The Elliots and Armstrongs did convener
They were a gallant companie
"We’ll ride and meet our lawful king,
And bring him safe to Gilnockie.

Make kinnen and capon ready then,
And venison in great plentie;
We’ll welcome here our noble king;
I hope he’ll dine at Gilnockie !"

They ran their horse on the Langholm holm,
And brak their spears wi’ mickle main;
The ladies lookit frae their loft windows:—
"God bring our men weel hame again !"

We are told by Pitscottie that Armstrong was the most redoubted chieftain that had been for a long time on the borders of Scotland or England. He always rode with twenty-four able gentlemen, well horsed, and from the borders to Newcastle every Englishman, of whatever state, paid him tribute. Armstrong is said to have incautiously made this display, by the crafty advice of some of the courtiers, who knew that it would only the more exasperate the king against him; and the effect was precisely so, for James, seeing this bold border chief so gallantly equipped, on his approach, fiercely ordered the tyrant, as he styled Armstrong, to be removed out of his sight and instantly executed, exclaiming, "What wants that knave that a king should have?"

There hang nine targats at Johnie’s hat,
And ilk ane worth three hundred pound,—
"What wants that knave that a king should have,
But the sword of honour and the croun?"

Armstrong saw at once the snare into which he had fallen, and made every effort to preserve his life. He offered, if James would pardon him, to maintain at his own expense, forty men, ready at a moment’s notice, to serve the king, and engaged never to injure any Scottish subject.

"Grant me my life, my liege, my king,
And a bonnie gift I’ll gie to thee,—
Full four-and-twenty milk white steeds,
Were a’ foaled in ae year to me.

I’ll gie thee a’ thae milk white steeds,
That prance and nicher at a speir,
And as muckle gude English gold
As four o’ their braid backs can bear."

He further undertook to produce to his majesty, within a certain day, any man in England, of whatever degree, duke, earl, or baron, either alive or dead. But James was inexorable.

"Away, away, thou traitor strang!
Out o’ my sight sune may’st thou be!
I grantit never a traitor’s life,
And now I’ll not begin wi’ thee!"

Seeing his death resolved upon, Armstrong haughtily exclaimed, "It is folly to ask grace at a graceless face, but had I guessed you would have used me thus, I would have kept the Border-side, in despite of the king of England and you both; for I well know that King Henry would give the weight of my best horse in gold to know that I am sentenced to die this day."

"To seik het water aneath cauld ice,
Surely it is a great follie !—
I have asked grace at a graceless face,
But there is nane for my men and me.

But had I kenn’d ere I cam frae hame
How thou unkind wadst been to me!
I wad hae keepid the border syde
In spite of all thy force and thee.

Wist England’s king that I was ta’en,
O then a blythe man he wad be!
For anes I slew his sister’s son,
And on his breast bane brak a tree."

He and all his followers, some accounts make them forty—eight, were hanged on the trees of a little grove at Carlinrigg chapel, two miles north of Moss Paul, on the road between Hawick and Langholm, and tradition still points out their graves in the solitary churchyard of the place. He left a son Christopher who succeeded as laird of Gilnockie. On the borders Armstrong was long missed and mourned as a brave warrior, and a stout defender of his country against England. It is said by Buchanan that James executed Armstrong and his retinue, in direct violation of his solemn promise of safety. We are told that this bold chief never molested any of his own countrymen, and it appears from his own statement that his plunderings were chiefly committed on the English; yet the Armstrongs are accused of having, in the course of a few years, destroyed not less than fifty-two parish churches in Scotland, and they openly boasted that their chieftain, Johnny Armstrong, would be subject neither to James nor to Henry, but would continue his excesses in defiance of both. The fate of this renowned border leader has been commemorated in many of the rude ballads of the border districts. The celebrated ballad of ‘Johnie Armstrang,’ some of the verses of which have been quoted, was first published by Allan Ramsay, in his ‘Evergreen,’ in 1724, having been copied, as he tells us, by himself from the mouth of a gentleman of the name of Armstrong, who was the sixth generation from the renowned borderer. The tower of the Hollows, or Holehouse, once the residence of this famous border chieftain, was a place of considerable strength in its day; its ruins are now used as a cowhouse to a neighbouring farmer. The younger son of Christopher Armstrong of Mangerton, the brother of this Armstrong of Gilnockie, went to Ireland, some years after the death of Queen Elizabeth, and settling in county Fermanagh, became the founder of a numerous family, whose descendants now possess extensive estates in Fermanagh, King’s county and Wicklow; and one of whom was created a baronet of Great Britain in 1841.

ARMSTRONG, JOHN, M.D., poet and miscellaneous writer, was born about 1709 at Castleton, a parish forming the southern extremity of Roxburghshire, of which his father and afterwards his brother were ministers. In history and poetry, and very frequently still in conversation, its name is Liddesdale, from the river Liddel which runs through it from east to west. Dr. Armstrong has sung the beauties of his native vale, in his highly-finished poem on ‘The Art of Preserving Health,’ Book III.:

"Such the stream,
On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air.
Liddal, till now—except in Doric lays,
Tuned to her murmurs by her love-sick swains—
Unknown in song; though not a purer stream
Through meads more flowery,
—more romantic groves,
Rolls toward the westward main. Hail, sacred flood!
May still thy hospitable swains be blest
In rural innocence; thy mountains still
Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods
For ever flourish, and thy vales look gay,
With painted meadows, and the golden grain!"

After receiving the rudiments of his education at home, he was sent to the university of Edinburgh, where he distinguished himself before his twentieth year, by gaining a prize medal for a prose composition, prescribed by a literary society in that city, and by other promising marks of genius during his studies. Having chosen the medical profession, he took his degree as physician February 4, 1732.

His inaugural dissertation, De Tabe Purulenta, gained him some reputation, as being superior to the general run of such essays. Soon after he went to London, where he commenced practice as a physician. In 1735 he published anonymously ‘An Essay for abridging the study of Physic,’ being a humorous attack on quacks and quackery, in the style of Lucian. This work gained him credit as a wit, but did not advance his practice as a physician. In 1737 he published a work on the venereal disease. This was followed by ‘The Economy of Love;’ for which poem he received fifty pounds from Andrew Millar, the bookseller, but which greatly injured his reputation. In a subsequent edition, published in 1768, he carefully expunged many of the youthful luxuriances with which the first abounded. In 1744 appeared his principal work, entitled ‘The Art of Preserving Health,’ in blank verse, one of the best didactic poems in the language. This valuable work established at once his reputation both as a physician and a poet. In 1746 he was appointed one of the physicians to the hospital for sick and lame soldiers. In 1751 he published his poem on Benevolence, and in 1753 his Epistle on Taste, addressed to a Young Critic. In 1758 he produced his prose ‘Sketches or Essays on various subjects, by Lancelot Temple, Esq.,’ in two parts, which evinced considerable humour and knowledge of the world, and in which he is said to have been assisted by Mr. Wilkes, whose acquaintance he had made soon after his first arrival in London. In 1760 he received the appointment of physician to the army, then in Germany, where, in 1761, he wrote ‘Day, a Poem, an Epistle to John Wilkes, Esq.;’ his friendship with whom was not of long continuance, the subject of politics having divided them; Wilkes’s continued attacks upon Scotland being the cause of their quarrel. Having in that epistle hazarded a reflection on Churchill, the satirist retorted severely in his poem of ‘The Journey.’

At the peace of Paris in 1763 Armstrong returned to London, and resigning his connection with the army, resumed his practice, but not with his former success. In 1770 he published a Collection of his Miscellanies, containing amongst others, the Universal Almanack, a new prose piece, and the Forced Marriage, a tragedy, which had been refused by Garrick. In 1771 he made the tour of France and Italy, in company with the celebrated artist Fusell, who survived him for half a century. In his journey he met his friend Dr. Smollett, to whom he was much attached. On his return he published an account of it under the name of ‘A short Ramble, by Lancelot Temple.’

Wilkes, his former friend, joined Churchill in assailing Dr. Armstrong, having published a scurrilous attack upon him in the Public Advertiser, contained in a series of three letters, commencing with one signed Dies, in which, to cloak his purpose, Wilkes reflected on himself. That letter appeared March 23, 1773, and was followed by one signed Truth, March 24, and by another signed Nox, April 1. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for January 1792, the following substance of a conversation which took place between Armstrong and Wilkes on the appearance of these letters, is inserted. It was taken down at the time by Mr. Wilkes, and is quite characteristic of both parties.

On Wednesday, April 7, 1773, Dr. Armstrong called on Mr. Wilkes in Prince’s Court, about two in the afternoon, and without the least ceremony or compliment, began— Dr. Armstrong. Did you, Sir, write the letters in the Public Advertiser?

Mr. Wilkes. What letters do you mean, Doctor? There are many letters almost every day in the Public Advertiser.

Dr. A. Sir, I mean the three letters about me, and Day, Day, Sir.

Mr. W. You may ask the printer, Mr. Woodfall. He has my orders to name me, whenever he thinks it proper, as the author of every thing I write in his paper.

Dr. A. I believe you wrote all those letters. Mr. W. What all three, Doctor? I am very roughly treated in one of them, in the first signed Dies.

Dr. A. I believe you wrote that on purpose to begin the controversy. I am almost sure of it.

Mr. W. I hope you are more truly informed in other things. I know better than to abuse myself in that manner, add I pity the author of such wretched stuff.

Dr. A. Did you write the other letters, Sir? Mr. W. The proper person to inquire of, is Mr. Woodfall. I will not answer interrogatories. My time would pass in a strange manner, if I was to answer every question which any gentleman chose to put to me about anonymous letters.

Dr. A. Whoever has abused me, Sir, is a villain; and your endeavours, Sir, to set Scotland and England together are very bad.

Mr. W. The Scots have done that thoroughly, Doctor, by their conduct here, particularly by their own nationality, and the outrages of Lord Bute to so many English families. Whenever you think proper to call upon me in particular as a gentleman, you will find me most ready to answer the call.

Dr. A. D—n Lord Bute! It bad been better for Scotland he had never been born. He has done us infinite mischief.

Mr. W. And us, too; but I suppose we are not met for a dish of politics?

Dr. A. No; but I wish there had been no Union. I am sure England is the gainer by it.

Mr. W. I will not make an essay on the advantages and disadvantages of the Union.

Dr. A. I hate politics; but I have been ill used by you, Mr. Wilkes, on the occasion.

Mr. W. On the contrary, Doctor, I was the injured friend.

Dr. A. I thought you for many years the most amiable friend in the world, and loved your company the most; but you distinguished yourself by grossly abusing my countrymen in the North Briton—although I never read much of that paper.

Mr. W. You passed your time, I am satisfied, much better. Who told you, Doctor, what particular numbers I wrote? It is droll, but the bitterest of those papers, which was attributed to me, was a description of Scotland, first printed in the last century, on Charles I.’s return from thence in 1633. Were you ever, Doctor, personally attacked by me? Were you not, although a Scotsman, at the very time of the North Britons, complimented by me, in conjunction with Churchill, in the best thing I wrote, the mock ‘Dedication to Mortimer.’

Dr. A. To be praised along with such a writer, I think an abuse.

Mr. W. The world thinks far otherwise of that wonderful genius, Churchill; but you, Doctor, have sacrificed private friendship at the altar of politics. After many years’ mutual intercourse of good offices, you broke every tie of friendship with me on no pretence but a suspicion, for you did not ask for proof, of my having abused your country, that country I have for years together heard you inveigh against, in the bitterest terms, for nastiness and nationality.

Dr. A. I only did it in joke, Sir; you did it with bitterness; but it was my country.

Mr. W. No man has abused England so much as Shakspeare, or France so much as Voltaire; yet they remain the favourites of two great nations, conscious of their own superiority. Were you, Doctor, attacked by me in any one instance? Was not the most friendly correspondence carried on with you the whole time, till you broke it off by a letter, in 1763, in which you declared to me, that you could not ‘with honour associate with one who had distinguished himself by abusing your country, and that you remained with all due sincerity? I remember that was the strange phrase.

Dr. A. You never answered that letter, Sir.

Mr. W. What answer could I give, Doctor? You had put a period to the intercourse between us. I still continued to our common friends to speak of you in terms of respect, while you were grossly abusing me. You said to Boswell, Miller, and others, "I hope there is a hell, that Wilkes may lie in it."

Dr. A. In a passion I might say so. People do not often speak their minds in a passion.

Mr. W. I thought they generally did, Doctor.

Dr. A. I was thoroughly provoked, although I still acknowledge my great pecuniary obligations to you— although, I dare say, I could have got the money elsewhere.

Mr. W. I was always happy to render you every service in my power; and I little imagined a liberal mind, like yours, could have been worked up by designing men to write me such a letter in answer to an affectionate one I sent you, on the prospect of your return.

Dr. A. I was happier with you than any man in the world for a great many years, and complimented you not a little in the Day, and you did not write to me for a year and a half after that.

Mr. W. Your memory does not serve you faithfully, Doctor. In three or four months at farthest, you had two or three letters from me together, on your return to the head-quarters of the army. I am abused in Dies for that publication, and the manner, both of which you approved.

Dr. A. I did so.

Mr. W. I was abused at first, I am told, in the manuscript of Dies for having sold the copy, and put the money in my pocket; but that charge was suppressed in the printed letter.

Dr. A. I know nothing of that, and will do you justice..

Mr. W. Will you call upon Mr. D—, our common friend, your countryman, and ask him what he thinks of your conduct to me, if it has not been wholly unjustifiable?

Dr. A. Have I your leave to ask Mr. Woodfall in your name about the letters?

Mr. W. I have already told you, Doctor, what directions he has from me. Take four-and-twenty hours to consider what you have to do, and let me know the result.

Dr. A. I am sorry to have taken up so much of your time, Sir.

Mr. W. It stands in no need of an apology, Doctor. I am glad to see you. Good morrow.

N.B.—These minutes were taken down the same afternoon, and sent to a friend.

Dr. Armstrong’s last publication was his ‘Medical Essays,’ which appeared in 1773. In this he complains of the little attention that had been paid to him, while so many other physicians of inferior abilities had risen to fame and fortune, forgetting that his own indolence and levity, and not the fickleness or want of discernment of the public, occasioned the neglect. A large portion of his time was spent at Slaughter’s coffee-house, in St. Martin’s lane, where he took his meals, and where messages for him were ordinarily directed to be addressed. He died on 7th September, 1779, and left, it is said, three thousand pounds, which his prudence and good management had enabled him to collect. He left his fortune by his will to his three nieces, the daughters of his brother Dr. George Armstrong; who, after having been an apothecary for several years at Hampstead, at length obtained a diploma constituting him doctor in medicine. Settling in London, he was appointed physician to a dispensary for the benefit of poor infants, opened at a house taken for him by the subscribers in Soho square. To aid the design, he published a small treatise on the diseases of children, in which he was supposed to have been assisted by his brother John. The dispensary, however, did not succeed, and the doctor died some years after in obscurity. Armstrong possessed a glowing imagination and a lively fancy, chastened, at times, by the guidance of a sound judgment, and a well regulated taste. Of his 'Art of Preserving Health,’ Dr. Aikin, in his Critical Essay prefixed to Cadell and Davis’ edition of his works published in 1796, says, "The manner of Armstrong is distinguished by its simplicity, by a free use of words which owe their strength to their plainness, by the rejection of ambitious ornaments, and a near approach to common phraseology. His sentences are generally short and easy, his sense clear and obvious. The full extent of his conceptions is taken in at the first glance, and there are no lofty mysteries to be unravelled by repeated perusal. What keeps his language from being altogether prosaic, is the vigour of his sentiments. He thinks boldly, feels strongly, and therefore expresses himself poetically. Where the subject sinks, his style sinks with it; but he has for the most part excluded topics incapable either of vivid description or of the oratory of sentiment. He had from nature a musical ear, whence his lines are never harsh, and are usually melodious, though apparently without much study to render them smooth. Perhaps he has not been careful enough to avoid the monotony of making several successive lines close with a rest or pause in the sense. On the whole, it may not be too much to assert, that no writer in blank verse can be found more free from stiffness and affectation, more energetic without harshness, and more dignified without formality." In Thomson’s ‘Castle of Indolence,’ to which he contributed four stanzas, at the conclusion of the first part, describing the diseases incidental to sloth, he is depicted as the shy and splenetic personage who "quite detested talk." The following is the stanza:

"With him was sometimes joined in silent walk,
(Profoundly silent, for they never spoke)
One shyer still, who quite detested talk;
Oft stung by spleen, at once away he broke,
To groves of pine and broad o’ershadowing oak,
There, inly thrilled, he wandered all alone,
And on himself his pensive fury wroke:
Nor never uttered word, save, when first shone
The glittering star of eve—’ Thank heaven! the day is done!’"

At right is a portrait of Dr. Armstrong taken from an engraving by [portrait of Dr. Armstrong] Fisher from a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

An Essay for abridging the study of Medicine; to which is added, A Dialogue between Hygeia, Mercury, and Pluto; relating to the Practice of Physic, as it is managed by a certain illustrious Society, as also n Epistle from Usbech, the Persian, to Joshua Ward, Esq. Lond. 1735, 8vo, (anon).

Synopsis of the history and cure of the Venereal Disease. Lond. 1737, 8vo.

The Economy of Love. Lond. 1737, 8vo.

Art of preserving Health, a poem. Lond. 1744, 4to, 1745, 8vo., numerous editions, with a critical essay, by Dr. Aikin, 12mo.

Benevolence, a poem. 1751, fol. An excellent production. Taste, an epistle to a young Critic. 1753. A pretty successful imitation of Pope.

Sketches, or Essays on various subjects. 1758.

Day, a poem. 1761.

Miscellanies, containing the art of preserving Health. Lond. 1770, 2 vols. 12mo.

A short ramble through some parts of France and Italy, by Lancelot Temple. Lond. 1771, 8vo.

Medical Essays. Lond. 1773. 4to. These treat of Theory, Medicine, Instruments of Physic, Fevers, Blisterings, Cordials, Ventilation, Bathing, Lodging, &c.. and, lastly, Gout and Rheumatism.

An Essay on Topic Medicines. Ed. Med. Ess. ii. p. 36. 1733.

ARMSTRONG, JOHN, a miscellaneous writer, was born at Leith in 1771, and educated at the college of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M.A. During his attendance at the university he published a volume of ‘Juvenile Poems,’ some of which possessed considerable merit. The same volume contained an ‘Essay on the Means of Punishing and Preventing Crimes.’ For this essay he had, in January 1789, a few months before, received the gold prize medal, given by the Edinburgh Pantheon Society for the best specimen of prose composition. Some time previous to this he had entered himself at the divinity hall, and had gone through the greater part of the exercises necessary to qualify him to become a preacher in the Church of Scotland. In 1790 he repaired to London, and supported himself by writing for the daily papers. In 1791 ho published a collection of ‘Sonnets from Shakspeare.’ He also preached occasionally, and was rising in reputation, when he was cut off, in 1797, in the 26th year of his age.

The following is a list of his works:

Juvenile Poems; with remarks on Poetry, and a dissertation on the best method of Punishing and Preventing Crimes. Lond. 1780, 12mo.

Confidential Letters from the Sorrows of Werter. Lend. 1799, 12mo.

Sonnets from Shakspeare. Lend. 1791, 8vo.