Grand Masters of Scotland - Onondaga and Oswego Masonic ...

I have told you already, my lord, that I will not give you the gun. You may prosecute me if you like, and I shall abide by the
consequences; but your lordship knows as well as I do that you have no right whatever to the gun, and you know, too, that you
cannot have it."
"Think what you are about, my man. You are caught here in the act of poaching. I have already let you go, on promise of
amendment; and now when I ask you to hand me over the piece, instead of complying, as you ought to do, you threaten to take my
life."
"I have said all I have to say, my lord. Go on with your prosecution. That would be legal. To deprive me of the gun would not be
legal. And, besides, it would be dangerous. Keep off, I tell you, keep off God forbid that I should shoot you ; but shoot you I will
rather than yield to your command."
"You are in dead earnest when you say you will shoot?"
" In dead earnest, my lord."
"Then," replied the Earl, calmly, "two can play at that game."
So saying Lord Eglinton instructed one of his servants to bring his fowling-piece from his carriage, which stood near. The servant
made haste to comply with the order.
All the while the Earl's 'anger had been increasing. He was a man of undoubted valour and of great decision of character, and he
could ill brook being thwarted by the exciseman. He was too much excited to wait until the return of his servant, and again advanced
upon the wary exciseman. The latter kept his gun pointed at the nobleman, but began to retreat. The Earl followed him up.
With his face to the enemy, the retiring Mungo Campbell was not aware that behind him was a large stone. This he steadily neared,
and, unsuspecting its presence, he fell backwards over it. But not for a moment did he take his eye off the Earl. Even as he fell he
watched his man, and kept his finger on the trigger. The exciseman's tumble Lord Eglinton recognized as his opportunity, and
reduced the distance between them until they were only three or four paces apart. Campbell was no sooner prone on the grass than
he made as much haste to regain his feet as was consistent with the watch he was keeping on his antagonist. The Earl was in the
act of rushing forward to close with Campbell when the latter pulled the trigger. The shot rang out, and the Earl sank on the grass
bleeding profusely from a wound on his left side. He had received the whole contents of the exciseman's piece.
All was confusion. Excitement seized upon the servants. The only cool, collected man in the little company was the wounded
nobleman. Conscious that his strength was rapidly waning., he walked to a grassy hillock, and with his hand to his side in a vain
attempt to staunch the flowing blood, he lay down. He knew he had been hard hit, but it was without quiver of voice or of demeanour
that he told his servants that he was mortally wounded, and commanded them to carry him to his carriage and convey him home.
The servants obeyed. All the way along to the vehicle was marked by the ruddy stream that ran from the wound; and when, rapidly
driven, the coach stopped at the castle door, the matting on the bottom was dyed with the same crimson hue.
The Earl was laid on his bed, doctors were summoned, the flow of blood was staunched, and every conceivable effort was made to
avert the inevitable. But in vain. The noble sufferer, patient and considerate to those about him, gradually sank. While
consciousness remained, he conversed cheerfully with the sorrowful friends grouped around the bed. He called them to witness that
he had intended no personal harm to Mungo Campbell, and that he had only ordered his gun to be brought him in order that he
might frighten the exciseman. In proof of this he told them the fowling-piece was unloaded, a statement which, on investigation, was
proved to be true. He was not afraid of death, and he met the tyrant calmly, resignedly, and with a mind at peace with both worlds.
Lord Eglinton was one of the ablest of a long succession of able men. He had high capacity for Parliamentary business, and it was
chiefly owing to his patriotic efforts that Scotland owes the abolition of an optional clause in the early constitution of the Scottish
banks, which gave them permission at will to refuse payment of their notes for six months after demand. In agricultural matters he
was, far ahead of the times in which he lived. He founded an agricultural society, and himself led the way in improving, by
encouragement and example, the holdings on his own possessions. So much was he minded in this direction that when, on one
occasion, he was called out to fight a duel in consequence of some remarks he had seen it his duty to make from his place in
Parliament, he concluded an epistle to his brother, written on the eve of the hostile meeting, with the laconic reminder, "Mind the
turnip drilling." He emerged scatheless from the encounter.
Mungo Campbell was apprehended, and brought to trial for murder. In summoning the jury the Clerk, Mr. Muir, included among, the
jurors a number of landed gentlemen, and objection was taken to this by Mr. Maclaurin, who defended the accused. The objection
was overruled, and the case went to trial, resulting in Campbell being found guilty by a majority of nine to six. He was sentenced to
be hanged in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh on Wednesday, 11th April, 1770.
But Mungo Campbell forestalled the public executioner in putting an end to his life. On the day following his conviction, he hanged
himself in his cell. The prison officials were about to hand over his body to Dr. Munro for dissection, but Campbell's friends
interposed and objected to such a course being taken, on the ground that, while such treatment of his remains was unquestionably
a corollary of his execution, it was by no means the legal sequence of his suicide. The Court sustained the contention, and ordered
that the exciseman's body should be delivered to his friends.
Campbell was secretly buried under Salisbury Crags, but the interment becoming known, an Edinburgh rabble had the corpse dug
up, and made sport of it, tossing it about until they were tired. To prevent further indecency and outrage Campbell's friends caused
the body to be sunk in the sea.
http://www.ayrshirehistory.org.uk/Bibliography/Reviews/am27intro.htm
In the 1750s, Alexander Wight was brought over to Ayrshire by Alexander Montgomerie, 10th Earl of Eglinton, so that the successful
practices of East Lothian could be transferred to his estate; as Fullarton put it, "to introduce the proper mode of ploughing, levelling
ridges, fallowing, drilling, turnip husbandry, and rotations of crop."
. . . "Don’t neglect horse–howing if you love Scotland." What better captures the spirit of patriotism that attached to improvement
than this advice, the postscript in a letter written by Alexander Montgomerie, 10th Earl of Eglinton, to his brother Archibald?
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