area of 512 sq. m. It drains the county and is itself drained by the Leven. It is famous for the Loch Leven trout (Salmo levenensis, considered by some a variety of S. trutta), which are remarkable for size and quality. The fishings are controlled by the Loch Leven Angling Association, which organizes competitions attracting anglers from far and near. The loch contains seven islands. Upon St Serf’s, the largest, which commemorates the patron saint of Fifeshire, are the ruins of the Priory of Portmoak—so named from St Moak, the first abbot—the oldest Culdee establishment in Scotland. Some time before 961 it was made over to the bishop of St Andrews, and shortly after 1144 a body of canons regular was established on it in connexion with the priory of canons regular founded in that year at St Andrews. The second largest island, Castle Island, possesses remains of even greater interest. The first stronghold is supposed to have been erected by Congal, son of Dongart, king of the Picts. The present castle dates from the 13th century and was occasionally used as a royal residence. It is said to have been in the hands of the English for a time, from whom it was delivered by Wallace. It successfully withstood Edward Baliol’s siege in 1335, and was granted by Robert II. to Sir William Douglas of Lugton. It became the prison at various periods of Robert II.; of Alexander Stuart, earl of Buchan, “the Wolf of Badenoch”; Archibald, earl of Douglas (1429); Patrick Graham, archbishop of St Andrews (who died, still in bondage, on St Serf’s Island in 1478), and of Mary, queen of Scots. The queen had visited it more than once before her detention, and had had a presence chamber built in it. Conveyed hither in June 1567 after her surrender at Carberry, she signed her abdication within its walls on the 4th of July and effected her escape on the 2nd of May 1568. The keys of the castle, which were thrown into the loch during her flight, were found and are preserved at Dalmahoy in Midlothian. Support of Mary’s cause had involved Thomas Percy, 7th earl of Northumberland (b. 1528). He too was lodged in the castle in 1569, and after three years’ imprisonment was handed over to the English, by whom he was beheaded at York in 1572. The proverb that “Those never got luck who came to Loch Leven” sums up the history of the castle. The causeway connecting the isle with the mainland was long submerged too deeply for use, but the reclamation operations already referred to almost brought it into view again.
LEVEN AND MELVILLE, EARLS OF. The family of Melville which now holds these two earldoms is descended from Sir John Melville of Raith in Fifeshire. Sir John, who was a member of the reforming party in Scotland, was put to death for high treason on the 13th of December 1548; he left with other children a son Robert (1527–1621), who in 1616 was created a lord of parliament as Lord Melville of Monymaill. Before his elevation to the Scottish peerage Melville had been a stout partisan of Mary, queen of Scots, whom he represented at the English court, and he had filled several important offices in Scotland under her son James VI. The fourth holder of the lordship of Melville was George (c. 1634–1707), a son of John, the 3rd lord (d. 1643), and a descendant of Sir John Melville. Implicated in the Rye House plot against Charles II., George took refuge in the Netherlands in 1683, but he returned to England after the revolution of 1688 and was appointed secretary for Scotland by William III. in 1689, being created earl of Melville in the following year. He was made president of the Scottish privy council in 1696, but he was deprived of his office when Anne became queen in 1702, and he died on the 20th of May 1707. His son David, 2nd earl of Melville (1660–1728), fled to Holland with his father in 1683; after serving in the army of the elector of Brandenburg he accompanied William of Orange to England in 1688. At the head of a regiment raised by himself he fought for William at Killiecrankie and elsewhere, and as commander-in-chief of the troops in Scotland he dealt promptly and effectively with the attempted Jacobite rising of 1708. In 1712, however, his office was taken from him and he died on the 6th of June 1728.
Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven (q.v.), was succeeded in his earldom by his grandson Alexander, who died without sons in July 1664. The younger Alexander’s two daughters were then in turn countesses of Leven in their own right; and after the death of the second of these two ladies in 1676 a dispute arose over the succession to the earldom between John Leslie, earl (afterwards duke) of Rothes, and David Melville, 2nd earl of Melville, mentioned above. In 1681, however, Rothes died, and Melville, who was a great-grandson of the 1st earl of Leven, assumed the title, calling himself earl of Leven and Melville after he succeeded his father as earl of Melville in May 1707. Since 1805 the family has borne the name of Leslie-Melville. In 1906 John David Leslie-Melville (b. 1886) became 12th earl of Leven and 11th earl of Melville.
See Sir W. Fraser, The Melvilles, Earls of Melville, and the Leslies, Earls of Leven (1890); and the Leven and Melville Papers, edited by the Hon. W. H. Leslie-Melville for the Bannatyne Club (1843).
LEVER, CHARLES JAMES (1806–1872), Irish novelist, second
son of James Lever, a Dublin architect and builder, was born
in the Irish capital on the 31st of August 1806. His descent
was purely English. He was educated in private schools, where
he wore a ring, smoked, read novels, was a ringleader in every
breach of discipline, and behaved generally like a boy destined
for the navy in one of Captain Marryat’s novels. His escapades
at Trinity College, Dublin (1823–1828), whence he took the
degree of M.B. in 1831, form the basis of that vast cellarage
of anecdote from which all the best vintages in his novels are
derived. The inimitable Frank Webber in Charles O’Malley
(spiritual ancestor of Foker and Mr Bouncer) was a college
friend, Robert Boyle, later on an Irish parson. Lever and Boyle
sang ballads of their own composing in the streets of Dublin,
after the manner of Fergusson or Goldsmith, filled their caps
with coppers and played many other pranks embellished in the
pages of O’Malley, Con Cregan and Lord Kilgobbin. Before
seriously embarking upon the medical studies for which he was
designed, Lever visited Canada as an unqualified surgeon on
an emigrant ship, and has drawn upon some of his experiences
in Con Cregan, Arthur O’Leary and Roland Cashel. Arrived in
Canada he plunged into the backwoods, was affiliated to a tribe
of Indians and had to escape at the risk of his life, like his own
Bagenal Daly.
Back in Europe, he travelled in the guise of a student from Göttingen to Weimar (where he saw Goethe), thence to Vienna; he loved the German student life with its beer, its fighting and its fun, and several of his merry songs, such as “The Pope he loved a merry life” (greatly envied by Titmarsh), are on Student-lied models. His medical degree admitted him to an appointment from the Board of Health in Co. Clare and then as dispensary doctor at Port Stewart, but the liveliness of his diversions as a country doctor seems to have prejudiced the authorities against him. In 1833 he married his first love, Catherine Baker, and in February 1837, after varied experiences, he began running The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer through the pages of the recently established Dublin University Magazine. During the previous seven years the popular taste had declared strongly in favour of the service novel as exemplified by Frank Mildmay, Tom Cringle, The Subaltern, Cyril Thornton, Stories of Waterloo, Ben Brace and The Bivouac; and Lever himself had met William Hamilton Maxwell, the titular founder of the genre. Before Harry Lorrequer appeared in volume form (1839), Lever had settled on the strength of a slight diplomatic connexion as a fashionable physician in Brussels (16, Rue Ducale). Lorrequer was merely a string of Irish and other stories good, bad and indifferent, but mostly rollicking, and Lever, who strung together his anecdotes late at night after the serious business of the day was done, was astonished at its success. “If this sort of thing amuses them, I can go on for ever.” Brussels was indeed a superb place for the observation of half-pay officers, such as Major Monsoon (Commissioner Meade), Captain Bubbleton and the like, who terrorized the tavernes of the place with their endless peninsular stories, and of English society a little damaged, which it became the specialty of Lever to depict. He sketched with a free hand, wrote, as he lived, from hand to mouth, and the chief difficulty he experienced was that of getting rid of his
