After Culloden (April 1746), an extraordinary event took place in the Glengarry family. Colonel Warren, who, in October 1746, carried off Charles safely to France, arrested, in Scotland, Macdonell of Barrisdale, on charges of treason to King James. [151b] Barrisdale had been taken by the English, but was almost instantly released after Culloden. One charge against him, on the Jacobite side, was that he had made several gentlemen of Glengarry’s clan believe that their chief meant to deliver them up to the English. Thereon ‘information was laid’ (by the gentlemen?) against Old Glengarry. Old Glengarry’s letters in favour of the Prince were discovered; he was seized, and was only released from Edinburgh Castle in October 1749.
Here then, in 1746, were Old Glengarry in prison, Young Glengarry in the Tower, and Lucas lying in the grave of Sir John the Graeme. Though only nineteen, Æneas was married, and left issue. The family was now in desperate straits, and already a sough of treason to the cause was abroad. Young Glengarry says that he lay in the Tower for twenty-two months; he was released in July 1747. The Rev. James Leslie, writing to defend himself against a charge of treachery (Paris, May 27, 1752), quotes a letter, undated, from Glengarry. ‘One needs not be a wizard to see that mentioning you was only a feint, and the whole was aimed at me.’ [152a] If this, like Leslie’s letter, was written in 1752, Glengarry was then not unsuspected. We shall now see how he turned his coat.
On January 22, 1748, he writes to James from Paris, protesting loyalty. But ‘since I arrived here, after my tedious confinement in the Tower in London, I have not mett with any suitable encouragement.’ Glengarry, even as Pickle, constantly complains that his services are not recognised. Both sides were ungrateful! In the list of gratuities to the Scotch from France, Glengarry l’Ainé gets 1,800 livres; Young Glengarry is not mentioned. [152b] From Amiens, September 20, 1748, Young Glengarry again wrote to James. He means ‘to wait any opportunity of going safely to Britain’ on his private affairs. These journeys were usually notified by the exiles; their mutual suspicions had to be guarded against. In December, Young Glengarry hoped to succeed to the Colonelcy in the Scoto-French regiment of Albany, vacated by the death of the Gentle Lochiel. Archibald Cameron had also applied for it, as locum tenens of his nephew, Lochiel’s son, a boy of sixteen. James replied, through Edgar, that he was unable to interfere and assist Glengarry, as he had recommended young Lochiel. What follows explains, perhaps, the circumstance that changed Young Glengarry into Pickle.
‘His Majesty is sorry to find you so low in your circumstances, and reduced to such straits at present as you mention, and he is the more sorry that his own situation, as to money matters, never being so bad as it now is, he is not in a condition to relieve you, as he would incline. But His Majesty being at the same time desirous to do what depends on him for your satisfaction, he, upon your request, sends you here enclosed a duplicate of your grandfather’s warrant to be a Peer. You will see that it is signed by H. M. and I can assure you it is an exact duplicate copie out of the book of entrys of such like papers.’ [153a]
It is easy to conceive the feelings and to imagine the florid eloquence of Young Glengarry, when he expected a cheque and got a duplicate copy of a warrant (though he had asked for it) to be a Peer—over the water! As he was not without a sense of humour, the absurdity of the Stuart cause must now have become vividly present to his fancy. He must starve or ‘conform,’ that is, take tests and swallow oaths. But it was not necessary that he should sell himself. Many loyal gentlemen were in his position of poverty, but perhaps only James Mohr Macgregor and Samuel Cameron vended themselves as Glengarry presently did.
Glengarry loitered in Paris. On June 9, 1749, he wrote to the Cardinal Duke of York. He explained that, while he was in the Tower, the Court of France had sent him ‘unlimited credit’ as a Highland chief. He understood that he was intended to supply the wants of the poor prisoners, ‘Several of whom, had it not been our timely assistance [Sir Hector Maclean was with him] had starved.’ Sir Hector tells the same tale. From Sir James Graeme, Glengarry learned that the Duke of York had procured for him this assistance. But now the French War Office demanded repayment of the advance, and detained four years of his pay in the French service. He ‘can’t receive his ordinary supply from home, his father being in prison, and his lands entirely destroyed.’ To James’s agent, Lismore, he tells the same story, and adds, ‘I shall be obliged to leave this country, if not relieved.’ [154] Later, in 1749, we learn from Leslie that he accompanied Glengarry to London, where Glengarry ‘did not intend to appear publicly,’ but ‘to have the advice of some counsellors about an act of the Privy Council against his returning to Great Britain.’ At this time Leslie pledged a gold repeater, the property of Mrs. Murray, wife of that other traitor, Murray of Broughton. ‘Glengarry, after selling his sword and shoe-buckles to my certain knowledge was reduced to such straits, that I pledged the repeater for a small sum to relieve him, and wrote to Mr. Murray that I had done so.’ He pledged it to Clanranald. Mrs. Murray was angry, for (contrary to the usual story that she fled after the Prince to France) she was living with her husband at this time. [155a]
Here then, in July or August 1749, is Young Glengarry in extreme distress at London. But Æneas Macdonald, writing to Edgar from Boulogne on October 12, 1751, says, ‘I lent Young Glengarry 50l. when he was home in 1744, and I saw him in London just at the time I got out of gaol in 1749, and though in all appearance he had plenty of cash, yet’ he never dreamed of paying Æneas his 50l.! ‘Nothing could have lost him but falling too soon into the hands of bad counsellors.’
I regret to say that the pious Æneas Macdonald was nearly as bad a traitor as any of these few evil Highland gentlemen. His examination in London was held on September 16, 1746. [155b] Herein he regaled his examiners with anecdotes of a tavern keeper at Gravelines ‘who threatened to beat the Pretender’s son’; and of how he himself made Lord Sempil drunk, to worm his schemes out of him. It is only fair to add that, beyond tattle of this kind, next to nothing was got out of Æneas, who, in 1751, demands a Jacobite peerage for his family, that of Kinloch Moidart.
So much, at present, for Æneas. If we listen to Leslie, Young Glengarry was starving in July or August 1749; if we believe Æneas, he had ‘plenty of cash’ in December of the same year. Whence came this change from poverty to affluence? We need not assume it to be certain that Glengarry’s gold came out of English secret service money. His father had been released from prison in October 1749, and may have had resources. We have already seen, too, that Young Glengarry was accused of getting, in the winter of 1749, his share of the buried hoard of Loch Arkaig. Lord Elcho, in Paris, puts the money taken by Young Glengarry and Lochgarry (an honest man) at 1,200 louis d’or. We have heard the laments of ‘Thomas Newton’ (Kennedy), who himself is accused of peculation by Æneas Macdonald, and of losing 800l. of the Prince’s money at Newmarket. [156] We do not know for certain, then, that Young Glengarry vended his honour when in London in autumn 1749. That he made overtures to England, whether they were accepted or not, will soon be made to seem highly probable. We return to his own letters. In June 1749 he had written, as we saw, from Paris, also to Lismore, and to the Cardinal Duke of York. On September 23, 1749, he again wrote to Lismore from Boulogne. He says he has been in London (as we know from Leslie), where his friends wished him to ‘conform’ to the Hanoverian interest. This he disdains. He has sent a vassal to the North, and finds that the clans are ready to rise. If not relieved from his debt to the French War Office he must return to England.
He did return in the winter of 1749, and he accompanied his cousin, Lochgarry (a truly loyal man), to Scotland, where he helped himself to some of the hoard of gold. On January 16, 1750, he writes to Edgar from Boulogne, reports his Scotch journey, and adds that he is now sent by the clans to lay their sentiments before James, in Rome. He then declares that Archibald Cameron has been damping all hearts in the Highlands. ‘I have prevented the bad consequences that might ensue from such notions; but one thing I could not prevent was his taking 6,000 louis d’ors of the money left in the country by his Royal Highness, which he did without any opposition, as he was privy to where the money was laid, only Cluny Macpherson obliged him to give a receipt for it. . . . I am credibly informed he designs to lay this money in the hands of a merchant in Dunkirk, and enter partners with him. . . .’ He hopes that James will detain Archibald Cameron in Rome, till his own arrival. He protests that it is ‘very disagreeable to him’ to give this information. [157]