(State Papers, Domestic, Scotland, Bundle 38 (1747), No. 6.)
‘Roterdam, Oct. 17, 1747.
‘Sir,—I take this opportunity of my worthy friend an officer of the Royals of informing you how I have had severall letters on the following Subject from Mr. Macdonell Junior of Glengary who desires me to charge you with this letter. He has frequently and seriously reflected on the many good Advices given him by you and Maj. White when he was Prisoner at the Tower, to abandon that party and the service of France. I am thorrowly convinced that he is determined so to do if it is agreeable to the Ministry, and that he will give the Duke of Argyle and them all the assurances that a man of honour can give of his behaving as a peaceable Subject, if they will allow him to wait upon them in London. Let me beg of you for God’s sake to persuade these great men to accept of this young Gentleman’s offer, by which at once you’ll detach him from that party that has given birth to all the Calamitys that both his Clan and Country has suffered this age past: as I shall be some months here before my affair is Negociated you’ll have time to send me answer, which I pray God may be favourable. Please write me as soon as you can. I am with my Compliments to your family,
‘Sir, your most obedt. oblidged humble Sert.
‘Will: Baillie.
‘P.S.—The young man depends very much on the Duke of Argyle’s interest.
‘To Major Macdonald at London.’
On September 20, 1748, Glengarry wrote from Amiens, telling James that he ‘waited an opportunity of going safely to Britain,’ on his private affairs. In December he asked James to procure for him the colonelcy vacant by the death of Lochiel. Young Lochiel, a boy, had been appointed. James could do nothing, and was too poor to send money. But, on Glengarry’s request, he dispatched ‘a duplicate of your grandfather’s warrant to be a peer’—Lord Macdonnell and Aros. Glengarry often signs ‘Mackdonell,’ without Christian name.[128]
On June 8, 1749, Glengarry explained his circumstances to Cardinal York and to Lismore, James’s agent at Versailles. ‘I shall be obliged to leave this country, if not relieved.’ Presently he went to London, with Leslie, a priest suspected of treachery by the Jacobites.[129] Leslie says, ‘Glengarry did not intend to appear publicly’ in London, ‘but to have advice of some counsellors about an act of the Privy Council against his returning to Great Britain.’ He was so poor that Leslie pledged for him, to Clanranald, a watch of Mrs. Murray’s of Broughton, wife of the notorious traitor. He had already ‘sold his sword and shoe-buckles.’ This must have been the very nadir of his fortunes, and four years later Campbell of Lochnell told Mrs. Archibald Cameron that now, in 1748 or 1749—the lady could not remember which—Glengarry offered his service, ‘in any shape they thought proper,’ to the English Government and Henry Pelham.[130] Without pausing to discuss the value of Mrs. Cameron’s evidence (given on January 25, 1754) we return to what is actually known of Glengarry in 1749. He had left London, probably little the better for his visit. On September 23, 1749, Glengarry wrote to Lismore from Boulogne. He has been in London, by advice of his friends, ‘ces Messieurs croyant que je ne ferai point de difficulté de me conformer aux intentions du Gouvernement, mais étant toujours determine de ne me point égare[r] des principes de mes Ancêtres, ne du devoir que je dois a mon Roy je [de?] me lui tenir, je puis retire [retirais?].’ If not relieved, he must return to England.[131] We know what his protestations of loyalty were worth. We do not know what occurred to Glengarry, in London, at this time.
Starving in July or August 1749, Glengarry appears (according to Æneas Macdonald, the banker) to ‘have plenty of cash’ at the end of the year (December). In October his father had been released from Edinburgh Castle, a point of no evidential importance, as several other gentlemen were also simultaneously set free. His estates were not forfeited, though remonstrances on this head were addressed to the English Government. They exist in the State Papers.