It is matter of history that Argyll did not escape in the long run. In 1685, three years before the dawn of the Revolution, he made that unfortunate expedition to Scotland which ended in failure, capture and death on the old charge. One of his associates was Sir John Cochrane of Ochiltree; he also was captured and as a “forefaulted traitor” was led by the hangman through the streets of Edinburgh bound and bareheaded. A line from London and all was over, so his friends thought, but that line never arrived. On the 7th of July in that year the English mail was twice stopped and robbed near Alnwick. The daring highwayman turned out to be a girl! She was Grizel, Sir John’s daughter, disguised in men’s clothes and (of course) armed to the teeth. In the end Sir John obtained his pardon, and lived to be Earl of Dundonald.
In the middle of the next century we have this on the Jacobite side. When the Highlanders were in Carlisle in the ’45 a lady called Dacre, daughter of a gentleman in Cumberland, lay at Rose Castle in the pangs of childbirth and very ill indeed. A party of Highlanders under Macdonald of Kinloch Moidart entered her dwelling to occupy it as their own. When the leader learned what had taken place, the presumed Highland savage showed himself a considerate and chivalrous gentleman. With courteous words he drew off his men, took the white cockade from his bonnet and pinned it on the child’s breast. Thus it served to guard not merely the child but the whole household. The infant became in after years the wife of Clerk of Pennicuick, her house was at 100 Princes Street, she lived far into the last century, known by her erect walk, which she preserved till over her eightieth year, and by her quaint dress. Once she was sitting in Constable’s shop when Sir Walter Scott went by. “Oh, sir Walter, are you really going to pass me?” she called out in a dudgeon that was only half feigned. But she was easily pacified. “Sure, my Lady,” said the Wizard in comic apology, “by this time I might know your back as well as your face.” She was called the “White Rose of Scotland” from the really beautiful legend of the white cockade, which she wore on every important occasion. And what of the Highland Bayard? His estates were forfeited, his home was burned to the ground, and himself on the Gallows Hill at Carlisle on the 18th October 1746 suffered the cruel and ignominious death of a traitor—aequitate deum erga bona malaque documenta!
The women were on the side of the Jacobites even to the end. “Old maiden ladies were the last leal Jacobites in Edinburgh. Spinsterhood in its loneliness remained ever true to Prince Charlie and the vanished dreams of its youth.” Thus Dame Margaret Sinclair of Dunbeath; and she adds that in the old Episcopal chapel in the Cowgate the last of those Jacobite ladies never failed to close her prayer book and stand erect in silent protest, when the prayer for King George III. and the reigning family was read in the Church service. Alison Rutherford, born 1712 and the wife of Patrick Cockburn of Ormiston, was not of this way of thinking. She lived in the house of, and (it seems) under the rule of, her father-in-law. She said she was married to a man of seventy-five. He was Lord Justice-Clerk, and unpopular for his severity to the unfortunate rebels of the ’15. The nine of diamonds, for some occult reason, was called the curse of Scotland, and when it turned up at cards a favourite Jacobite joke was to greet it as the Lord Justice-Clerk. Mrs. Cockburn is best known as the authoress of one, and not the best, version of the Flowers of the Forest. But this is not her only piece. When the Prince occupied Edinburgh in the ’45, she wrote a skit on the specious language of the proclamations which did their utmost to satisfy every party. It began—
“Have you any laws to mend?
Or have you any grievance?
I’m a hero to my trade
And truly a most leal prince.”
With this in her pocket she set off to visit the Keiths at Ravelston. They were a strong Jacobite family, which was perhaps an inducement to the lady to wave it in their faces. She was driven back in their coach, but at the West Port was stopped by the rough Highland Guard who threatened to search after treasonable papers. Probably the lady then thought the squib had not at all a humorous aspect, and she quaked and feared its discovery. But the coach was recognised as loyal by its emblazonry and it franked its freight, so to speak. Mrs. Cockburn was a brilliant letter-writer, strong, shrewd, sensible, sometimes pathetic, sometimes almost sublime, she gives you the very marrow of old Edinburgh. Thus she declines an invitation: “Mrs. Cockburn’s compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers. Would wait on them with a great deal of pleasure, but finds herself at a loss, as Mrs. Chalmers sets her an example of never coming from home, and as there is nobody she admires more, she wishes to imitate her in everything.” A woman loses her young child. These are Mrs. Cockburn’s truly Spartan comments: “Should she lose her husband or another child she would recover: we need sorrowes often. In the meantime, if she could accept personal severity it would be well,—a ride in rain, wind and storm until she is fatigued to death, and spin on a great wheel and never allowed to sit down till weariness of nature makes her. I do assure you I have gone through all these exercises, and have reason to bless God my reason was preserved and health now more than belongs to my age.” And again: “As for me, I sit in my black chair, weak, old, and contented. Though my body is not portable, I visit you in my prayers and in my cups.” She tells us that one of her occasional servants, to wit, the waterwife, so called because she brought the daily supply of water up those interminable stairs, was frequently tipsy and of no good repute. She discharged her, yet she reappeared and was evidently favoured by the other servants; this was because she had adopted a foundling called Christie Fletcher, as she was first discovered on a stair in Fletcher’s Land. The child had fine eyes, and was otherwise so attractive that Mrs. Cockburn got her into the Orphan Hospital. “By the account,” she grimly remarks, “of that house, I think if our young ladies were educated there, it would make a general reform of manners.”
