As we have already seen, ‘Newton,’ since 1748, had been in England, trying to procure the money from Cluny: we have seen that Archibald Cameron, Young Glengarry, and others, had obtained a large share of the gold in the winter of 1749. Charges of dishonesty were made on all sides, and we have already narrated how Archibald Cameron, Sir Hector Maclean, Lochgarry, and Young Glengarry carried themselves and their disputes to Rome (in the spring of 1750), and how James declined to interfere. The matter, he said, was personal to the Prince. But the following letter of James to Charles deserves attention.
The King to the Prince.
‘March 17, 1750.
‘You will remark that at the end of Archy’s paper, it is mentioned as if a certain person should have made use of my name in S—d, and have even produced a letter supposed to be mine to prove that he was acting by commission from me: what there may be in the bottom of all this I know not, but I think it necessary you should know that since your return from S—d I never either employed or authorized the person, or anybody else, to carry any commissions on politick affairs to any of the three kingdoms.’
Now this certain person, accused by ‘Archy’ (Archibald Cameron) of forging a letter from James, with a commission to take part of the hidden hoard, is Young Glengarry. In his letter of October 12, 1751, Æneas Macdonald mentions a report ‘too audacious to be believed; that Glengarry had counterfeited his Majesty’s signature to gett the money that he gott in Scotland.’ Glengarry ‘was very capable of having it happen to him,’ but he accused Archibald Cameron, and the charge still clings to his name. Even now Cameron is not wholly cleared. On November 21, 1753, his uncle, Ludovic Cameron of Torcastle, wrote to the Prince from Paris:
‘My nephew, Dr. Cameron, had the misfortune to take away a round sum of your highness’s money, and I was told lately that it was thought I should have shared with him in that base and mean undertaking. I declare, on my honour and conscience, that I knew nothing of the taking of the money, until he told it himself in Rome, where I happened to be at the time, and that I never touched one farthing of it, or ever will.’ [159]
Cluny, as well as Cameron, was this gentleman’s nephew. The character of Archibald Cameron is so deservedly high, the praises given to him by Horace Walpole are so disinterested, that any imputation on him lacks credibility. One is inclined to believe that there is a misunderstanding, and that what money Cameron took was for the Prince’s service. Yet we find no proof of this, and Torcastle’s letter is difficult to explain on the hypothesis of Cameron’s innocence. Glengarry tried to secure himself by a mysterious interview with the King. On May 23, at Rome, he wrote to Edgar. ‘As His Majesty comes into town next week, and that I can’t, in your absence, have an audience with such safety, not choising to confide myself on that particular to any but you; I beg you’l be so good as contrive, if His Majesty judges it proper, that I have the honour of meeting him, in the duskish, for a few moments.’
No doubt Glengarry was brought to the secret cellar, whence a dark stair led to James’s furtive audience chamber.
We must repeat the question, Was Young Glengarry, while with James in Rome, actually sold to the English Government at this time? We have seen that he was in London in the summer of 1749. On August 2 of that year, the Duke of Cumberland wrote to the Duke of Bedford, who, of all men in England, is said by Jacobite tradition to have most frequently climbed James’s cellar stair! Cumberland speaks of ‘the goodness of the intelligence’ now offered to the Government. ‘On my part, I bear it witness, for I never knew it fail me in the least trifle, and have had very material and early notices from it. How far the price may agree with our present saving schemes I don’t know, but good intelligence ought not to be lightly thrown away.’ [160]
Was Glengarry (starving in August 1749) the source of the intelligence which, in that month, Cumberland had already found useful? The first breath of suspicion against Glengarry, not as a forger or thief (these minor charges were in the air), but as a traitor, is met in an anonymous letter forwarded by John Holker to young Waters. [161] A copy had also been sent to Edgar at Rome. Already, on November 30, 1751, some one, sealing with a stag’s head gorged, and a stag under a tree in the shield, had written to Waters, denouncing Glengarry’s suspected friend, Leslie the priest, as ‘to my private knowledge an arrant rogue.’ Leslie has been in London, and is now off to Lorraine. ‘He is going to discover if he can have any news of the Prince in a country which, it is strongly suspected, His Royal Highness has crossed or bordered on more than once.’ In the later anonymous letter we are told of ‘a regular correspondence between John Murray [of Broughton, the traitor] and Samuel Cameron’—a spy of whom we shall hear again. ‘What surprises people still more is that Mr. Macdonald of Glengarrie, who says that he is charged with the affaires of his Majesty, is known to be in great intimacy with Murray, and to put Confidence in one Leslie, a priest, well known for a very infamous character, and who, I’m authorised to say, imposed upon one of the first personages in England by forging the Prince’s name.’
The anonymous accusers were Blair and Holker, men known to Edgar and Waters, but not listened to by Charles. Glengarry, according to his anonymous accuser of February 1752, was in London nominally ‘on the King’s affaires.’ On July (or, as he spells it, ‘Jully’) 15, 1751, Young Glengarry wrote from London to James and to Edgar. He says, to James, that the English want a Restoration, but have ‘lost all martial spirit.’ To Edgar he gave warning that, if measures were not promptly taken, the Loch Arkaig hoard would be embezzled to the last six-pence. ‘I must drop the politicall,’ he says; he will no longer negotiate for James, but ‘my sword will be always drawn amongst the first.’
The letter to James is printed by Browne; [162a] that to Edgar is not printed. And now appears the value of original documents. In the manuscript Glengarry spells ‘who’ as ‘how’: in the printed version the spelling is tacitly corrected. Now Pickle, writing to his English employers, always spells ‘who as ‘how,’ an eccentricity not marked by me in any other writer of the period. This is a valuable trifle of evidence, connecting Pickle with Young Glengarry. In an undated letter to Charles, certainly of 1751, Glengarry announces his approaching marriage with a lady of ‘a very Honourable and loyall familie in England,’ after which he will pay his share of the Loch Arkaig gold. He ends with pious expressions. When at Rome he had been ‘an ardent suitor’ to the Cardinal Duke ‘for a relick of the precious wood of the Holy Cross, in obtaining which I shall think myself most happy.’ [162b]