Frederick’s letters have brought us to May 1753, when Archy Cameron, in the Tower of London, lay expecting his doom. While kings, princes, ambassadors, statesmen, and highland chiefs were shuffling, conspiring, peeping, lying and spying, the sole burden of danger fell on Archibald Cameron, Lochgarry, and Cluny. They were in the Elector’s domains; their heads were in the lion’s mouth. We have heard Young Glengarry accuse both Archy Cameron and Cluny of embezzling the Prince’s money in the Loch Arkaig hoard, but Glengarry’s accusations can scarcely have been credited by Charles, otherwise he would not have entrusted the Doctor with an important mission. Cluny’s own character, except by Kennedy and Young Glengarry, is unimpeached, and Lochgarry bore the stoutest testimony to his honour.
The early biography of Archibald Cameron is interesting. As the youngest son of old Lochiel, he, with his famous brother ‘the gentle Lochiel,’ set about reforming the predatory habits of their clan, with considerable success. Archibald went to Glasgow University, and read Moral Philosophy ‘under the ingenious Dr. Hutchinson.’ He studied Medicine in Edinburgh and in France; then settled in Lochaber, and married a lady of the clan of Campbell. He was remarked for the sweetness of his manners, and was so far from being a violent Jacobite that he dissuaded his brother, Lochiel, from going to see the Prince at his first landing in 1745. This account of his conversion, from ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ (June 1753), is naïf. ‘Dr. Cameron was at last brought to engage by the regard due to a benefactor and a brother, who was besides his Chief as head of his Clan, and threatened to pistol him if he did not comply.’ Wounded at Falkirk (the ball was never extracted), he served at Culloden, escaped to France with Lochiel, was surgeon in his regiment, and later in Lord Ogilivie’s, was guardian of Lochiel’s son, and, as we know, came and went from Scotland with Lochgarry and Young Glengarry. His last trip to Scotland was undertaken in September 1752. Of his adventures there in concerting a rising we know nothing. On March 20 he was detected near Inversnaid (possibly through a scoundrel of his own name), and was hunted by a detachment of the Inversnaid garrison. They were long baffled by children set as sentinels, who uttered loud cries as the soldiers approached. At last they caught a boy who had hurt his foot, and from him discovered that Cameron was in a house in a wood. Thence he escaped, but was caught among the bushes and carried to Edinburgh by Bland’s dragoons. On April 17 he was examined by the Council at the Cockpit in Whitehall. He was condemned on his attainder for being out in 1745, [201] and his wife in vain besieged George II. and the Royal Family with petitions for his life. ‘The Scots Magazine’ of May 1753 contains a bold and manly plea for clemency. ‘In an age in which commiseration and beneficence is so very conspicuous among all ranks, and on every occasion, we have reason to hope that pity resides in that place where it has the highest opportunity of imitating the divine goodness in saving the distressed.’
They ‘sought for grace at a graceless face.’ Mrs. Cameron was shut up with her husband to prevent her troubling any of the Royal Family or nobility with petitions in his favour. On June 8, Cameron was hanged and disembowelled, but not while alive, as was the custom. A London letter of June 9 says ‘he suffered like a brave man, a Christian, and a gentleman. . . . His merit is confessed by all parties, and his death can hardly be called untimely, as his behaviour rendered his last day worth an age of common life.’
‘One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name!’
As Scott remarks, ‘When he lost his hazardous game Dr. Cameron only paid the forfeit which he must have calculated upon.’ The Government, knowing that plots against George II. and his family were hatching daily, desired to strike terror by severity. But Prince Charles, when in England and Scotland, more than once pardoned assassins who snapped pistols in his face, till his clemency excited the murmurs of his followers and the censures of the Cameronians. They wrote thus:
‘We reckon it a great vice in Charles, his foolish pity and lenity in sparing these profane blasphemous Red Coats, that Providence put into his hand, when, by putting then to Death, this poor Land might have been eased of the heavy Burden of these Vermin of Hell.’ [202]
Cameron was deprived in prison of writing materials, but he managed to secure a piece of pencil, with which on scraps of paper he wrote his last words to his friends. These were obtained by Mrs. Cameron, and are printed in the ‘State Trials.’ [203] Never was higher testimony borne to man than by Cameron to Prince Charles.
‘As I had the honour from the time of the Royal youth’s setting up his Father’s standard, to be almost constantly about his person, till November 1748 . . . I became more and more captivated with his amiable and princely virtues, which are, indeed, in every instance so eminently great as I want words to describe.
‘I can further affirm (and my present situation, and that of my dear Prince too, can leave no room to suspect me of flattery) that as I have been his companion in the lowest degree of adversity that ever prince was reduced to, so I have beheld him too, as it were, on the highest pinnacle of glory, amidst the continual applauses, and I had almost said, adorations, of the most brilliant Court in Europe; yet he was always the same, ever affable and courteous, giving constant proofs of his great humanity, and of his love for his friends and his country. . . . And as to his courage, none that have ever heard of his glorious attempt in 1745 can, I should think, call it in question.’
Cameron adds that if he himself was engaged in a new plot, ‘neither the fear of the worst death their malice could invent, nor much less their flattering promises, could have extorted any discovery of it from me.’ He forgives all his enemies, murderers, and false accusers, from ‘the Elector of Hanover and his bloody son, down to Samuel Cameron, the basest of their spies.’
As to the Prince’s religion, Cameron says (June 1753):