concerning the Jacobite rebellion of 1745–6. However Ramsay, like Constable, by no means shared Oldbuck's contempt for “womankind”. W. S. Crockett asserted that another figure behind the fictional Oldbuck was Alexander Gordon (1692?–1755), whose Itinerarium Septentrionale… Containing an Account of all the Monuments of Roman Antiquity [and] of the Danish Invasions on Scotland was much admired in its day, not least by Jonathan Oldbuck himself, who carries a prized copy of it home at the opening of the novel and goes on to quote his opinions approvingly in later chapters. Scott's son-in-law and biographer J. G. Lockhart suggested that yet another model could be found in the character of John Clerk of Eldin, a naval writer; and certainly an incident in the life of Clerk's grandfather Sir John Clerk, 1st Bt. was the inspiration for an episode in chapter 4 of The Antiquary: [T]he old Baronet carried some English virtuosos to see a supposed Roman camp; and on his exclaiming at a particular spot, “This I take to have been the Praetorium”, a herdsman, who stood by, answered, “Praetorium here, Praetorium there, I made it wi' a flaughter-spade.” But he was also sure that Oldbuck's greatest resemblance was to his own author, and this view has been widely accepted by modern critics. Scott's pursuit of antiquities was every bit as enthusiastic as Oldbuck's, and he could easily have said with the laird of Monkbarns “My great-great-great-grandfather – it's a shame to the English language that we have not a less clumsy way of expressing a relationship of which we have occasion to think and speak so frequently.” A particular obsession of Scott's was the tracking down of Border ballads, which he edited in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and likewise Oldbuck was “a diligent collector of these scraps of ancient poetry”. In later years Scott repeatedly compared himself to Oldbuck when discussing his antiquarian pursuits in his letters. The two men were equally capable of being taken in by fraudulent impositions on their credulity, as when Scott accepted the fake ballad “Barthram’s Dirge” and a manufactured Latin legend about a spectre knight from his friend Robert Surtees. They were also equally prone to buying land purely for its historical associations, Scott being in the process of completing his acquisition of the entire wide-ranging site of the battle of Melrose while he was writing The Antiquary. Oldbuck’s preference for publishing his