that curious and laborious antiquary,
Robert Milne, who, as a virulent Jacobite, willingly lent a hand to
blacken the family of Stair.


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