[374] Humphrey Bland (1686-1763), author of A Treatise on Discipline. At this time he was a major-general and colonel of the dragoon regiment now the 3rd Hussars. He was governor of Edinburgh Castle from 1752 till his death. He became Commander-in-Chief in Scotland in 1753.
[375] Probably a mistake for lieut.-colonel (the command is too great for a subaltern’s), and evidently means Robert Rich (1714-85), son of Field-Marshal Sir Robert Rich, whom he succeeded as 5th bart. in 1768. Rich was at this time lieut.-colonel of Barrel’s regiment the 4th (now the K. O. Royal Lancaster regiment). At Culloden Rich was badly wounded and lost his hand.
[376] See post, p. 307.
[377] Probably means ‘light-footed laddies.’ Cf. Oxford Dict., s.v. ‘leger.’
[378] Robert Hunter of Burnside, Monifieth, was captain in the Prince’s Life-Guards, and was very active throughout the campaign. He escaped to Bergen in Norway after Culloden, and for a time was held prisoner there, but apparently soon released, for in October he is on French King’s pension list for 1800 livres as a ‘gentilhomme eccossois arrivé depuis peu en France.’
[379] This took place on 17th March. The officer commanding the Jacobite party was Major Nicolas Glascoe, a lieutenant in Dillon’s Irish-French regiment. He acted as major and military instructor to the 2nd battalion of Lord Ogilvie’s regiment. He was made prisoner after Culloden, and tried at London in November, but pleading that he was born in France and held a French commission, he was released as a rebel, the irons were knocked off his legs, and he was treated as a prisoner of war.
[380] The husbands of these ladies were all in the Jacobite army.
[381] Cullen House was the home of Lord Findlater.
[382] William Thornton, of Thornville, near Knaresborough, raised and equipped a company, known as the ‘Yorkshire Blues,’ at his own expense in October 1745. He joined Wade’s army at Newcastle, and his company was attached to Pulteney’s regiment (13th, now Prince Albert’s Own Somersetshire Light Infantry), which was below strength. His henchman and servant was John Metcalf, better known as ‘Blind Jack of Knaresborough,’ afterwards celebrated as a civil engineer and maker of roads, but at this time a horse-coper and itinerant musician. At Falkirk the company served as escort to the artillery which covered itself with disgrace. Blind Jack fought at the battle in which his master and Lieutenant Crofts were taken prisoners. After the battle Blind Jack retreated to Edinburgh along with the remains of the company, now reduced to forty-eight from an original strength of sixty-four. In a quaint little book, The Life of John Metcalf (3rd edition, Leeds, 1802), there is a long and graphic account of how this blind man succeeded in rescuing his master. Donning a ‘plaid waist-coat,’ the Jacobite uniform, he made his way from Edinburgh to the battle field, where among the marauders hunting for plunder he found the wife of Lord George Murray’s cook, who gave him ‘a token’ for her husband. Giving out that he wished to be employed as a musician to Prince Charles, he made his way to Lord George Murray’s quarters at Falkirk, where that General gave him a glass of wine, and he had a conversation with several of the Jacobite leaders. Confined on suspicion for some days, he was acquitted by a court-martial. Finding his captain, he had him disguised as a Highlander and managed to escape with him. How Crofts and Simson escaped I do not know. The rev. ensign was Patrick Simson, minister of Fala, near Dalkeith (b. 1713; ord. 1743; transferred to Clunie, Dunkeld, 1759; d. 1771). How he joined Thornton’s ‘Blues’ I do not know; one would rather have expected to find him in the Glasgow regiment (see post, p. 198). The original ensign of the company had died at Newcastle, and Thornton may have appointed Simson when in Edinburgh. Simson had the reputation of being a sportsman, particularly an angler. (Scott, Fasti.) The Dict. of Nat. Biog. says that Blind Jack fought at Culloden, but it is not so stated in the life quoted above, and if this passage is correct it precludes the possibility. There is no mention in the Life of this incident at Ellon, nor any account of the company leaving the army.
[383] Cumberland left Aberdeen on April 8th.