1653. His second wife was Mrs. Wilkie, widow, daughter of a former principal of the university (Dr. Strang); by her he had a daughter, Margaret, who became wife of Walkinshaw of Barrowfield, and grandmother of Henry Home, Lord Kames. Another descendant was Miss Walkinshaw, mistress of James Charles Stuart.
As a scholar, Baillie was remarkable. He understood thoroughly no fewer than thirteen languages, including Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic. He had a keen, penetrative intellect, which never allowed his learning to overload it. He is an alert controversialist, with a swift eye to his opponents' weaknesses and admissions. He bows to what he believes to be the true interpretation of Holy Scripture. He fiercely denounces 'the sectaries,' and though personally modest, he shows towards adversaries little charity. His 'Letters and Journals' are for Scotland much what Pepys and Evelyn are for England. They are especially valuable in relation to the assembly of 1638 and the assembly of Westminster.
[Kippis's Biogr. Brit. i. 510-15; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.; Anderson's Scottish Nation; Neal's Puritans (passim); a remarkable paper by Carlyle on 'Baillie the Covenanter' in Westminster Review, xxxvii. 43, and reprinted in his Miscellanies.]
BAILLIE, ROBERT (d. 1684), patriot, the 'Scottish Algernon Sydney,' as he has been named, was son of George Baillie of St. John's Kirk, Lanarkshire, of the Lamington Baillies, though he himself is known as Baillie of Jerviswood. He first appears in full manhood, as the object of suspicion and hatred to the powers then dominant in Scotland. An apparently trivial incident brought things to a crisis. In June 1676 the Rev. Mr. Kirkton, a non-episcopalian minister, who had married Baillie's sister, was illegally arrested in the High Street of Edinburgh by an informer named Carstairs, on the bidding of Archbishop Sharp, himself a renegade presbyterian. Carstairs, not having a warrant, endeavoured to extort money from his prisoner before releasing him. Baillie having been sent for arrived on the scene. It was a mean house near the common prison ('Heart of Midlothian'). Carstairs had locked the door and refused to open it. Kirkton desired of him that he would either produce his warrant or set him free. Instead of compliance, Baillie drew a pocket-pistol, and a struggle ensued for its possession. Those without, hearing the noise and cries, burst open the door, and discovered Kirkton on the floor and Carstairs seated upon him. Baillie demanded sight of the warrant, but none was produced. Thereupon Kirkton and his friends left the house. Upon the complaint of the informer, he procured an ante-dated warrant, bearing the signatures of some members of the privy council. Baillie — the higher victim — was called before the council, and by Sharp's influence was fined 'in six thousand marks' (= 318l., or, according to Wodrow, 500l.), to be imprisoned till paid.' After being four months in prison, he was liberated on payment of half the fine to Carstairs. Needless to say he was a suspected man henceforward. None the less was he bold and outspoken for civil and religious liberty. In the year 1683,. sick at heart and seeing no prospect of relief from the prevailing tyranny in his native land, he joined some fellow-countrymen in negotiations for emigration to South Carolina. The scheme was frustrated. Contemporaneously, Baillie and compatriots repaired to London, and entered into association with Monmouth, Sydney, Russell, and their friends, if possible to obtain mitigation, or perchance change, of government measures. The Rye House plot came to the front, and though Baillie had nothing whatever to do with it, he was arrested and sent north to Scotland. Hopes of a pardon for himself having been treacherously held out to him, on condition of his giving the government information, he replied: 'They who can make such a proposal to me neither know me nor my country.' The late Earl Russell observes: 'It is to the honour of Scotland that no witnesses came forward voluntarily to accuse their associates, as had been done in England.' Baillie had married, when young, a sister of Sir Archibald Johnston of Warriston (who was executed in June 1633); and during his imprisonment she offered to go into irons as an assurance against any attempt at escape, if only she might keep her husband company. But permission was denied. He was accused of complicity in the Rye House plot and conspiracy to raise a rebellion, but his prosecutors were unable to adduce one iota of evidence. Therefore he was ordered to 'free himself' by oath. This he refused to do, and was fined 6,000l. He was still held in prison and refused the slightest alleviation. Bishop Burnet, in his 'History of his own Times,' informs us that 'the ministers of state were most earnestly set on Baillie's destruction, though he was now in so languishing a condition, that if his death would have satisfied the malice of the court, it seemed to be very near.' He adds, that 'all the while he was in prison he seemed so composed and cheerful, that his behaviour looked like the reviving spirit of the noblest of the old Greeks or Romans, or rather of the
