Death
In his later years he bought an estate, to which he gave the name of Belville, in his native Invernessshire, where he died at the age of 59. Macpherson's remains were carried from Scotland and interred in the Abbey Church of Westminster.
The Highland MP and antiquarian, Charles Fraser-Mackintosh, comments on late eighteenth century evictions in the area of Kingussie, in his second series of "Antiquarian Notes" (Inverness 1897, pp 369 et seq, public domain) as follows: "Mr James MacPherson of Ossianic fame, who acquired Phoiness, Etterish, and Invernahaven, began this wretched business and did it so thoroughly that not much remained for his successors.......Every place James MacPherson acquired was cleared, and he also had a craze for changing and obliterating the old names......{including}......Raitts into Belville. Upon this point it may be noticed that Mac Ossian, in making an entail and calling four of his numerous bastards in the first instance to the succession, declares an irritancy if any of the heirs uses any other designation than that of MacPherson of Belville". Fraser-Mackintosh also asserts that MacPherson bought the right to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
Read more about this topic: James Macpherson
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;
But he once passed, soon after when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of Heaven,
Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length
From hell continued reaching th’ utmost orb
Of this frail world;”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)