ABSTRACT
These were not easy years in which to raise a large family, and certainly not for a Dalrymple, for the family had a tradi tion of stern opposition to the House of Stuart. This was why the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion forced Sir James to move his wife and children to Berwick-on-Tweed for protection, which inter rupted the young boy’s education. Shortly before the outbreak of this rebellion, Alexander had been sent to Haddington School, and thither he returned as soon as the family came back to Newhailes, but this, the only formal education he enjoyed, ceased before he was fourteen years old, owing to his father’s death in 1750. Sir David, his eldest brother, now took a hand, beginning with an attempt to improve Alexander’s Latin. Sir David was later to win literary distinction as an antequarian and a friend of Dr Johnson, and he also became a distinguished Lord of Session under the name of Lord Hailes. He had no success, however, with Alexander’s studies, since his younger brother found no pleasure in translating the Odes of Horace. Nor was the attempt to send him to a French Academy in Edinburgh any more successful, since he refused to learn the language of his country’s enemies, a wilful and headstrong atti tude which he had cause to rue in later years when he developed close ties with several eminent Frenchmen!
