Origins of the 'Forty-five

by Unknown

The account of the interview with Cecil (pp. 16, 21) makes pathetic reading. Murray, the Scottish official agent, fresh from seeing Balhaldy and Sempill, the official agents in Paris, is conscious that the latter are deceiving both the French Government and their own party. Murray conceals from Balhaldy that he is going to interview Cecil; from Cecil that he has been in Paris. Cecil, on the other hand, makes only a partial disclosure of his feelings in Murray’s presence. He is contemptuous of his Jacobite colleagues, the Duchess of Buckingham and her party, and he has not a good word to say of Sempill. Murray again ridicules Cecil, of whom he has a poor opinion.

How could a cause served by such agents ever prosper?

This copy of John Murray’s papers and the three following documents were found among some papers relating to the ’Forty-five collected by a gentleman of Midlothian shortly after the Rising. Many years ago I was permitted to copy them, and from these transcripts the text has been printed.

MEMORIAL CONCERNING THE HIGHLANDS

In 1898 the late Mr. Andrew Lang edited and published a manuscript from the King’s Library in the British Museum, which he entitled The Highlands of Scotland in 1750. Mr. Lang was unable to discover the author, but conjectured that it was written by Mr. Bruce, a Government agent employed to survey the Highland forfeited estates after the ’Forty-five. A close scrutiny of Mr. Lang’s volume along with the Memorial here printed has convinced me that they are the work of the same hand. Whoever wrote the manuscript in the King’s Library, the information contained therein came from the author of this ‘Memorial.’ The manuscript in the British Museum contains a good deal more than this Memorial, but the views advanced are generally the same, the sentiments are similar, and occasionally the phraseology is identical.

The manuscript from which the ‘Memorial Concerning the Highlands’ is printed is holograph of the Rev. Alexander Macbean, minister of Inverness at the time of the ’Forty-five. Macbean was well qualified to write on this subject. I have been unable to discover the place of his birth, but it may be conjectured that, if not actually born in the Macbean country, his family came from there, i.e. that part of Inverness-shire lying to the east of Loch Ness, of which The Mackintosh was feudal superior. The earliest information that can be gleaned from ecclesiastical records is that he received his degree of Master of Arts from the University of St. Andrews in 1702, and that he was employed as schoolmaster at Fort William from 1701 to 1709. That his salary was slender may well be believed, but its tenuity was aggravated by the fact that it was not paid regularly. We find that as late as 1717 the Commission of the General Assembly applied to the Treasury for arrears due to Macbean, and was bluntly refused on the ground that the Treasury was not responsible for debts incurred before the Union of 1707.

Alexander Macbean went from the Western Highlands to Roxburghshire, where he became chaplain to Douglas of Cavers, and was licensed as a probationer by the Presbytery of Edinburgh in 1711. In the following year the right of presentation to the parish of Avoch in the Black Isle, Ross-shire, having fallen to the Presbytery of Chanonry, jure devoluto, Macbean was selected to fill the vacancy, and was ordained minister of the parish in June 1712. His appointment met with fierce opposition. His predecessor had been one of the pre-Revolution episcopal ministers who had retained his living, and the parishioners, for the most part episcopalians, resented his intrusion and fretted him with litigation. He became so unhappy that he obtained permission to resign his charge. In 1714 he was presented to the rural parish of Douglas in Lanarkshire, and there he remained for six years. In 1720 he was back in the Highlands as minister of the ‘third charge’ of Inverness; and in 1727 he was transferred to the ‘first charge’ of that important town, and there he remained until his death in 1762.

In Inverness he made his individuality strongly felt as champion for the Government. He was ‘the John Knox of the North,’ and one who exerted himself to suppress the spirit of rebellion in and about Inverness in the years 1745 and 1746.

On one occasion he nearly fell a victim to his interest in the struggle. Having gone with many others to the Muir of Culloden to witness the battle, one of the flying Highlanders attempted to cut him down with his broadsword, but the blow was warded off by a bystander.

Alexander Macbean was the father of a very distinguished son, Lieut.-General Forbes Macbean (1725-1800) of the Royal Artillery. This officer was educated at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, was present at Fontenoy in 1745, and at Minden in 1759. At Minden he so distinguished himself that he was presented with a gratuity of five hundred crowns and a letter of thanks from the Commander-in-Chief, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, written with his own hand. Forbes Macbean subsequently became Inspector-General of Portuguese Artillery, 1765-69; served in Canada 1769-73 and 1778-80; but his principal claim to the gratitude of posterity is a collection of manuscript notes recording the early history of the Royal Artillery.