On October 14, Glenevis tired of hiding, and surrendered himself to Crawfurd. No harm was found in Fassifern’s papers, which had been seized, and he, with Angus MacIan, a brother (or half-brother) of Lochgarry, was admitted to bail.
On October 22, Colonel Crawfurd wrote an account of Glenevis’s examination to Churchill, who forwarded it to the Duke of Newcastle. Now we must ask how Government, which in 1749-50 knew only the anonymous account of the treasure already quoted, was, in 1751, informed that Lochgarry, Young Glengarry, Cameron of Glenevis, and his brother Angus, had meddled with the spoil in December 1749? Readers of ‘Pickle the Spy’ will remember that Pickle (that is, ex hypothesi, Young Glengarry) dates his services as a paid informer from 1750-51. Young Glengarry, then, may have been himself the source of the intelligence about the plunder, and that, as we shall see, was the strong opinion of Glenevis.
In any case this is the earliest hint of suspicion against the honour of Young Glengarry which we have encountered. The eternal feud of Macdonnells and Camerons may have suggested the notion of Glengarry’s treachery to the mind of Glenevis; Cluny being out of the question, and he not knowing any one out of prison, except Young Glengarry, who had the necessary information. Glenevis’s brother, Angus, and Angus MacIan were in prison with himself, and Lochgarry was with his regiment in France.
Crawfurd says of Glenevis, and his suspicions:
‘He seems to think that all the Intelligence procured against him has been by means of Young Glengary: this you may believe I am at no great pains to desuade him from, as the greater Enmity gives the better chance of your coming at truth. He does not deny but that his brother, (Angus) Lochgary, Young Glengary, Angus Mc.Ian and he went into Badenoch in the winter 1749, after the Troops were gone from thence, with a view of meeting Clunie, but that while Lochgary, and young Glengary had their Interview at a sheiling opposite to Dalwhinnie, he was desired by Clunie to keep at the House of Dalwhinnie till sent for; and that neither Angus nor he coud be allowd to speak with him, tho he sent repeated messages by Clunie’s Piper, and a young Brother of Clunie’s. That he lay in the same Room with Young Glengary at Dalwhinnie, and early in the morning, the young Brother of Clunie brought Glengary a Bag which might contain two or three Hundred guineas, and counted them out to him, and that he understood Glengary got, in the whole, by that expedition about Two Thousand;[96] he farther says that the money remitted abroad by Cluny was carried away by his Brother in Law Mc.Pherson of Brechachie to Major Kennedy in the North of England....’ (So Gask also says.)
On October 31, Crawfurd again writes to Churchill. He had recommended on October 21, that Angus Cameron ‘should be allowed the quiet enjoyment of his treasure.’ He now remarks that Glenevis has been admitted to bail. ‘He says, in the Scotch phrase, that it is hard, to have both the skaith and the scorn’—that is, to be molested, though he has not got much of the French gold. ‘He blames his brother Angus for having acted a weak and foolish part in quitting (parting) with so great a share of the money that had fallen into his hands, which, he says, did not exceed £2,500, tho’ most people call it £3,000, and of which he knew his brother had paid £1,000 for the use of Lochiel soon after his going to France’ (1746). Next we find a repetition of Glenevis’s charges against Young Glengarry, as his betrayer. The accusation, too, that Young Glengarry forged King James’s name (alluded to by James in a letter to the Prince, March 17, 1750, as a story reported by Archy Cameron) is urged by Glenevis.
‘He (Glenevis) still continues full of resentment against Young Glengary, believing that he is the Author of all the information against him and his Brother Angus, not being able to account for our knowledge of the Badenoch meeting in any other way. He confirms what I wrote of the young Gentleman in my last, only that the £2,000 was not of Clunie’s money, but of what was left by the Secretary Murray in the hands of Mr. Mc.Douel his brother in Law, and that his credentials for receiving the money was from the old Pretender, but that he was sure they were forged.’ They certainly were forged.
One thing is to be observed about Glenevis’s doubts of Young Glengarry. In this year, 1751, and onwards, that hero was allowed by Government to live in London, in Beaufort Buildings, Strand, whence he communicated with Charles and James, as a strenuous Jacobite agent. His letters are printed by Browne from the Stuart MSS. Yet Government, if only from Glenevis’s evidence just given, knew that Glengarry was at least as guilty as Glenevis and his brother of the only crime charged against them on this occasion—namely, dealing with French gold that had been landed for the use of Prince Charles. Where the treason to King George came in, unless they were using the money for Jacobite purposes, or depriving his Majesty of spoils of war, or of treasure trove, does not appear. Yet the Camerons, Glenevis, Dunan, Fassifern, were all kept in durance at Port William, while Young Glengarry, implicated in their vague offence, was permitted to live, and even to make love, in London. To this point we return later (p. 207). Government had their own reasons for sparing Glengarry, while punishing his accomplices. These accomplices, again, averred that Glengarry had ‘peached’ upon them, as doubtless he had. The Camerons were released, but before very long, they and Fassifern were all imprisoned again in Edinburgh Castle, on a charge of treasonable dealings with the attainted. This was part of a plan of Government’s for ‘uprooting’ Fassifern, who represented the exiled Young Lochiel in the eyes of the Clan. The action of Government makes another chapter in the history of the sufferings after Culloden. Meanwhile the casks of louis d’or had done their task, and sown among the Clans the dragon’s teeth of distrust and of calumny. We cannot tell where the remainder of the gold went, though Cluny probably took what was left over to France, in 1754, as Charles commanded him to do, getting no more for his trouble, perhaps, than did poor Duncan Cameron in Strontian—‘not a shilling.’ As for Glenevis and his brother, they seem to have finally been fobbed off with the skaith and the scorn, and with very little else but the company of Colonel Crawfurd, so anxious to talk about their hay crop.
Such is an example of Highland life after Culloden. There are midnight meetings at lonely sheilings, there is digging and delving by hands that knew the claymore better than the spade. Letters are opened in the post office, secret murmurs fly about carrying charges of indefinite guilt, reported by unknown spies. No man can put confidence in another: each neighbour may have been bullied or bribed into babbling, and, when the laird sees the English colonel saunter along the avenue, Highland hospitality struggles in his heart with a natural inclination to drop out of a back window, and steal up the glen into the hills. A gentleman is apt to be less often on his estates than in Fort William prison or in Edinburgh Castle. No wonder that many joined the new Highland regiments when they were raised, and preferred King George’s pay to domiciliary visits from King George’s colonels!