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116
and around these the hundreds that succumbed and found
their last resting-places in the wilds of Livland or Poland,
and in Germany from the shores of the Lake of Constance
to those of the Baltic, to whom all donations came too
late !
Leslie and Ruthven kept up their correspondence with
Oxenstierna to the end of their lives. Both men are
anxious to receive their pensions regularly, which
in some cases were due for three years. It is interesting
to see from one of Leslie’s letters, dated Newcastle
1645, that he is still busy levying men for Sweden,
this time “ efficient naval officers.” The difficulty
of selling his estates in Sweden troubled his last years.
His last letter is dated from the Tower, 27th of October
1651. In it he again urges the payment of his salary,
now outstanding since 1648. Ruthven’s letters from
1639 to 48 tell of the warlike preparations in Scotland, and
beg Oxenstierna’s assistance in the matter of selling his
Swedish property u of which he drew no profit.” In
spite of his decrepitude—for his old drinking habits began
to tell on him—he stuck to his post, was made an
English General, and raised to the peerage as Earl of
Bramford. But, in spite of these honours, his end was
clouded. In a letter dated December 1647, he describes
how the king and himself had lost all. All his Scottish
property had been confiscated; this being so, he most
urgently claims the sum of 4000 Thaler still outstanding,
through General King or Jacob Maclier in Stockholm.
This prayer he repeats in the last of the printed letters
(4th September, 1648), in which he proposes that the sum
might be taken out of the custom-revenues of Lifland.
alone amounted to 25,000 Thaler. No wonder that his heirs lived in
great distress and poverty, enjoying only a small annuity from the Crown.
Kammer A.
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