The tenth Duke was magnificent indeed. He knew what was due to his strawberry-leaves, and, being a man of immense wealth, saw that he got his due accordingly. A great deal is possible to a man with eighteen titles and five residences, and millions of money to properly support them. He added expensively to the Palace in 1828 and not only beautified it and filled it with wonderful collections of art and literature, but expended £130,000 on a grand mausoleum, so that he might be adequately housed in death. He even imported the black marble sarcophagus of an ancient Egyptian monarch; who, however, appears to have been of shorter stature than the princely Duke Alexander, for the thing was a misfit, and when at length his Grace was gathered to his fathers, his body had to be doubled up, in a very derogatory way. The immense collections in Hamilton Palace were at length sold in 1882, by an extravagant and impecunious successor of Duke Alexander, and realised £400,000 at auction.
The park and the mausoleum may be seen at due seasons, and sometimes the miniature castle of Châtelherault, built in 1732, in imitation of the castle in France whence the Dukes of Hamilton take their French title of Dukes of Châtelherault.
Hamilton town is a cheery place, with colour and ornament in its new buildings: very different from the lowering streets of Glasgow, which we are now nearing. In its present prosperous condition, many old buildings are being removed, but the passer-by will note a quaint tablet over an old house in the chief street, with three moustached lions’ heads, the initials “A. S.” and the inscription:
The . airt . of . weaving . is . renouned . so . that . rich . nor . poor . without . it . cannot . go .
A very broad and well-kept stretch of road leads from Hamilton to the Clyde at Bothwell Bridge: the famous Brig where the battle so immediately disastrous to the Covenanters was fought, June 22nd, 1679. The bridge representing the one that spanned the river so long ago was built in 1826, and neither it nor the road resembles the old circumstances of the place in any but the remotest degree. The road across Bothwell Brig when the battle was fought was steep and but twelve feet wide. The Covenanters lost the day entirely through the internal dissensions among their own forces. Each officer wanted to be commandant, and while they were bitterly wrangling about this point, up came the Royalist forces under the Duke of Monmouth and “bloody Claverse,” otherwise Graham of Claverhouse, the “bonnie Dundee” of the famous ballad. The Covenanting army was well placed for defence, and the day might, in other circumstances, have gone in their favour, but as it was, they were defeated, with a slaughter of three hundred. Twelve hundred prisoners were taken. Of these, some were executed: many were shipped to the plantations in Barbadoes. Thus was avenged the initial Royalist defeat by the hands of the Covenanters at Drumclog, on the 1st of June.