Edinburgh Castle in 1715, from the North-East. From an old print.
Arthur, the officer who had bribed the soldiers, having engaged his brother, a physician in Edinburgh, in the Jacobite interest, let him into the secret of the design upon the castle. Dr. Arthur, who appears to have been a man of a timorous disposition, grew alarmed at this intelligence, and so deep had been the impression made upon his mind while contemplating the probable consequences of such a step, that on the day before the attempt his spirits became so depressed as to attract the notice of his wife, who importuned him to inform her of the cause. He complied, and his wife, without acquainting him, sent an anonymous letter to Sir Adam Cockburn of Ormiston, Lord-Justice-Clerk, acquainting him with the conspiracy. Cockburn received this letter at ten o’clock at night, and sent it off with a letter from himself to Lieutenant-colonel Stuart, the deputy-governor of the castle, who received the communication shortly before eleven. Stuart lost no time in ordering the officers to double their guards and make diligent rounds; but probably supposing that no attempt would be made that night he went to bed after issuing these instructions. In the meantime, the conspirators had assembled at a tavern preparatory to their attempt, but unfortunately for its success they lingered over their cups far beyond the time they had fixed upon for putting their project into execution. In fact, they did not assemble at the bottom of the wall till after the deputy-governor had issued his orders; but ignorant of what had passed within the castle, they proceeded to tie the rope, which had been let down by the soldiers, to the ladder. Unhappily for the whole party, the hour for changing the sentinels had arrived, and while the traitorous soldiers were in the act of drawing up the ladder, one Lieutenant Lindsay, at the head of a party of fresh sentinels, came upon them on his way to the sally-port. The soldiers, alarmed at the approach of Lindsay’s party, immediately slipt the rope, one of them at the same time discharging his piece at the assailants to divert suspicion from himself. The noise which this occurrence produced told the conspirators that they were discovered, on which they dispersed. A party of the town-guard which the Lord Provost, at the request of the Lord-Justice-Clerk, had sent to patrol about the castle, attracted by the firing, immediately rushed from the West-Port, and repaired to the spot, but all the conspirators, with the exception of four whom they secured, had escaped. These were one Captain Maclean, an officer who had fought under Dundee at Killiecrankie, whom they found lying on the ground much injured by a fall from the ladder or from a precipice; Alexander Ramsay and George Boswell, writers in Edinburgh; and one Lesly, who had been in the service of the same Duchess of Gordon who had distinguished herself in the affair of the medal. This party picked up the ladder and a quantity of muskets and carbines which the conspirators had thrown away in their flight.[688]
Such was the result of an enterprise which had been matured with great judgment, and which would probably have succeeded, but for the trifling circumstance above mentioned. The capture of such an important fortress as the castle of Edinburgh, at such a time, would have been of vast importance to the Jacobites, inasmuch as it would not only have afforded them an abundant supply of military stores, with which it was then well provided, and put them in possession of a considerable sum of money, but would also have served as a rallying point to the disaffected living to the south of the Forth, who only waited a favourable opportunity to declare themselves. Besides giving them the command of the city, the possession of the castle by a Jacobite force would have compelled the commander of the government forces to withdraw the greater part of his troops from Stirling, and leave that highly important post exposed to the northern insurgents. Had the attempt succeeded, Lord Drummond, the contriver of the design, was to have been made governor of the castle, and notice of its capture was to have been announced to some of the Jacobite partisans on the opposite coast of Fife, by firing three cannon-shots from its battlements. On hearing the report of the guns, these men were instantly to have communicated the intelligence to the Earl of Mar, who was to hasten south with all his forces.[689]
As the appointment of a person of rank, influence, and talent, to the command of the army, destined to oppose the Earl of Mar, was of great importance, the Duke of Argyle, who had served with distinction abroad, and who had formerly acted as commander-in-chief of the forces in Scotland, was pitched upon as generalissimo of the army encamped at Stirling. Having received instructions from his majesty on the 8th of September, he departed for Scotland the following day, accompanied by some of the Scottish nobility, and other persons of distinction, and arrived at Edinburgh on the 14th. About the same time, the Earl of Sutherland, who had offered his services to raise the clans in the northern Highlands, in support of the government, was sent down from London to Leith in a ship of war, with orders to obtain a supply of arms and ammunition from the governor of the castle of Edinburgh. He arrived on the 21st of September, and after giving instructions for the shipment of these supplies, departed for the north.
When the Duke of Argyle reached Edinburgh, he found that Mar had made considerable progress in the insurrection, and that the regular forces at Stirling were far inferior in point of numbers to those of the Jacobite commander. He, therefore, on the day he arrived in the capital, addressed a letter to the magistrates of Glasgow, (who, on the first appearance of the insurrection, had offered, in a letter to Lord Townshend, one of the secretaries of state, to raise 600 men in support of the government, at the expense of the city,) requesting them to send forthwith 500 or 600 men to Stirling, under the command of such officers as they should think fit to appoint, to join the forces stationed there. In compliance with this demand, there were despatched to Stirling, on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of September, three battalions, amounting to between 600 and 700 men, under the nominal command of the Lord Provost, who deputed the active part of his duties to Colonel Blackadder. On the arrival of the first battalion, the duke addressed a second letter from Stirling to the magistrates of Glasgow, thanking them for their promptitude, and requesting them to send intimation, with the greatest despatch, to all the friends of the government in the west, to assemble all the fencible forces at Glasgow, and to hold them in readiness to march when required. In connexion with these instructions, the duke, at the same time, wrote letters of a similar import to the magistrates of all the well affected burghs, and to private individuals who were known to be favourably disposed. The most active measures were accordingly adopted in the south and west by the friends of the government, and in a short time a sufficient force was raised to keep the disaffected in these districts in check.[690]
Meanwhile the Earl of Mar and his friends were no less active in preparing for the campaign. Pursuant to an arrangement with the Jacobite chiefs, General Gordon, an officer of great bravery and experience, was despatched into the Highlands to raise the north-western clans, with instructions either to join Mar with such forces as he could collect at the fords of the Forth, or to march upon Glasgow by Dumbarton. Having collected a body of between 4,000 and 5,000 men, chiefly Macdonalds, Macleans, and Camerons, Gordon attempted to surprise Fort-William, and succeeded so far as to carry by surprise some of the outworks, sword in hand, in which were a lieutenant, sergeant, and 25 men; but as the garrison made a determined resistance, he withdrew his men, and marched towards Inverary. This route, it is said, was taken at the suggestion of Campbell of Glendaruel, who, at the first meeting of the Jacobites, had assured Mar and his friends that if the more northern clans would take Argyleshire in their way to the south, their numbers would be greatly increased by the Macleans, Macdonalds, Macdougalls, Macneills, and the other Macs of that county, together with a great number of Campbells, of the family and followers of the Earl of Breadalbane, Sir James Campbell of Auchinbreck, and Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell; all of whom, he said, would join in the insurrection, when they saw the other clans in that country at hand to protect them against those in the interest of the Duke of Argyle.[691]
When the Earl of Islay, brother to the Duke of Argyle, heard of General Gordon’s movements, he assembled about 2,500 men to prevent a rising of the clans in Argyle, and of the disaffected branches of the name of Campbell. On arriving before Inverary, General Gordon found the place protected by entrenchments which the earl had thrown up. He did not venture on an attack, but contented himself with encamping at the north-east side of the town, at nearly the distance of a mile, where he continued some days without any hostile attempt being made on either side. It was evidently contrary to Gordon’s plan to hazard an action, his sole design in entering Argyleshire being to give an opportunity to the Jacobite population of that district to join his standard, which the keeping of such a large body of men locked up in Inverary would greatly assist.
During the continuance before Inverary of the “Black Camp,” as General Gordon’s party was denominated by the Campbells, the Earl of Islay and his men were kept in a state of continual alarm from the most trifling causes. On one occasion an amusing incident occurred, which excited the fears of the Campbells, and showed how greatly they dreaded an attack. Some time before this occurrence, a small body of horse from Kintyre had joined the earl: the men were quartered in the town, but the horses were put out to graze on the east side of the small river that runs past Inverary. The horses disliking their quarters, took their departure one night in search of better pasture. They sought their way along the shore for the purpose of crossing the river at the lower end of the town. The trampling of their hoofs on the gravel being heard at some distance by the garrison, the earl’s men were thrown into the utmost consternation, as they had no doubt that the enemy was advancing to attack them. As the horses were at full gallop, and advancing nearer every moment, the noise increasing as they approached, nothing but terror was to be seen in every face. With trembling hands they seized their arms and put themselves in a defensive posture to repel the attack, but they were fortunately soon relieved from the panic they had been thrown into by some of the horses which had passed the river approaching without riders; so that “at last,” says the narrator of this anecdote, “the whole was found only to be a plot among the Kintyre horse to desert not to the enemy, but to their own country; for ’tis to be supposed the horses, as well as their owners, were of very loyal principles.”[692]
Shortly after this event, another occurrence took place, which terminated not quite so ridiculously as the other. One night the sergeant on duty, when going his rounds at the quarter of the town opposite to the place where the clans lay, happened to make some mistake in the watchword. The sentinel on duty supposing the sergeant and his party to be enemies, discharged his piece at them. The earl, alarmed at the firing, immediately ordered the drums to beat to arms, and in a short time the whole of his men were assembled on the castle-green, where they were drawn up in battalions in regular order by torch or candle light, the night being extremely dark. As soon as they were marshalled, the earl gave them orders to fire in platoons towards the quarter whence they supposed the enemy was approaching, and, accordingly, they opened a brisk fire, which was kept up for a considerable time, by which several of their own sentinels in returning from their posts were wounded. Whilst the Campbells were thus employed upon the castle-green, several gentlemen, some say general officers, who liked to fight “under covert,” retired to the square tower or castle of Inverary, from the windows of which they issued their orders. When the earl found that he had no enemy to contend with, he ordered his men to cease firing, and to continue all night under arms. This humorous incident, however, was attended with good consequences to the terrified Campbells, as it had the effect of relieving them from the presence of the enemy. General Gordon, who had not the most distant intention of entering the town, on hearing the close and regular firing from the garrison, concluded that some forces had entered the town, to celebrate whose arrival the firing had taken place, and alarmed for his own safety, sounded a retreat towards Perthshire before day-light.[693]