VIII
JUSTICE AFTER CULLODEN
The Uprooting of Fassifern
The years 1752-1754 were full of trouble for Highlanders. The Prince was intriguing desperately with Scotland, and with Prussia. The Elibank Plot was matured and betrayed. Dr. Cameron and Lochgarry were stirring up the Clans. Cluny remained as untakable as Abd-el-Kader. The Government were alarmed at once by Pickle, by their ambassadors abroad, and by Count Kaunitz. The Forfeited Estates had been nationalised, ‘for the improvement of the Highlands,’ factors had been appointed to raise and collect rents: evictions were threatened; agrarian discontent had been aroused; Campbell of Glenure had been shot in the wood of Lettermore.[97] The reports of all these things flew from township to township, from strath to strath, as fleetly as the fiery cross. The Highlands, in 1752, were boiling like a caldron. Old tenants were being turned out that men of a hostile Whiggish clan might occupy their hereditary holdings. Ensign Small, an officer who knew Gaelic, and was engaged in secret service, found murmurs of a rising even in the Islands. The Duke of Newcastle was jotting down alarmed notes, ‘to be at any expense in order to find out where the Young Pretender is. Lord Anson to have Fregates upon the Scotch and Irish coast.’[98]
The consequence of this official flutter was a crowd of arrests and trials. James Stewart, on a charge of being accessory to Glenure’s slaying, was, to speak plain words, judicially murdered. He was confined in Fort William, and denied access to his advisers; the charges and evidence against him were kept from him till too late, he had a jury of hostile Campbells at Inveraray, the Duke on the bench, and he was hanged as accessory to a murder in which the alleged principal was not before the Court. Political necessities and clan hatred killed James Stewart (1752).
In 1753 Dr. Cameron was caught, and hanged in London, denouncing as informer his kinsman, Samuel Cameron. The famed Sergeant Mohr Cameron was taken (by treachery, General Stuart hints and tradition proclaims; both are right), and he ‘died for the law.’ His alleged crime was cattle theft, but, as a sergeant in French service, he was probably regarded as a Jacobite agent. The Sergeant was captured in mid-April, 1753: a few days later Angus Cameron, brother of Glenevis, was taken at the same place, his house of Dunan or Downan, in Rannoch. On May 6 Fassifern, Charles Stewart, writer in Banavie, Fassifern’s agent, and Glenevis, were lodged, with Angus Cameron, in Edinburgh Castle. On July 7 Young Barisdale, Young Morar, and others, were culled like flowers at Lochourn, while Young John Macdonnell, ‘Spanish John,’ was also arrested.
Of all these, the most important prisoner was Fassifern. He had been taken, as we saw, in October 1751, and released, as nothing could be found against him in the affair of the Cluny Treasure. He was Lochiel’s brother and representative, and consequently chief, for the time, of the Camerons. He had not been out in Forty-five. A man of commerce, a burgess of Glasgow, he had tried to dissuade Lochiel from exposing himself to the dangerous charm of the Prince. But he was naturally anxious to save as much as possible of Lochiel’s estate for the family. There were several lawful claims on it, which Government was bound to respect and he to press. Moreover he, with ‘Glenevegh’ (Glenevis), had been denounced by Pickle as agents between the Southern and Northern Jacobites.[99] In addition to all this, Fassifern was trying to keep the old Cameron tenants, Jacobites, in their holdings, and evict tenants who had the bad taste to be Whigs.
As early as May 1751 he had been denounced for these offences by Captains Johnston and Mylne, of the Buffs, in garrison at Inversnaid. ‘He falls on ways,’ writes an informer whose letter they forward, ‘of turning out any from their possessions, who he knows to be well affected to His Majesty.’ He encourages Jacobites to settle near the forts, for the purpose of a sudden assault.[100] He has ‘plenty of the Pretender’s money’ to use for these purposes. Clan sentiment, not Jacobitism, may have influenced Fassifern, and Glenevis, at least, was hardly the man to play the part of Jacobite agent.
The original charge against Fassifern in May 1753 was that of ‘correspondence with persons attainted.’ But the game of the Government was to get rid of him on any pretext. Colonel Crawfurd had come from Fort William to Edinburgh, and, on June 4, 1753, wrote a long letter to the Lord Justice Clerk. ‘The uprooting of Fassifern,’ he says, with candour, ‘is what we ought chiefly to have in view.’[101] He has found witnesses, or rather has heard of them (it seems kinder to omit the names of these gentlemen), who avow that Fassifern tampered with them to threaten the late Glenure’s wife, and to murder Glenure. That unlucky man was factor for Lochiel’s as well as for Ardsheil’s forfeited estate, and was expected to evict Cameron tenants. ‘The Lord Advocate said that, if this did not hang Fassiefairn, it would at least send him to Nova Scotia.’ Perhaps, the Colonel thinks, Breakachie may be induced to inform against Fassifern! That culprit has only sent 100l. to Lochiel’s family in France, and has made Lochiel’s tenants work on his estate, instead of on the county roads.
These last were not hanging matters. And, somehow, Breakachie, a perfectly loyal gentleman, and kinsman of Cluny’s, did not give the desired information. The witnesses as to the suborning of Glenure’s murder by Fassifern would not kiss the book, or, perhaps, had never promised their evidence at all. Angus Cameron and Glenevis were discharged on bail, on July 3. No proof of treasonable correspondence, or suborned murder, or anything else existed, or could be found against Fassifern. Pickle, of course, could not be produced in Court. The Colonel does not conceal the discomfort of his reflections, and Government is perplexed as to the details of the process of ‘uprooting’ the representative of Lochiel. On June 10 Fassifern and Charles Stewart petitioned that they might be put on their trial. But what were they to be tried for? It was an awkward situation.
The resources of civilisation, however, were not exhausted. On August 6 the Duke of Argyll came to Edinburgh and, next day, took his seat in the Court of Session.
That day the Lord Advocate sprang a fresh charge on the accused. They might not have been holding treasonable correspondence, or even suborning murder, but they had been mixed up in—forgery! The Lord Advocate suspected that certain deeds had been forged, to substantiate claims made by Fassifern on Lochiel’s estate. These claims rested on old papers and bonds of various dates, from 1713 to 1748. There was ‘credible information’ (how obtained we shall learn) that five of these deeds were forged. Fassifern’s lawyer, Mr. Macfarlane (husband of pretty Mrs. Macfarlane who shot the Captain), had no longer the vouchers, the original papers from which he drew up the claims. These vouchers had been in a bag at Mr. Macfarlane’s house; but ‘some time in Summer’ (1752) Fassifern (being in Edinburgh) had sent for the bag, and had returned it in a few hours.