Ayrshire > Volume 2

THE MONTGOMERIES OF EGLINTON 91
Susanna, married John Rentoun of Lamberton ; the
fourth, Margaret, married Sir Alexander Macdonald of
Macdonald, was the mother of three distinguished sons,
and the confidante of Flora Macdonald in her plans for
promoting the escape of Prince Charlie ; the fifth,
Frances, died unmarried ; the sixth, Christian, married
James Moray of Abercairney ; the seventh, Grace, made
an unhappy marriage with Charles Byne, a Cornet in
Blaud's Dragoons ; and the eighth, Charlotte, died young
and unmarried.
At the time of the Earl's death his eldest son, and
heir, was only six years old. Feeling the end to be
gradually approaching, he addressed an anxious and
earnest letter to his son, which he instructed should be
carefully kept till he was twelve or fourteen years old,
when it was to be handed to him in order that he might
read it once a week with a view to his instruction in things
both spiritual and temporal. This letter is so good, and
so full of wise and understanding counsel, that the
greater part of it may well be both reproduced and read
■with profit. Having referred to his growing weakness, and
his anxiety for the future of his son, the Earl proceeds: —
"' The best advice, my dearest child, I can give —
and I pray God may give you His grace to follow it —
is that you remember your Creator in the days of your
youth, and that yow early acquaint yourself with
asking direction from Him ; and, in order to obtain
His favour, read the Scriptures carefully, and observe
and follow what is there commanded, and abstain
from what is forbidden, for in them yow will find
your duty to God, to your neighbour, and your self,
distinctly set down. And let me earnestly recommend
my chiefest care, that yow ever keep in remembrance
your mortality, and that as yow shall employ the
short time yow shall have in this world, so yow shall
be either happy or miserable to all eternity. Let
me therefore intreat yow, with all the earnestness of
a most affectionat father, that yow would never put
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