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No. IV . ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BROTHER ALEXIS CALLED IN THE WORLD ROBERT GRÆME , A SCOTCH GENTLEMAN. CONTRIBUTED BY GEORGE FREDERICK ENGELBACH . This short life of Brother Alexis of La Trappe ( Robert Græme) is a contemporary translation, presumably by a Poor Clare , of the French original printed in Paris in 1703 , the author of which is unknown. The British Museum does not possess a copy, the only one known to me being that which belonged to the late Colonel R. C. Græme, of Camberley, a collateral descendant of the same family. The life was, however, included in the Relation de la vie et de la mort de quelques Religieux de l'Abbaye de la Trappe , published in six small volumes in Paris in 1755, a copy of which was kindly lent me, for the purposeof collation , by the Rt . Rev. Abbot Phelan of Mount Melleray, co . Waterford. Our English manuscript, the spelling of which is both quaint and curious, consists of forty pages of close writing in ink, numbered in pencil, and belongs to the Community of St. Clare's Abbey, Darlington . As mentioned above , the author of the life is not known, but was doubtless written by someone in the monastery of La Trappe, assisted by Bro. Alexis's elder brother, the Capucin , Fr. Archangel of Boulogne, who, we are expresslytold in a note to the French original, is responsible for certain information supplied. A few details, other than those which appear in the notes , of this interesting family, four members of which became Catholics , will not be out of place here . Brother Alexis's father , Patrick Græme, was the second son of Patrick Græme, of Inchbrakie (known as " Black Pate ), by his wife Jean , daughter of John, second Lord Madderty. Like his father he was a soldier , and in May 1682 was appointed Captain of the Town Guard in Edinburgh and obtained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel 17 July 1688. In the following month of September he was given the commandof the Militia Regimentin addition to that of the Town Guard, and on the disbanding of the latter in 1689, at once obtained command of a Regiment of Dragoons in the service of King James II . He married, in 1663 , Anne, daughter of Patrick Smythe, of Braco , and had by her four sons(1) James , born 1664, who became a seaman and, after an adventurous life, died in 1707, being described in the Will proved at Edinburgh 8 October 1707, as Midshipman and Sailor aboard the ship St Andrews belonging to the Company of Scotland," in other words, the Darien Company. (2) Patrick, born c . 1669 , mentioned several times in his brother's life, who also became a Catholic, and was for some time at Douai. The following entry in the Records of the Scots College at Douai refers to him : 1696. 13. Mar. Patritius Graham , filius Petri * Colonelli, post 14 menses factus recolecta apud Anglos Duaci ; postea Capuci-
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* His father's Christian name was Patrick, but in Scotland " Pat " and Peter " are interchangeable.