In November 1752, if not earlier, a new fountain of information becomes open to us, namely, the communications made by Pickle the spy to the English Government. His undated letters to his employers are not always easily attributed to a given month or year, but there can be mo mistake in assigning his first dated letter to November 2, 1752. [145]
The spy called Pickle was a descendant of Somerled and the Lords of the Isles. In her roll-call of the clans, Flora MacIvor summons the Macdonalds:
‘O sprung from the kings who in Islay held state,
Proud chiefs of Glengarry, Clanranald, and Sleat,
Combine like three streams from one mountain of snow,
And resistless in union rush down on the foe!’
Pickle was the heir to the chieftainship of Glengarry; he was Alastair Ruadh Macdonnell (or Mackdonnell, as he often writes it), son of John Macdonnell, twelfth of Glengarry. Pickle himself, till his father’s death in 1754, is always spoken of as ‘Young Glengarry.’ We shall trace the steps by which Young Glengarry, the high-born chief of the most important Catholic Jacobite clan, became Pickle, the treacherous correspondent of the English Government. On first reading his letters in the Additional MSS. of the British Museum, I conceived Pickle to be a traitorous servant in the household of some exiled Jacobite. I then found him asserting his rank as eldest son of the chief of a great clan; and I thought he must be personating his master, for I could not believe in such villainy as the treason of a Highland chief. Next, I met allusions to the death of his father, and the date (September 1, 1754) corresponded with that of the decease of Old Glengarry. Presently I observed the suspicions entertained about Young Glengarry, and the denunciation of him in 1754 by Mrs. Cameron, the widow of the last Jacobite martyr, Archibald Cameron. I also perceived that Pickle and Young Glengarry both invariably spell ‘who’ as ‘how.’ Next, in Pickle’s last extant epistle to the English Government (1760), he directs his letters to be sent to ‘Alexander Macdonnell, Glengarry, Fort William.’ Finally, I compared Pickle’s handwriting, where he gives the name ‘Alexander Macdonnell,’ with examples of Young Glengarry’s signature in legal documents in the library of Edinburgh University. The writing, in my opinion, was the same in both sets of papers. Thus this hideous charge of treachery is not brought heedlessly against a gentleman of ancient, loyal, and honourable family. Young Glengarry died unarmed, at home, on December 23, 1761, leaving directions that his political papers should be burned, and the present representatives of a distinguished House are not the lineal descendants of a traitor.
The grandfather of Alastair Ruadh Macdonnell (alias Pickle, alias Roderick Random—he was fond of Dr. Smollett’s new novels—alias Alexander Jeanson, that is, Alastair, son of Ian), was Alastair Dubh, Black Alister, ‘who, with his ponderous two-handed sword, mowed down two men at every stroke’ at Killiecrankie, and also fought at Shirramuir. At Killiecrankie he lost his brother, and his son Donald Gorm (Donald of the Blue Eyes), who is said to have slain eighteen of the enemy. At Shirramuir, when Clanranald fell, Glengarry tossed his bonnet in the air, crying in Gaelic, ‘Revenge! Revenge! Revenge to-day, and mourning to-morrow.’ He then led a charge, and drove the regular British troops in rout. He received a warrant of a peerage from the King over the water.
This hero seems a strange ancestor for a spy and a traitor, like Pickle. Yet we may trace an element of ‘heredity.’ About 1735 a member of the Balhaldie family, chief of Clan Alpin or Macgregor, wrote the Memoirs of the great Lochiel, published in 1842 for the Abbotsford Club. Balhaldie draws rather in Clarendon’s manner a portrait of the Alastair Macdonnell of 1689 and of 1715. Among other things he writes:
‘Most of his actions might well admitt of a double construction, and what he appeared generally to be was seldome what he really was. . . . Though he was ingaged in every attempt that was made for the Restoration of King James and his family, yet he managed matters so that he lossed nothing in the event. . . . The concerts and ingagements he entered into with his neighbours . . . he observed only in so far as suited with his own particular interest, but still he had the address to make them bear the blame, while he carried the profits and honour. To conclude, he was brave, loyal, and wonderfully sagacious and long-sighted; and was possessed of a great many shineing qualities, blended with a few vices, which, like patches on a beautifull face, seemed to give the greater éclat to his character.’
Pickle, it will be discovered, inherited the ancestral ‘vices.’ ‘What he appeared generally to be was seldome what he really was.’ His portrait, [149a] in Highland dress, displays a handsome, fair, athletic young chief, with a haughty expression. Behind him stands a dark, dubious-looking retainer, like an evil genius.
Alastair Dubh Macdonnell died in 1724, and was succeeded by his son John, twelfth of Glengarry. This John had, by two wives, four sons, of whom the eldest, Alastair Ruadh, was Pickle. Alastair held a captain’s commission in the Scots brigade in the French service. In March 1744, he and the Earl Marischal were at Gravelines, meaning to sail with the futile French expedition from Dunkirk. In June 1745, Glengarry went to France with a letter from the Scotch Jacobites, bidding Charles not to come without adequate French support. Old Glengarry, in January 1745, had ‘disponed’ his lands to Alastair his son, for weighty reasons to him known. [149b] Such deeds were common in the Highlands, especially before a rising.
From this point the movements of Young Glengarry become rather difficult to trace. If we could believe the information received from Rob Roy’s son, James Mohr Macgregor, by Craigie, the Lord Advocate, Young Glengarry came over to Scotland in La Doutelle, when Charles landed in Moidart in July 1745. [150a] This was not true. Old Glengarry, with Lord George Murray, waited on Cope at Crieff in August, when Cope marched north. Cope writes, ‘I saw Glengarry the father at Crieff with the Duke of Athol; ’tis said that none of his followers are yet out, tho’ there is some doubt of his youngest son; the eldest, as Glengarry told me, is in France.’ [150b] On September 14, Forbes of Culloden congratulated Old Glengarry on his return home, and regretted that so many of his clan were out under Lochgarry, a kinsman. [150c] Old Glengarry had written to Forbes ‘lamenting the folly of his friends.’ He, like Lovat, was really ‘sitting on the fence.’ His clan was out; his second son Æneas led it at Falkirk. Alastair was in France. At the close of 1745, Alastair, conveying a detachment of the Royal Scots, in French service, and a piquet of the Irish brigade to Scotland, was captured on the seas and imprisoned in the Tower of London. [150d] In January 1746 we find him writing from the Tower to Waters, the banker in Paris, asking for money. Almost at this very time Young Glengarry’s younger brother, Æneas, who led the clan, was accidentally shot in the streets of Falkirk by a Macdonald of Clanranald’s regiment. The poor Macdonald was executed, and the Glengarry leader, by Charles’s desire, was buried in the grave of Wallace’s companion, Sir John the Graeme, as the only worthy resting-place. Many Macdonalds deserted. [151a]