Excerpt from Montrose

Perthshire, Mugdock in Stirlingshire, and Old Montrose in Forfarshire - all went down in the storm Of civil war. Montrose's parents seem to have resided at all three impartially, and at the last their son may have been born. If this were so, it is easy to understand how tradition, anxious for some visible memorial of a famous man in the town bearing his name, should have trans ferred the honour Of his birth there across the few miles Of water that separated it from the Old home of his family. But in fact nothing is certainly known of the place or time Of Montrose's birth, except that he was fourteen years Old when his father died in 1626, and must consequently have been born some time in the year 1612.

The Grahams had long been conspicuous figures in Scottish history. In 1298 Sir John Graham, the chosen comrade Of Wallace, had fallen, more fortunate than his friend, at the battle of Falkirk, in the churchyard of which town his tomb may still be seen. In 1304, at the capitulation which seemed for the moment to have closed the Scots' struggle for independence, Sir David, the first proprietor Of Old Montrose, had been specially marked by the English king as a dangerous man. Through the wars Of Bruce and his immediate successors the Grahams had stood stoutly by the national cause. In the thir teenth and fourteenth centuries they had three times intermarried with the royal blood of Scotland. A son of Sir William Graham and the Princess Mary, daughter Of Robert the Third, was the first Primate of Scotland and as a Graham of a later generation had held the see of Dunblane, the indifference expressed for bishops by their illustrious descendant should at least not have been hereditary. One of Sir William's grandsons.

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