Grossett’s second brother, Alexander, was a captain in Price’s regiment, and served on the staff at the battle of Culloden, where he was killed under circumstances related in the text (p. 336). His wife and children are on the list of recipients of gratuities from a Guildhall Relief Fund collected for sufferers in the campaign of the ’Forty-five (see Appendix, p. 429). The entry reads, ‘Captain Grossett’s widow and 4 children, £150.’ It was the largest individual sum distributed.
Grossett’s narrative seems truthful and straightforward. Although presented in the unusual form of a commercial invoice, it is particularly interesting and useful in giving details of minor events of the campaign not generally mentioned, or at least not detailed elsewhere. He, however, would convey the impression that his enterprises were always successful, which was not the case. For instance, the Jacobites were successful in securing the passage of the Firth of Forth, yet Grossett does not make the reader understand this in his long account of the operation at pp. 353-358, and the same applies to other passages. Yet the description does not differ more from the Jacobite accounts than in modern times do the descriptions of operations as narrated by opposing belligerent generals.[103]
Two services he was employed on are worthy of special notice—the release of the officers on parole (p. 364), and his participation in the distribution of the Guildhall Relief Fund (p. 374). The former service had been originally destined by Hawley for the company of Edinburgh volunteers under the command of John Home (author of Douglas), by whom it was indignantly refused.[104] The latter, which is described in the Appendix, is particularly interesting at the present time of war, when similar funds are being distributed for similar purposes.
The manuscripts of the ‘Memorial,’ the ‘Narrative,’ and ‘The Account of Money’ are in the Record Office. A remarkable coincidence procured the Correspondence printed on pp. 379-399. After the ‘Narrative’ was in type, my friend, Mr. Moir Bryce, President of the Old Edinburgh Club, sent me a packet of letters, most of them holograph, to look over and see if there was anything of interest in them. To my surprise and gratification, I found they were the identical original letters that Grossett quotes as authority for his transactions. Mr. Bryce, who had purchased the letters from a dealer, knew nothing of the history of their ownership. He subsequently generously presented me with the collection. The Report of Fawkener and Sharpe was lent to me by Miss Frances Grosett-Collins, Bredisholm, Chew Magna, Somerset. Miss Grosett-Collins also kindly lent me some family papers from which, along with documents preserved in the Record Office and the British Museum, these brief notes of her ancestor’s career have been compiled.
ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLES OF PRESTON, FALKIRK, AND CULLODEN
This is a beautifully written manuscript of sixty-two folios, small quarto, by Andrew Lumisden, private secretary to Prince Charles when in Scotland. Certain documents bound up with the manuscript give its history. It was originally written for the information of John Home, author of the tragedy of Douglas, when engaged in writing his history of the Rebellion. After Home’s death, it was presented by his nephew, John Home, W.S., to Macvey Napier, Librarian of the Signet Library. In 1840 Napier presented it to Mr. James Gibson Craig, W.S., because, as he says in a letter, he ‘has a just taste and value for such documents.’ On Mr. Gibson Craig’s death in 1886, it passed into the collection of his partner Sir Thomas Dawson Brodie, Bart. On his death, it came into my possession by purchase.
Andrew Lumisden was a grandson of Andrew Lumisden, episcopal minister of Duddingston, who was ‘outed’ at the Revolution. In 1727 the latter was consecrated bishop of Edinburgh, and died six years later. The bishop’s third son, William, was educated for the bar, but he ‘went out’ in 1715, and, refusing to take the oaths to Government after that Rising, he was unable to follow his profession, but practised in Edinburgh as a Writer or law agent. He married Mary Bruce, a granddaughter of Robert Bruce, third of Kennet. To them were born two children, (1) Isabella born in 1719, who, in 1747, was married to the young artist Robert Strange, whom she had induced to join Prince Charles’s Life Guards, and who afterwards became the most famous British engraver of his time, and was knighted by George III.; and (2) Andrew, born in 1720, the author of this ‘Account.’
Andrew followed his father’s profession of Writer, and when Prince Charles came to Edinburgh in 1745 he was, on the recommendation of his cousin Sir Alex. Dick of Prestonfield, appointed private secretary to the Prince, and accompanied him throughout the campaign. After Culloden he was attainted. He concealed himself for some weeks in Edinburgh, escaped to London, and thence to Rouen. Here at first he suffered great privation, but succeeded in obtaining a French pension of 600 livres, which relieved his immediate wants. In 1749 he went to Rome, and in the following year he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Old Chevalier. On the death of James Edgar, in 1762, he succeeded him as Jacobite Secretary of State. The Old Chevalier died in 1766, and Lumisden was for a time continued in his office by Charles. The great object of Charles’s policy was to be acknowledged by the Pope as King of Great Britain, a title which Clement XIII. refused him in spite of a powerful appeal by Cardinal Henry, Duke of York, to his Holiness.[105] Charles, smarting under the indignity, became intensely irritable, and gave himself up more and more to self-indulgence. In December 1768 Lumisden, along with two other Scottish officials, was summarily dismissed for refusing to accompany his royal master to an oratorio when that master was intoxicated.[106] Leaving Rome, he settled in Paris, where he moved in the highest literary and artistic circles. In 1773 he was allowed to return to Great Britain, and five years later he received a full pardon.
Lumisden, who was never married, continued to spend much of his time in Paris, accounted ‘a man of the finest taste and learning,’ living the life of a dilettante, and paying frequent visits to London and Edinburgh.
There is a pleasant anecdote told of him at this time, which reflects the kindly feeling borne by King George III. to irreconcilable Jacobites. It is very similar to the well-known story of King George’s message to Laurence Oliphant of Gask, told by Sir Walter Scott in the Introduction to Redgauntlet. It must be remembered that to their dying day both the laird of Gask and Andrew Lumisden never referred to King George except as the Elector of Hanover. The story of Lumisden is told in a family paper[107] by his great-niece Mrs. Mure (née Louisa Strange), and may be given in that lady’s own words.