Series 1 > Chronicles of the Frasers

298
POLICHRONICON SEU
brother William with him, who was made Collonell at Venice,
whose martial atchievements in the defence of that state
against the Turks may very well admit him to be ranked
amongst our worthies. He becam Vice-admirall to the Venetian
fleet, and the onely bane and terror of Mahumetan navigators;
whither they had gallyes, galeoons, galeasses, huge warships,
it was all one to him, he set uppon all alike, saying still the
more they were the mannier he would kill, and the stronger
that the rancounter should happen the greater should be his
honnor, and his prise the richer. He oftentimes so cleared the
Archipelago of the Musselmans that the Ottoman famely and
the very gates of Constantinople would quake at the report of
his victoryes; and did so ferret them out of all the creeks of
the Hadrrattick Gulfe, and so shrudly put them to it, that
they hardly knew in what port of the Mediterranean they
might best shelter themselves from the fury of his blowes.
Many of their mariners turnd land souldiers for fear of Scot;
and of their maritim officers many tooke charge of caravans to
escape his hand, which for many yeares together lay so heavy
uppon them that he was cried up for another Don John of
Austria or Duke de Orea by the enemies of that Scithian
generation. In spight of which and the rancor of all their
unchristian hearts he died in his bed of a fever in the Isle of
Candy, January 1652. He was truly the glory of his nation
and country, and was honored after his death with a statue of
marble, which I saw near the Realto of Venice, April 1659.1
Montrosse his This May the Earl of Lindsay, the prime ringleader of the
new " ' Covenanters next unto Argil, had raised a new army, and
1 In his unpublished ‘ Triennial Travels’ our author gives a long account of
Venice, which he visited in April 1659. ‘ I staled full 7 dayes in Venice,
and truelie I never slurred more in so much time all my life. I could have a
fresh hospital everie night. I lodged 3 nights in St. Marks hospital, and verie
well treated. But there were so manie English, Scots, and Irish in Venice that
I could have free bed and board whole 3 months from them for nothing. Mr.
Gieles Johnes was our great friend: we were recommended to him, living in
Gala Longa at St. Maria Formosa; John Moore, an English Lieutenant; and
one John Scolt, sone to Captn. George Scot who died in the Venetian service.
I saw his effigie sett up in Murina, and an description declaring that he had
built a ship in his owne countrie in Scotland, and, like a free noble spirit, sptnt
himself and itt in the States service.’ The statue or ‘effigie’ does not now