Menteith did not recover sufficiently to join Montrose during his brief and glorious career;and when that heroic general disbanded his army and retired from Scotland,Menteith resolved to adopt the life of privacy,which he led till the Restoration.After that happy event,he occupied a situation in the land befitting his rank,lived long,happy alike in public regard and in domestic affection,and died at a good old age.
Our DRAMATIS PERSONAE have been so limited,that,excepting Montrose,whose exploits and fate are the theme of history,we have only to mention Sir Dugald Dalgetty.This gentleman continued,with the most rigorous punctuality,to discharge his duty,and to receive his pay,until he was made prisoner,among others,upon the field of Philiphaugh.He was condemned to share the fate of his fellow-officers upon that occasion,who were doomed to death rather by denunciations from the pulpit,than the sentence either of civil or military tribunal;their blood being considered as a sort of sin-offering to take away the guilt of the land,and the fate imposed upon the Canaanites,under a special dispensation,being impiously and cruelly applied to them.
Several Lowland officers,in the service of the Covenanters,interceded for Dalgetty on this occasion,representing him as a person whose skill would be useful in their army,and who would be readily induced to change his service.But on this point they found Sir Dugald unexpectedly obstinate.He had engaged with the King for a certain term,and,till that was expired,his principles would not permit any shadow of changing.The Covenanters,again,understood no such nice distinction,and he was in the utmost danger of falling a martyr,not to this or that political principle,but merely to his own strict ideas of a military enlistment.Fortunately,his friends discovered,by computation,that there remained but a fortnight to elapse of the engagement he had formed,and to which,though certain it was never to be renewed,no power on earth could make him false.