Chiefs of Grant > Correspondence

1641.] JAMES DALEYMPLE OF STAIR. 71
122. James Dalrymple, afterwards Viscount Stair, to James Chalmer of Gadgirth —
Compliments and good wishes. [Copy.]
Glasgow, May 27,1641.
Eight Honourable, — The fervency of my affection, and the sense of that duty I owe, could
not suffer me to lett this occasion slip without representing to you that most adherent
respect and entirest service, which the lustring rays of your worth so oft reflexed upon me,
tho' in nothing else, yet in that happy obumborating shades of your favour, wherewith I
have been sou long circumcepted, hath produced in this heart, which no tearing teeth of time,
nor forgetfullness shall be able to make shorter than the yondest periods of my subsistance ;
since then only, as yet, I am able to pay the first fruits of my due obligements. But, least
I should seem as with a compliment to confirm that which, I hope, you shall never call in
question, — my pen being unable to express my wishes, and these my thoughts, and all being
inferiour to what they should be, — I must in this lett all resolve, such as I wish, with all mj r
heart, to you and yours, even such must those be which God bestoweth upon my self. I am
glad of any hopes I hear of your relief from that your toilsome and troublesome disease.
As for me, in that only I am discontent, that I neither had your advice and approbation
through the celerity of the occasion to this alteration of vay course, nor your opinion since ;
so that not daring to take up any more of that time which is appointed for better ones, with
remembrance of your lady and children, I must take leave, and remain your most addicted
servant and respective cousin,
Ja. Dalrymple.
To the right honourable and his most respected cousin, the Laird of Gadgirth.
(The following note is appended to the copy letter.)
This letter was wrote by the Viscount of Stair immediatly upon his leaving the army,
where he had served as a captain, and his being admitted one of the professors of phylo-
sophy in the Colledge of Glasgow. He had received from the Laird of Gadgirth divers
marks of favour, whereof he here declares his due sense in the strongest terms, and which
he was never to forgett. "Whether the partition of the estate concluded by the same Viscount
and others, anno 1695, was an evidence of his indelible friendship for the family, the world
must judge.
It 's possible the teeth of time, as the Viscount expresses it, might have wore out his
impression of affection to the family before the year 1695, notwithstanding his strong reso-
lutions to the contrary, anno 1641. But the Captain, who knows not the particular motives
to these measures, shall make no definitive judgment upon them.