Readers who have followed the adventures of Pickle the Spy may care to know what were the later fortunes of his inseparable companion, Young Glengarry. These fortunes were not answerable to the expectations of the Chief. The death of Henry Pelham, in March 1754, blighted, as we shall learn, the hopes which Glengarry, like Pickle, had founded on the promises of the Prime Minister, and left him a debtor to Government for claims on his lands. That Young Glengarry, on reaching his estates in November 1754, behaved with oppressive dishonesty to his smaller wadsetters, men holding portions of his land in pawn, we learn from the report of Colonel Trapaud, who, for some sixty years, was Governor of Fort Augustus. Early in 1755, we find Glengarry at Inverness, where he signs a tack, or lease, on January 24. A copy of an undated letter from Pickle represents Glengarry as ‘making a grand tour round several parts of the Highlands, and having concourse of people from several clans to wait of him.’ Glengarry himself speaks, in a letter to be quoted, about such a gathering. In 1755, we find General Bland objecting to Glengarry’s journeyings (when Pickle went to London), and on May 18, 1757, Captain John Macdonnell, of General Frazer’s regiment, departing for America, makes Glengarry his ‘factor and attorney,’ also his executor and general legatee.[114] This Captain Macdonnell was the younger Lochgarry, who accompanied Pickle in Edinburgh, in September 1754. ‘I hope, in case of accident, you’ll take care of Young Lochgary,’ writes Pickle.[115] Captain Macdonnell was later Colonel of the 76th, says General Stewart, and a previous owner of my copy of the General’s book notes in the margin that ‘he was wounded on the Heights of Abraham.’ Critics who think that Glengarry was personated by Pickle will observe that Young Lochgarry knew both gentlemen and could not be deceived. He was Pickle’s companion in Edinburgh when Pickle had just lost his father, a Highland chief. In 1757 he makes Glengarry (who had suffered a similar bereavement at the same time as Pickle), his factor and legatee. There is, of course, no reason to suppose that Young Lochgarry had ever heard of such a mysterious personage as Pickle.
We know nothing else of Glengarry’s life from 1755 to 1757, when his manuscript letter book throws a melancholy light on his closing years. There is a draft of a letter of 1757 and several drafts of 1758-1759, in a stitched folio wherein he entered the brouillons of his correspondence, not always in his own hand. On April 28, 1757, he wrote from London, probably from his rooms in Beaufort Buildings, Strand. He writes to his Edinburgh agent, Mr. Orme, W.S., on a variety of business. His action in settling his estates was much impeded by the retention of his charters and family papers by Sir Everard Falkner (or Faulkner), an English officer. ‘I have prevailed,’ he says, ‘upon Mr. Brado, how (who) is a principal man amongst the Jewes, to endeavour to recover my charters from Sir Everard.’ He expects to redeem all the wadsets on his lands, and to compound for a few of the most pressing of his father’s debts. But he must have been disappointed, for on his death, in 1761, more of his estate was in the hands of wadsetters than in his own. He must, however, have secured proof of ‘my propinquity to those of my predecessors left infeft,’ for he was formally inducted into his property before an Inverness jury in 1758. He mentions that, when he left Scotland, ‘the appearance of a famine threatened then the whole north,’ and ‘his friends were buying meal in Buchan.’ A wet summer and autumn always meant dearth in the Highlands. He alludes to some military oppression of one of his retainers: ‘the attempt is so flagrant that it would not pass unpunished amongst the hotentots.’ An unfinished draft appears to be addressed to General Frazer, son of Old Lovat. With him (if it is Frazer) he wants ‘to settle family differences à l’aimable.’ His correspondent is leaving Scotland after recruiting.
In June 1758, Glengarry was in correspondence with persons concerned in the affairs of his sister-in-law, widow of his brother Æneas, accidentally shot at Falkirk, in 1746. Æneas must have married very young: he was not twenty when he died, but he left a son and a daughter. For some unknown reason Glengarry was on ill terms with his brother’s widow, as will appear, and she would not permit her children to visit their uncle. To this business the following letter refers:
‘To Rory McLeod.
‘(Dated Greenfield, 22nd June, 1758.)
‘Dear Sir,—I am favour’d with yours by the last post, and am not a little surprized to understand by it that Mr Robison should have wrott either to Mr Drummond or you that I intended to dispose of my nephew contrar to the present system of moral education, all I said to Mr Robison that if I sent him abroad I could have him educated for nothing, but that I did not myself aprove of this frugall method, but that I would advise with Mr Drummond how to Dispose of him when I would be at Edinburgh, that if he inclin’d a military life, I might have interest to get him a pair of Colours, but then I would insist the best moitié of his patrimony should be assigned to his sister, but that what I inclined he should follow was the law, if he had genius for that profession, and that in that case if Mr Drummond aprovd of it, I would send him for the sake of the language to some country schooll in England. This was all that passed upon honour, and Desired to send over the boy that I might make him acquaint in the country, and should only Detain him two months, I had a Double view in this as I had the countrey about that time all convened, it would have been fifty pounds in his way, and this I told Mr Robison; and at the same time, as the lassie had no English, I would Keep her all winter with my sister so that in spring she might be presentable, when I would send her for a little time to my sister’s Dr Chisolme at Inverness. Mr. Robison approved of all this, particularly of the lassy’s coming, and, that he might not be blamed for retaining them, sent them to their Mother’s, where the Girle has ever been, and laid the whole blame to her charge. I have still Mr Robison’s letter, but he has his views which I am resolved to frustrate.... I will shew you my brother’s discharge to my father, and I have living witnesses that delivered him Cattle in payment of interest, and part principall, and as one of them is his father’s brother, how would go all lengths for him, that there can be no objection to his evidence as Discharges have been burned or Destroyed after the Castle was blown up....
‘Your affect. Cousine and humble servant,
‘Mackdonell.’
Burt says that ‘to have the English’ was the mark, among the Highlanders, of a gentleman’s children. Glengarry’s niece had as yet no English; her education had doubtless been neglected in the distresses consequent on the Rising. Probably, too, her mother was poor, her husband’s portion having been partly paid in cattle. These very cattle may have been among the 20,000 plundered by Cumberland’s men after Culloden, as a volunteer writes in his little book of ‘A Journey with the Army into Scotland’ (1747).