xxvi JOURNAL OF JOHN LAUDER

When James VII. on his accession proposed to relax the penal
laws against Roman Catholics, while enforci.ng them against
Presbyterians, Lauder, who had just entered Parliament,
opposed that policy and spoke against it in terms studiously
moderate and respectful to the Cro~vn. The result, however,
was that he became a suspected person. As he records in
April 1686, Il My 2 servants being imprisoned, and 1
threatened therewith, as also that they would seize upon
my papers, and search if they contained anything offensive
to the party then pre\'ailing, I was izecessitat to hide this
manuscript, and many others, and intermit my Historick
Remarks till the Revolution in the end of 1688.'
Hence the Revolution was perhaps welcome to him. As
an adherent of character and some position he met with
marked favour from the new sovereigns, who promoted him
to the bench, and corrected the injustice which had been
done to him in the matter of the patent of his father~s
baronetcy, and also granted him a pension of £'100 a year,
an addition of fifty per cent. to his official salary. Shortly
afterwards he was offered the post of Lord Ad\'ocate, but
declined it, because the condition w as attached that he
should not prosecute the persons implicated in the biassacre
of Glencoe.' From these facts it has been sometimes inferred
that Lauder was disaffected to the Stewart dynasty, and that
his professional advancement w as thereby retarded. In reality
his career was one of steady prosperity. Haviiig already

1 It has been said that there is no sufficicnt evidence of this honourable in-
cident in Fountainhall's career. But Sir Thomas Dick Lauder (MS, Genealogical
Roll, supra) reproduces it in a poem to the Tiemory of Sir John Lauder,
published in 1743, and attributed to Blair, the author of The Grave" in which
the following lines occur. lie

Saw guiltless blood poured out with la%ish hand,

And vast depopulated traclS of land

And saw the wicked authors of that ill

Unpunished, nay, caressed and favoured still

The power to prosccute he would not have,

Obliged such miscreants overlooked to save.'