BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 79
In 1794, while second in command of the forces in Scotland, in consequence
of a mutiny in the Breadalbane Regiment of Fencibles, then stationed at Glasgow,'
General Leslie, Colonel Montgomerie (afterwards Earl of Eglinton), and
Sir James Stewart, left Edinburgh to take charge of the troops collected for
the purpose of compelling the mutineers to surrender. By the judicious
management, however, of Lord Adam Gordon, then Commander-in-Chief, an
appeal to force was avoided by the voluntary surrender of four of the ringleaders,
who were marched to Edinburgh Castle as prisoners, under a strong
guard of their own regiment. General Leslie and Adjutant M'Lean of the
Fencibles, having accompanied the party a short way out of town, they were
assailed on their return by a number of riotous people, who accused them of
being active in sending away the prisoners. The mob rapidly increased, stones
and other missiles were thrown, by one of which General Leslie was knocked
down, and he and the Adjutant were compelled to take shelter in a house, from
which they were at last rescued by the Lord Provost, with a posse of peaceofficers
and a company of the Fencibles. On his way back to Edinburgh, the
General was seized with a dangerous illness, and died at Beechwood House,
about three miles west of the city, on the 27th December 1794.
General Leslie married in 1760 a daughter of Walter Tullidelph of Tullidelph,
in Forfarshire, who died the year following, leaving a daughter, Mary
Anne, who was married in 1787 to John Rutherford, Esq. of Edgerstown, in
Roxburghshire. The General resided in St. Andriw Square.
No, CXCVIII.
DR. JAMES HAMILTON, SENIOR.
DK HAMILTOwNa s for many years one of the ornaments of Edinburgh.
His grandfather, the Rev. William Hamilton, was a branch of the family of
Preston, and held the honourable station of Principal of the University in the
earlier part of last century j and his father, Dr. Robert Hamilton, afterwards
made a distinguished figure as Professor of Divinity.'
1 The mutiny, which occurred on the 1st December 1794, originated in the rescue of a soldier
who had been confined in the guard-house for some military offence. The party afterwarda would
neither give up the prisoner nor those who had been conspicuoas in effecting his release. The
prisoneis, seven in number, were tried by a court-martial, held in the Castle, at which Colonel
Moutgomerie presided. Sentence of death was recorded against all of them save two, but one only,
Alexander Sutherland, sutfered.
* It may be mentioned, to the honour of the last-named gentleman, and as indicative of that
uprightness and independence, which were afterwards conspicuous in his son, that he led the way to
the abolition of pluralities in the Church, by spontaneously relinquishing his parochial charge of
Lady Yeater's, on being appointed Professor of Divinity-a distinction which was conferred on him
without solicitation. The clergyman
of a neighbouring pariah had withheld the privilege of baptism from a child, the conduct of the
The others were ordered to the West Indies and to America.
Another instance of the same qualities of mind is thus related.