GROSSETT’S MEMORIAL AND ACCOUNTS
Walter Grossett[92] of Logie was the grandson of a certain Alexander Grossett, or Grosier, or Grosiert, a Frenchman, who came over to Great Britain in the Civil Wars and served King Charles I. in the army. He settled in Scotland, and died there, leaving a son Alexander. This son purchased the small estate of Logie, near Dunfermline. He was an ardent Covenanter, and retired to Holland at the time of the persecutions. Alexander left an only son, Archibald, who married Eupham Muirhead, a daughter of the laird of Bredisholm, in North Lanarkshire, by whom he had three sons; of these Walter was the eldest. Through his mother, he was a cousin of Sir John Shaw of Greenock, and was also nearly connected with the families of Lord Blantyre and the Earl of Cathcart.
In 1745 this Walter Grossett was Collector of Customs at Alloa, an office he had held for seventeen years. He was exceedingly active in his vocation, and very successful in the prosecution of smugglers. A short time before the Rising, at great risk to himself, he made one of the largest seizures of smuggled tobacco ever made in Scotland, thus enriching the Treasury by several thousand pounds.[93] Early in the ’Forty-five, eight days before Prince Charles entered Edinburgh, Grossett was commissioned by Lord Advocate Craigie to seize the boats and shipping on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth to prevent their falling into the hands of the Jacobite army, then assembling at Perth. Apparently his performance gave satisfaction, for he was promoted to be Collector at Leith, and he was constantly employed thereafter by the military authorities and the Lord Justice-Clerk, both in executive work and in secret service. His services were so highly approved by the Duke of Cumberland that H.R.H. promised him ‘his countenance on every occasion.’[94] After the suppression of the Rising, he was employed by the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, to collect evidence for the prosecution of the rebel lords and other Jacobite prisoners, and to escort the witnesses for the prosecution to London. For his services to Government he was promoted to the office of Inspector-General of Customs in 1747, on the recommendation of the Duke of Cumberland.[95]
Grossett must have been a man of great personal courage, for he went about with his life in his hand. On one occasion, it is related, he saved the life of his cousin Sir John Shaw by entering the Jacobite camp (it is not stated when or where) and carrying him off in the disguise of a Jacobite officer.[96] His enemies, whether Jacobites or smugglers, perhaps both, wreaked terrible vengeance on his house and his family, treating his wife so harshly that she died shortly afterwards.[97]
It is pleasant to find on record a friendly action of Grossett to a condemned prisoner. Patrick Murray, a goldsmith of Stirling, was taken prisoner at Airdrie in November 1745 by some country people. To Grossett, who was present, he declared that he surrendered in accordance with Marshal Wade’s proclamation of 30th October offering his Majesty’s clemency to all rebels who would surrender before 11th November.[98] Grossett had been summoned to Murray’s trial at Carlisle as a witness for the defence, but was prevented from being present owing to his secret services detaining him in London. Murray was tried on September 24th, 1746, found guilty, and condemned to death. The terms of his surrender were not pled at his trial, and Grossett sent in a memorial stating the facts of the arrestment:[99] it was of no avail, Murray was executed on November 15th.
Grossett tells the story of his executive work and of the expenses he incurred in the pages printed in this volume. He mentions that he gave evidence in 1747 at the trial of Lord Provost Archibald Stewart for losing Edinburgh to Prince Charles, but he does not mention the lines in which he is held up to shame and ridicule, along with the magistrates and the clergy of Edinburgh, in a poem published after the trial, which was burned by the hangman, and which brought the printer to the pillory and to ruin:
‘And stupid Gr—t next must take the field,
And He, (with fifty,) swore he would not yield,
To those brave Hundreds (who deserv’d the rope,)
That did beat Thousands under Sir J—n C—pe.’[100]
Judging from the report of the Duke of Cumberland’s Secretary and the Solicitor to the Treasury (p. 400), Grossett’s claim for £3709 was justified. I have, however, failed to discover if the sum was actually paid, and family papers throw some doubt on this. In a memorandum by his eldest son it is stated that he was a sufferer for his services to Government by many thousand pounds. This may mean that his claim was never liquidated, though after the report of the official scrutineers that hardly seems probable. It is more likely that young Grossett refers to the legal expenses incurred by his father in defending himself against the ‘scandalous Libells and groundless and vexatious lawsuits,’ which he had to meet as the result of his anti-Jacobite and anti-smuggling zeal, together with the loss of professional perquisites referred to on pp. 336 and 337.[101]
A gauger has always been a most unpopular personage in Scotland, and Grossett rendered himself doubly odious by his action as informer against the unfortunate Jacobite prisoners. He was the victim of shoals of frivolous actions in the courts, brought by persons determined to wear him out in law expenses. He was strongly advised by the Secretary of State to leave the country and go abroad for a few years, and he was told that the Treasury would give him full pay as Inspector-General during his absence on leave. How long this leave on full pay continued I do not know, but Grossett went to Italy. His wife had been a Miss de Vlieger, the daughter of a Dutch merchant and Government financier, and it may be that this fact stimulated Grossett to international financial enterprise. Along with the Earl of Rochfort, British minister at the Sardinian Court, and other gentlemen, he entered into silver and copper mining adventures in Savoy, which proved utter failures. He returned to England a completely ruined man, and died broken-hearted, in 1760, at his son’s house in London.
Walter Grossett had been heir-presumptive to his uncle, John Muirhead of Bredisholm, the last of the male representatives of that ancient family and of the Muirheads of that Ilk. Muirhead had helped Grossett in his mining speculations, and had become so involved that he was obliged to sell the reversion of the estate in order to live. He wished the property kept in the family, so he sold it to Walter Grossett’s nephew, the son of his youngest brother, James, a prosperous merchant of Lisbon, who assumed the name of Muirhead. James’s son John married a granddaughter of Lord George Murray—Lady Jean Murray, daughter of the third Duke of Atholl.[102] He is the ancestor of the family which, in the female line but retaining the name of Muirhead, still possesses the property of Bredisholm.
Grossett’s second brother, Alexander, was a captain in Price’s regiment, and served on the staff at the battle of Culloden, where he was killed under circumstances related in the text (p. 336). His wife and children are on the list of recipients of gratuities from a Guildhall Relief Fund collected for sufferers in the campaign of the ’Forty-five (see Appendix, p. 429). The entry reads, ‘Captain Grossett’s widow and 4 children, £150.’ It was the largest individual sum distributed.
Grossett’s narrative seems truthful and straightforward. Although presented in the unusual form of a commercial invoice, it is particularly interesting and useful in giving details of minor events of the campaign not generally mentioned, or at least not detailed elsewhere. He, however, would convey the impression that his enterprises were always successful, which was not the case. For instance, the Jacobites were successful in securing the passage of the Firth of Forth, yet Grossett does not make the reader understand this in his long account of the operation at pp. 353-358, and the same applies to other passages. Yet the description does not differ more from the Jacobite accounts than in modern times do the descriptions of operations as narrated by opposing belligerent generals.[103]
Two services he was employed on are worthy of special notice—the release of the officers on parole (p. 364), and his participation in the distribution of the Guildhall Relief Fund (p. 374). The former service had been originally destined by Hawley for the company of Edinburgh volunteers under the command of John Home (author of Douglas), by whom it was indignantly refused.[104] The latter, which is described in the Appendix, is particularly interesting at the present time of war, when similar funds are being distributed for similar purposes.
The manuscripts of the ‘Memorial,’ the ‘Narrative,’ and ‘The Account of Money’ are in the Record Office. A remarkable coincidence procured the Correspondence printed on pp. 379-399. After the ‘Narrative’ was in type, my friend, Mr. Moir Bryce, President of the Old Edinburgh Club, sent me a packet of letters, most of them holograph, to look over and see if there was anything of interest in them. To my surprise and gratification, I found they were the identical original letters that Grossett quotes as authority for his transactions. Mr. Bryce, who had purchased the letters from a dealer, knew nothing of the history of their ownership. He subsequently generously presented me with the collection. The Report of Fawkener and Sharpe was lent to me by Miss Frances Grosett-Collins, Bredisholm, Chew Magna, Somerset. Miss Grosett-Collins also kindly lent me some family papers from which, along with documents preserved in the Record Office and the British Museum, these brief notes of her ancestor’s career have been compiled.