While London was awaiting the return of the hero, whose triumphs had already been celebrated, the anti-Jacobites were disappointed by being deprived of greeting in their rough way the arrival of the captured rebel lords. As early, indeed, as November 1745, Charles Radcliffe (calling himself Lord Derwentwater) had been taken with his son on board the ‘Soleil,’ bound for Scotland and high treason, and these had been got into the Tower, at peril to their lives. But others were expected. The Earl of Cromartie and his son, Lord Macleod, had been taken at Dunrobin the day before Culloden. The Earl of Kilmarnock had been captured in the course of the fight; Lord Balmerino a day or two after. The old Marquis of Tullibardine, who had been in the fray of ’15, the attempt in ’19, and had escaped after both, missed now his old luck; that passed to his brother, Lord George Murray, who got clear off to the Continent. Lord Tullibardine being sorely pressed and in great distress, sought the house of Buchanan of Drummakill. It is a question whether Tullibardine asked asylum or legally surrendered himself. In either case, he was given up. The above lords were despatched to London by sea in two separate voyages. Thus they were spared the insults undergone thirty years before by Lord Derwentwater and his unfortunate companions. On June 29th, Walpole writes: ‘Lady Cromartie went down incog. to Woolwich to see her son pass by, without the power of speaking to him. I never heard a more melancholy instance of affection.’ Lord Elcho, who had escaped, solicited a pardon; but, says Walpole, ‘as he has distinguished himself beyond all the rebel commanders by brutality and insults and cruelty to our prisoners, I think he is likely to remain where he is.’ Walpole was of opinion that the young Chevalier was allowed to escape. He also says: ‘The duke gave Brigadier Mordaunt the Pretender’s coach, on condition he rode up to London in it. “That I will, sir,” said he, “and drive till it stops of its own accord at the Cocoa Tree”—the Jacobite Coffee House in St. James’s Street.’
THE DUKE IN ABERDEEN.
With leafy June came the duke; but before him arrived his baggage. When that baggage which the duke and General Hawley brought with them from Scotland was unpacked in London, the articles of which it consisted must have excited some surprise. To show what it was, it is necessary to go northward to the house of Mr. Thompson, advocate, in the Great Row, Aberdeen. The duke had his quarters in that house, after his state entry into the granite city, in February 1746. Six weeks were the Thompsons constrained to bear with their illustrious but unprofitable lodger. They had to supply him with coals, candles, the rich liquids in the advocate’s cellars, and all the milk of his sole cow. The bed and table linen was both used and abused. The duke is even charged with breaking up a press which was full of sugar, of which he requisitioned every grain. At the end of the six weeks, when about to march from the city, the duke left among the three servants of the house as many guineas. This was not illiberal; but Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were chiefly aggrieved by his Highness’s lack of courtesy. He went away without asking to see them, or leaving any acknowledgment of their hospitality by sending even a curt thank ye! General Hawley behaved even more rudely in the house of Mrs. Gordon of Hallhead. Before he took possession it was understood that everything was to be locked up, and that the general was only to have the use of the furniture. This gallant warrior, as soon as he had flung his plumed hat on the table, demanded the keys. LOOTING. Much disputation followed, with angry squabbling, and the keys were only given up on the general’s threat that he would smash every lock in the house. The yielding came too late. General and duke together declared all the property of Mrs. Gordon to be confiscated, except the clothes she wore. ‘Your loyalty, Madam,’ said Major Wolfe to her, ‘is not suspected;’ which made the poor lady only the more perplexed as to why she was looted. The major politely offered to endeavour to get restored to her any article she particularly desired to recover. ‘I should like to have all my tea back,’ said Mrs. Gordon. ‘It is good tea,’ said the major. ‘Tea is scarce in the army. I do not think it recoverable.’ It was the same with the chocolate and many other things agreeable to the stomach. ‘At all events,’ said the lady, ‘let me have my china again!’ ‘It is very pretty china,’ replied the provoking major, ‘there is a good deal of it; and we are fond of china ourselves; but, we have no ladies travelling with us. I think you should have some of the articles.’ Mrs. Gordon, however, obtained nothing. She petitioned the duke, and he promised restitution; but, says the lady herself, ‘when I sent for a pair of breeches for my son, for a little tea for myself, for a bottle of ale, for some flour to make bread, because there was none to be bought in the town, all was refused me!’ ‘In fact, Hawley, on the eve of his departure,’ Mrs. Gordon tells us, ‘packed up every bit of china I had, all my bedding and table linen, every book, my repeating clock, my worked screen, every rag of my husband’s clothes, the very hat, breeches, night-gown, shoes, and what shirts there were of the child’s; twelve tea-spoons, strainer and tongs, the japanned board on which the chocolate and coffee cups stood; and he put them on board a ship in the night time.’
THE DUKE AND HIS PLUNDER.
Out of this miscellaneous plunder, a tea equipage and a set of coloured table china, addressed to the Duke of Cumberland at St. James’s, reached their destination. With what face his Highness could show to his London friends the valuable china he had stolen from a lady whose loyalty, he allowed, was above suspicion, defies conjecture. The spoons, boy’s shirts, breeches, and meaner trifles, were packed up under an address to General Hawley, London. ‘A house so plundered,’ wrote the lady, ‘I believe was never heard of. It is not 600l. would make up my loss; nor have I at this time a single table-cloth, napkin, or towel, teacup, glass, or any one convenience.’ One can hardly believe that any but the more costly articles reached London. Moreover, whatever censure the Londoners may have cast upon the plunderers, the duke was not very ill thought of by the Aberdeen authorities. When the duke was perhaps sipping his tea from the cups, or banquetting his friends at St. James’s off Mrs. Gordon’s dinner-service, a deputation from Aberdeen brought to his Highness the ‘freedom’ of the city, with many high compliments on the bravery and good conduct of the victor at Culloden!
The duke got tired of his tea-set. He is said to have presented it to one of the daughters of husseydom, and the damsel sold it to a dealer in such things. A friend of Mrs. Gordon’s saw the set exposed for sale in the dealer’s window, and on inquiry he learnt, from the dealer himself, through what clean hands it had come into his possession.
A HUMAN HEAD.
If report might be credited the Duke of Cumberland brought with him to London, and in his own carriage, a human head, which he believed to be that of Charles Edward! Young Roderick Mackenzie called to the soldiers who shot him down in the Braes of Glenmorristen, ‘Soldiers, you have killed your lawful prince!’ These words, uttered to divert pursuit from the young Chevalier, were believed, and when Roderick died, the soldiers cut off his head and brought it to the Duke of Cumberland’s quarters. Robert Chambers, in his ‘History of the Rebellion,’ qualifies with an ‘it is said’ the story that the duke stowed away the head in his chaise, and carried it to London. Dr. Chambers adds, as a fact, that Richard Morrison, Charles Edward’s body-servant, and a prisoner at Carlisle, was sent for to London, as the best witness to decide the question of identity. Morrison fainted at this trial of his feelings; but regaining composure, he looked steadily at the relic, and declared that it was not the head of his beloved master.
‘SWEET WILLIAM.’
But all minor matters were forgotten in the general joy. Now the duke was back in person, loyal London went mad about ‘the son of George, the image of Nassau!’ Flattery, at once flowery and poetical, was heaped upon him. A flower once dedicated to William III. was now dedicated to him. The white rose in a man’s button-hole or on a lady’s bosom, in the month of June, was not greater warranty of a Jacobite than the ‘Sweet-William,’ with its old appropriate name, was of a Whig to the back-bone. Of the poetical homage, here is a sample:—