Series 1 > Journal of the Hon. John Erskine of Carnock, 1683-1687

130
JOURNAL OF THE HON.
[JUNE
taken, and few or none killed, but that they had separated and
fled, and had killed many of the enemy, and that the horse
were all safe with many foot, and in a body. When the news
came the Castle of Stirling did shoot, and this was all the
certainty we could get. I went when it was dark to Shir-
garton with Arthur Dougall, and found his wife, who told me
that Sir Duncan Campbell, having left the army before they
passed Clyde, came there about midday, and that he was now
gone for Edinburgh upon some business.
SOtfA.—Missing Shirgarton, I came back to Boquhan, and
stayed in his bam all day without telling the Laird, none
knowing where I was but Alison Creighton and Margaret
Stevenson, his servants, who provided for me ; Arthur Dougall
was to send his son to Glasgow for intelligence. I understood
now that Sir Duncan Campbell left not the army untill these
irreligious and cowardly Highlanders, who after they had
refused to fight, turned about and left the body of the army,
which occasioned the taking of My Lord Argyle their master,
some hundreds of them having turned back together. I left
Boquhan and came to Shirgarton, where I stayed a little.
We had now news from the court party, and that in print,
that Monmouth landed in Lyme in Dorsetshire in England
the eleventh of June.
21 —I came to Cardross this morning early, having entered
at the new gate, and stayed within all day, none knowing but
my Lady and Mary Edmonston. Now the heritors were com¬
ing home from Atholl, thinking their enemies were now gone,
and it was said that our ships, arms and ammunition, were all
taken. I left Cardross this night.
22d.—Early this morning I came to Shirgarton, and missing
him, I went to Dougall Cristall’s near Boquhan glen, and
stayed in his barn, Shirgarton and Arthur Dougall having
come there.
23d.—There was a great confusion in the country by peoples
driving their goods to the mountains and mosses, and trans¬
porting the best things they had to houses and other places
that they thought secure, and running through the country
with their back burthens, and all because that they knew the
Marquis of Huntly, now Duke of Gordon, with about sixteen