BORLUM.
Long ago—you may say in 1808—when I was a boy at Peebles, the school-children, as a variety in their boisterous amusements, occasionally bombarded with stones a grievously defaced effigy built into the walls of a ruinous old church in the neighbourhood. With savage significance, the unfortunate piece of sculpture was called Borlum, and as Borlum it had been pelted by several successive generations. From the dearth of historical knowledge at the spot, no one could explain who or what was meant by Borlum; and not till some years afterwards, in the course of reading, did I find out that by Borlum was meant Brigadier Mackintosh of Borlum, who commanded a resolute party of Highlanders in Mar’s rebellion of 1715, and who, by their masterly audacity in marching towards the Border, threw the southern counties of Scotland into a state of indescribable alarm. To Borlum, as he was familiarly termed, was thus assigned the character of a bugbear along the whole course of the Tweed; and long after he had passed away, and when the political events in which he was concerned were forgotten, the original terror of his name survived in the vengefully destructive recreations of school-children. In a vicarious capacity, a harmless piece of sculpture, which had nothing at all to do with Borlum, was doomed to suffer for a popular scare nearly a hundred years previously.
In the history of that miserably managed affair, Mar’s Jacobite rebellion, Mackintosh of Borlum—or more properly younger of Borlum, for his father was still living—stands conspicuously out as a military hero, who threw into the shade many of higher title and pretensions. How with five hundred of his clan, with banners flying, he marched to Inverness, and seized that important post. How he hastened on to the Lowlands, eluded the troops designed to intercept him; crossed the Firth of Forth with a large force in open boats, and captured Leith. How, carrying everything before him, he marched onwards to the Border, in order to join the rebel forces of General Forster in Northumberland—are all facts belonging to history. His sagacity, foresight, intrepidity, and daring courage were worthy of a better cause. Getting into England, and mixed up with half-hearted movements, Borlum is very much lost sight of. The enterprise, owing to Mar’s indiscretion, had been shockingly ill considered. The English Jacobites failed to rise in a body, as they were justified in doing, for the auxiliaries which had been expected from France never made their appearance; and the whole thing collapsed, as is well known, by the humiliating capture of the insurgents by General Carpenter at Preston, in Lancashire. Surrendering at discretion, the whole were conducted as prisoners to London—Borlum among the rest. A dreadful downcome to the proud Highland chief, but not more so than to Lords Derwentwater, Winton, Nithsdale, Kenmure, Carnwath, Widdrington, and other Jacobite noblemen.
It is not altogether agreeable to look back on the dynastic struggles which took place in England in the first half of the eighteenth century; for with some redeeming traits of character, they give a very mean view of human nature. The subject has been suggested to us by the appearance of a work which many will appreciate for its lively account of scenes and circumstances hitherto imbedded in the dry records of history. We mean London in the Jacobite Times, by Dr Doran, F.S.A. (2 vols. Bentley and Son). The writer, it is sorrowful to learn, passed away before the work at which he had long patiently laboured had well been published; and we regret that he has not survived to hear the praises bestowed on his endeavours to produce a picture of past times such as is rarely presented. The way the subject is treated is quite unique. Instead of going into regular historical details, which would be alike tedious and tiresome, the author writes in a sketchy and anecdotic style without pause from beginning to end, and we have before us a drama of unflagging interest, extending over the greater part of a century. We do not think, however, that the book would have been the worse of a few preliminary remarks on the strange circumstances by which the Stuarts forfeited the crown, and placed themselves in the grotesquely unhappy condition of kings retired from business.
The flight of James II. from England, and practically his abdication of authority, December 22, 1688, finished the house of Stuart. When a king runs away from his subjects, and stupidly flings down a magnificent inheritance, he has a bad chance of being called back again, particularly when by a course of exasperating and illegal conduct he has forfeited general esteem. Yet, from the date of that fatal flight there were successive plots by Jacobite adherents to bring back the Stuarts to the throne. Throughout the reign of William III. and of Queen Anne, the plottings were of a comparatively obscure character. On the death of Anne in 1714, and the installation of George I. under a parliamentary Act of Settlement, came the crisis. The rebellion of 1715 broke out, and being quenched at Preston, the fierce dissensions of Jacobites and Whigs arose. Dr Doran commences his narrative with the death of Anne, but scarcely awakes to his subject till the droves of rebels from Preston enter London and are dispersed through the various prisons, the more noble of them being conducted to the Tower.
While preserving the forms of law, the government did not put off time in the examination and trials of the captured rebels. The pulpits rang with sermons condemnatory of their crimes. Joseph Addison, in his paper the Freeholder, railed upon them with indecent subserviency. There was no want of evidence to convict the leading spirits in the insurrection; but matters were considerably simplified by the voluntarily proffered testimony of the Rev. Robert Patten, who had been formerly a curate at Preston, and acted as chaplain to the rebel forces. Clapped into prison with his associates, Patten pondered on the best means of escaping the gallows; and the longer he thought of it, he became the more firmly convinced that his best plan was to become king’s evidence. His testimony was accepted; and at the cost of being branded throughout all time as a rascal, he daily stood up in court and told every particular requisite to convict the unhappy noblemen and gentlemen with whom he had been associated, and whose bread he had eaten. Very much through the testimony of this wretch, the prisons were gradually cleared by the exit of batches of convicts on hurdles to Tyburn. The Tower was similarly relieved of two of its noble inmates, Derwentwater and Kenmure, who perished on the scaffold; and there would have been more of them, but for the escape of the Earl of Nithsdale disguised in his wife’s clothes, and for the fortunate reprieve of the Lords Widdrington, Nairn, and Carnwath. On the evening of the day on which the Earl of Derwentwater was beheaded (24th February 1716), London was thrown into a state of commotion by the appearance in the sky of an extraordinary Aurora, in which there were fancied resemblances of armies, flaming swords, and fire-breathing dragons—the Jacobites accepting the phenomenon as a token of the indignation of Heaven at the cruel murders on Tower Hill, and prognosticating the rise of the sun of Stuart! On the estates of the Earl of Derwentwater, this famed aurora was called the ‘Earl of Derwentwater’s Lights;’ and it is said that an aurora is still so named in the vicinity of Dilston.
The government of George I. had some difficulty in dealing with the Earl of Wintoun, who contrived to get his trial put off as long as possible, on the plea that he was not yet prepared with his evidence. The truth is, the earl was a somewhat eccentric being. In his youth he had run away from his home at Seton House, went to France, and hired himself to work as a blacksmith. Returning at the death of his father, when everybody had given him up for lost, he assumed the title, George fifth Earl of Wintoun, and was living quietly at Seton when the rebellion broke out. He had no wish to connect himself with it; but stung by some outrageous proceedings of the authorities, he joined the insurrection, and so got himself into trouble. When brought to the bar of the House of Lords, there was some surprise at the oddity of his behaviour. Whether from cunning or affectation, he did not seem to understand why his trial should be hurried on, though in reality he might have complained of the delay. All the earl’s shifts did not greatly serve him. Patten, on being questioned, said that he had seen the Earl of Wintoun on several occasions with a drawn sword in his hand when the Pretender was proclaimed. After this, of course Wintoun was found guilty, and condemned to be beheaded. Not a pleasant drive from Westminster Hall to the Tower, accompanied by the Gentleman Gaoler, ceremoniously carrying an axe with its edge turned towards the condemned earl. One feels a degree of satisfaction in knowing that after all the Earl of Wintoun escaped his doom. Confined to an apartment in the Tower preparatory to the morning of execution, he brought his knowledge as a blacksmith into play by cutting through the iron bars of his window by files supplied by his servant, and dropping to the ground got clear off. He died at Rome in 1749, his title and estates being meanwhile forfeited. The title has been latterly revived in favour of the Earls of Eglintoun. But with the disappearance of the last of the Setons in the direct line, an ancient and honourable family was blotted from the Scottish peerage.
Mackintosh of Borlum—called by mistake Borland by Dr Doran—was confined along with General Forster and a host of others in Newgate. Borlum and Forster are stated to have often quarrelled regarding the military conduct of the insurrection, their angry debates often furnishing amusement in the corridors, court-yard, and common room in the prison, to which visitors were admitted without hinderance, as to a tavern, for the more eating and drinking there were the better it was for Mr Pitt, the governor. Pitt, himself, was never disinclined to lend his assistance in eating a dinner, or in finishing a bowl of punch. So countenanced, the revelries in Newgate were boundless. Dr Doran affords a glimpse of this state of things. Visitors and sympathisers supplied the prisoners with money. ‘While it was difficult to change a guinea almost at any house in the street, nothing was more easy than to have silver for gold in any quantity, and gold for silver, in the prison; those of the fair sex, from persons of the first rank to tradesmen’s wives and daughters, making a sacrifice of their husbands’ and parents’ rings and other precious movables for the use of the prisoners. The aid was so reckless, that forty shillings for a dish of early peas and beans, and thirty shillings for a dish of fish, with the best French wine, was an ordinary regale!’
Forster was to be tried on the 18th April, but a week previously the town was startled with the intelligence that he had broken bounds; he was off. ‘His escape,’ says Doran, ‘was well planned and happily executed. His sharp servant found means to obtain an impression of Pitt’s master-key, from which another key was made and conveyed to Forster, without difficulty. Pitt loved wine, and Forster seems to have had a cellar full of it. He often invited the governor to get drunk on its contents. One night, Pitt got more drunk than usual, finished the wine, and roared for more. Forster bade his servant to fetch up another bottle. This was the critical moment. The fellow was long, and Forster declared he would go and see what the rascal was at. On going, he locked the unconscious Pitt in the room; and the way being prepared by his servant, and turnkeys, as it would seem, subdued by the “oil of palms,” master and servant walked into the street, where friends awaited them. Pitt sounded the alarm, but everything had been well calculated. A smack lay at Holly Haven, on the Thames, which had often been employed by the Jacobites in running between England and France.’ By this means, Forster effected his escape, and ‘the joy of the Jacobites was incontrollable.’ The government shut up Pitt in one of his own dungeons, and offered a thousand pounds for the recovery of ‘General Forster;’ but pursuit was useless. The general was safe in France.