Series 1 > Journals of Sir John Lauder, Lord Fountainhall, with his observations on public affairs and other memoranda, 1665-1676

INTRODUCTION
xi
was compiled, and the additions to the text of the folio are
not numerous, though the historical matter, which was buried
among the legal decisions, is presented in a more convenient
form. But from 1661 to 1678 (about half of vol. i.) and
especially from 1670 (for the previous entries occupy only a
few pages) the notices are all new and many of them of con¬
siderable interest. In printing these volumes, which I believe
are acknowledged to contain some of the best material for the
history of Scotland at the time, the Bannatyne Club carried
out a design which had been long cherished by the late Sir
Thomas Dick Lauder,1 though he did not live to see its com¬
plete fulfilment, and he was helped in his efforts by Sir
Walter Scott. The story2 is worth telling more fully than
has yet been done. In the winter of 1813-14 Sir Thomas,
then a young man, met Sir Walter at a dinner-party. Sir
Walter expressed his regret ‘that something had not been done
towards publishing the curious matter in Lord Fountainhall’s
mss.,’ 3 and urged Sir Thomas to undertake the task. In
1815 Sir Thomas wrote to Scott asking about a box in the
Advocates’ Library believed to contain mss. of Fountainhall’s.
Sir Walter replied as follows :—
‘ Dear Sir,—I am honoured with your letter, and should have
been particularly happy in an opportunity of being useful in assist¬
ing a compleat edition of Lord Fountainhall’s interesting manu¬
scripts. But I do not know of any in the Advocates’ Library but
those which you mention. I think it likely I may have mentioned
that a large chest belonging to the family of another great Scottish
lawyer. Sir James Skene of Curriehill, was in our Library and had
never been examined. But I could only have been led to speak
of this from the similarity of the subject, not from supposing that
any of Lord Fountainhall’s papers could possibly be deposited
1 Author of The Moray Floods, The Wolf of Badenoch, and other well-known
books.
3 The original correspondence was bound up by Sir Thomas in a volume along
with Mylne’s book (see infra), and is in the possession of Sir T. N. Dick Lauder.
3 Letter, Sir T. D. Lauder to Sir W. Scott, 22nd May 1822, infra.