The Right Honourable LADY GRISELL BAILLIE
wife of GEORGE BAILLIE of Jerviswood, Esq.
eldest daughter
of the Right Honourable PATRICK, Earl of Marchmont;
a pattern to her sex, an honour to her country.
She excelled in the characters of a daughter, a wife, a mother.
While an infant,
at the hazard of her own, she preserved her father’s life;
who, under the rigorous persecution of arbitrary power,
sought refuge in the close confinement of a tomb,
where he was nightly supplied with necessaries, conveyed by her,
with a caution far above her years,
a courage almost above her sex;
a real instance of the so much celebrated Roman charity.
She was a shining example of conjugal affection,
that knew no dissension, felt no decline,
during almost a fifty year’s union;
the dissolution of which she survived from duty, not choice.
Her conduct, as a parent,
was amiable, exemplary, successful,
to a degree not well to be expressed,
without mixing the praises of the dead with those of the living;
who desire that all praise , but of her, should be silent.
At different times she managed the affairs
of her father, her husband, her family, her relations,
with unwearied application, with happy economy,
as distant from avarice as from prodigality.
Christian piety, love of her country,
zeal for her friends, compassion for her enemies,
cheerfulness of spirit, pleasantness of conversation,
dignity of mind,
Good breeding, good humour, good sense,
were the daily ornaments of an unusual life,
protracted by Providence to an uncommon length,
for the benefit of all who fell within the sphere of her benevolence.
Full of years, and of good works,
she died on the 6th day of December 1746,
near the end of her 81st year,
and was buried on her birth-day, the 25th of that month.