He was taken at last on July 18, 1753, in a wood near Lochourn in Morar, and was tried in Edinburgh on a charge of High Treason, on March 11, 1754. With him was Macdonald of Morar, five or six other Macdonalds, and Mackinnons, a MacEachan, and others. He disputed the indictment, which described him as ‘of Barisdale,’ on the score that his grandfather had only been ‘a moveable tenant of Glengarry’s, without any right in writing whatsoever.’ This plea was disregarded, and he was condemned to be hanged on May 22, bearing his sentence ‘with great composure and decency.’ Being respited, he lay in the Castle till 1762, when he took the oaths, and was released.
By a curious freak of fortune, young Barisdale’s son Col, in 1788, ‘held a Commission to regulate the Fisheries. This, in the height of the fishing season, was no easy task, and required a firm hand. Not only were there disputes among the fishermen themselves, but, apparently, thieves made it a regular trade to attend, and pick up what they could.... The poor fishermen now suffer from piracy in another form. If there were officials like Barisdale armed with sufficient powers, trawling within the limits would soon be extirpated,’ writes Mr. Fraser Mackintosh.[67] The fishermen have never been fortunate. Before trawling came in they had to do with the portentous Col of Barisdale. Perhaps, of the two, they may prefer the trawlers.
Thus, in a generation, the son of Archibald and grandson of Col, the former a brigand and thief alike of cattle and herrings, became a peaceful subject, and protector of the very class of fishermen whom his grandsire had plundered. We may drop a tear over old romance, but reality has its alleviating features. There is absolutely no kind of villainy of which Col of Barisdale was not eminently guilty. Oppression, cruelty, cowardice, theft, and treachery were all among his qualities, were all notorious, yet, till after Culloden, Col could laugh at the law, and was not shunned by society.
We have seen that Col accuses Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat of corrupting his honour, and advising him to sell himself. This may, or may not, be true. The sympathies of Sir Alexander had been Jacobite, before 1745, but Murray of Broughton states that in 1741 he was very angry when Balhaldie put his name on a list of adherents presented to the French Court. ‘He declared he had never given him any authority to do so.’ A statement to the contrary effect will be found in Mr. Mackenzie’s ‘History of the Macdonalds,’ page 234. In 1744, Murray represents him as ready to rise if French troops were landed. Murray repeats, in justice, that Sir Alexander’s promises were purely contingent; they depended on the existence of a ‘well-concerted scheme,’ and there was none. But Sir Alexander not only did not come out, he was won over by Forbes of Culloden to the Hanoverian Cause. ‘I should be sorry,’ says Murray, ‘to have so bad an opinion of mankind as to think any of them cappable of attempting an apologie for him.’ Murray, in his examination, lied in Sir Alexander’s interests, saying ‘he always absolutely refused to have anything to do with the Pretender.’ But, after Preston Pans, Sir Alexander, moved by that victory, said, in the hearing of Malcolm Macleod of Raasay, that he would now raise 900 of his clan and march south to fight for King James. Next morning, however, he received a letter from Forbes of Culloden, and instantly ‘was quite upon the grave and thoughtful, and dropt the declared resolution of his own mind.’[68] In fact, he turned Hanoverian.
Later, in the crisis of the Prince’s wanderings, Sir Alexander was not at home when his wife, Lady Margaret, connived with Flora Macdonald to secure Charles’s escape from Skye. Lady Margaret wrote to Forbes of Culloden that Flora was ‘a foolish girl,’ and thanked God that she knew nothing of the Prince’s being in hiding near her house. Sir Alexander, on the other hand, confessed to Forbes that Flora put his wife ‘in the utmost distress by telling her of the cargo she had brought from Uist.’[69] It was fortunate for everybody, himself included, that Sir Alexander was away from home. He wrote the following letter to Cumberland, confessing nothing:—
From Sir Alexander McDonald to H.R.H. giving intelligence of Pretender’s movements
‘Sconsar, Isle of Sky, 1746.
‘Sir,—This morning Capt. Hodgson remitted to your R. Highness all the intelligence I had then got; in rideing a few miles I was informed of the Pretender’s whole progress since he landed in this island. By the letter remitted to your R.H. he was left at Portree, 14 miles from my house near which he landed; at Portree he met one Donald McDonald, who was in the Rebellion, and who put him into a boat belonging to the Isle of Rasay, which feryd him into that island; after staying there 2 nights he returned in the same small boat to the neighbourhood of Portree, attended by one Malcolm McLeod. That night he and his companion lay in a byre; next day (the Pretender in shabby man’s apparel since he left Portree) they found their way into a part of MacKinnon’s estate, and having found MacKinnon, though disguised and lurking himself, he found a boat which next day convey’d the Pretender, MacKinnon, and one John MacKinnon, into Moror. They sail’d from this island on Saturday last. MacKinnon was taken in Moror by a party from Sky, and John McK. was this day seized ... they are both on board the Furnace and confirm to a trifle the above relation.
‘Alex. MacDonald.’[70]
The Baronet tells as little as may be; he does not implicate Flora, and, of course, shields his wife. His own position was awkward.