PUBLICATIONS

OF THE

SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY

SECOND SERIES

VOL.
II

ORIGINS OF THE ’FORTY-FIVE

March 1916

ORIGINS OF THE ’FORTY-FIVE

AND OTHER PAPERS RELATING TO THAT RISING

Edited by
WALTER BIGGAR BLAIKIE
LL.D.

EDINBURGH

Printed at the University Press by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society

1916

PREFACE

I desire to express my thanks to the Government of the French Republic for permission to make transcripts and to print selections from State Papers preserved in the National Archives in Paris; to the Earl of Ancaster for permission to print the Drummond Castle Manuscript of Captain Daniel’s Progress; to the Earl of Galloway for Cardinal York’s Memorial to the Pope; to His Grace the Archbishop of St. Andrews for the use of papers elucidating the action of the Roman Catholic clergy in 1745; to Miss Grosett-Collins, who kindly lent me Grossett family papers; to Mrs. G. E. Forbes and Mr. Archibald Trotter of Colinton for private papers of the Lumisden family; to M. le Commandant Jean Colin of the French Army (author of Louis XV. et les Jacobites) for several valuable communications, and to Martin Haile for similar help.

To my cousin, Miss H. Tayler, joint author of The Book of the Duffs, I am indebted for transcripts of papers in the French Archives in Paris as well as for information from Duff family papers; to Miss Maria Lansdale for the transcript of the report of the Marquis d’Eguilles to Louis XV.; to Dr. W. A. Macnaughton, Stonehaven, for copies of the depositions referring to the evasion of Sir James Steuart; and to Miss Nairne, Salisbury, for the translation of Cardinal York’s Memorial.

I have also to acknowledge general help from the Hon. Evan Charteris; Mr. William Mackay, Inverness; Mr. J. K. Stewart, secretary of the Stewart Society; Mr. J. R. N. Macphail, K.C.; Mr. J. M. Bulloch, author of The House of Gordon; Dr. Watson, Professor of Celtic History, Edinburgh; Mr. P. J. Anderson, Aberdeen University Library; Colonel Lachlan Forbes; the Rev. Archibald Macdonald of Kiltarlity; and the Rev. W. C. Flint of Fort Augustus.

I should be ungrateful if I did not make acknowledgment of the information I have received and made use of from five modern books—James Francis Edward, by Martin Haile; The King Over the Water, by A. Shield and Andrew Lang; The Jacobite Peerage, by the Marquis de Ruvigny; The History of Clan Gregor, by Miss Murray Macgregor; and The Clan Donald, by A. and A. Macdonald.

Lastly, I have to thank Mr. W. Forbes Gray for kindly reading and revising proofs and for other assistance; and Mr. Alex. Mill, who has most carefully prepared the Index and given me constant help in many ways.

W. B. B.

Colinton, March 1, 1916.

CORRIGENDA

Page xxxix, lines [3] and [14], for ‘Excellency’ read ‘Eminence.’

Page 18, [note 3], for see Appendix’ read ‘see Introduction, p. xxiii.’ [Transcriber’s note: found in footnote 140]

Page 47, [note 1], for ‘John Butler’ read ‘John Boyle.’ [Transcriber’s note: found in footnote 180]

Page 113, [note 3], last line, for ‘1745’ read ‘1746.’ [Transcriber’s note: found in footnote 323]

SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY

The Editor of ‘ORIGINS OF THE FORTY-FIVE’ requests members to make the following corrections:—

Page xviii, [line 20], ‘September 3rd’ should be ‘September 1st.’

Page xxv, [line 25], the age of Glenbucket should be ‘sixty-four,’ and at page lxi, [line 6], his age should be ‘seventy-two.’

In a letter in the Stuart Papers (Windsor), from Glenbucket to Edgar, dated St. Ouen, 21 Aug. 1747, he states his age to be seventy-four.

Page 97, [line 22 of note], ‘Clan Donald iii, 37,’ should be ‘iii, 337.’ [Transcriber’s note: found in footnote 301]

Page 164, [note 1] [Transcriber’s note: found in footnote 388], and again in Genealogical Table, [page 422], ‘Abercromby of Fettercairn’ should be ‘of Fetterneir.’

June 4, 1917.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

James Francis Edward, King James III. and VIII. of the Jacobites, the Old Pretender of his enemies, and the Chevalier de St. George of historians, was born at St. James’s Palace on 10th June 1688. On the landing of William of Orange and the outbreak of the Revolution, the young Prince and his mother were sent to France, arriving at Calais on 11th December (O.S.);[1] the King left England a fortnight later and landed at Ambleteuse on Christmas Day (O.S.). The château of St. Germain-en-Laye near Paris was assigned as a residence for the royal exiles, and this château was the home of the Chevalier de St. George for twenty-four years.

James II. and VII. died on 5th September 1701 (16th Sept. N.S.), and immediately on his death Louis XIV. acknowledged his son as king, and promised to further his interests to the best of his power.

The Scots Plot, 1703.[2]

The first opportunity of putting the altruistic intention of the King of France into operation occurred within a year of King James’s death, and the evil genius of the project was Simon Fraser, the notorious Lord Lovat.

Lovat, whose scandalous conduct had shocked the people of Scotland, was outlawed by the courts for a criminal outrage, and fled to France in the summer of 1702. There, in spite of the character he bore, he so ingratiated himself with the papal nuncio that he obtained a private audience with Louis XIV., an honour unprecedented for a foreigner. To him he unfolded a scheme for a Stuart Restoration. He had, he said, before leaving Scotland visited the principal chiefs of the Highland clans and a great number of the lords of the Lowlands along with the Earl Marischal. They were ready to take up arms and hazard their lives and fortunes for the Stuart cause, and had given him a commission to represent them in France. The foundation of his scheme was to rely on the Highlanders. They were the only inhabitants of Great Britain who had retained the habit of the use of arms, and they were ready to act at once. Lord Middleton and the Lowland Jacobites sneered at them as mere banditti and cattle-stealers, but Lovat knew that they, with an instinctive love of fighting, were capable of being formed into efficient and very hardy soldiers. He proposed that the King of France should furnish a force of 5000 French soldiers, 100,000 crowns in money, and arms and equipment for 20,000 men. The main body of troops would land at Dundee where it would be near the central Highlands, and a detachment would be sent to western Invernessshire, with the object of capturing Fort William, which overawed the western clans. The design was an excellent one, and was approved by King Louis. But before putting it into execution the ministry sent Lovat back to obtain further information, and with him they sent John Murray, a naturalised Frenchman, brother of the laird of Abercairney, who was to check Lovat’s reports.

It is characteristic of the state of the exiled Court, that it was rent with discord, and that Lord Middleton, Jacobite Secretary of State, who hated Lovat, privately sent emissaries of his own to spy on him and to blight his prospects.

Lovat duly arrived in Scotland, but the history of his mission is pitiful and humiliating. He betrayed the project to the Duke of Queensberry, Queen Anne’s High Commissioner to the Scots Estates, and, by falsely suggesting the treason of Queensberry’s political enemies, the Dukes of Hamilton and Atholl, befooled that functionary into granting him a safe conduct to protect him from arrest for outlawry.

When Lovat returned to France he was arrested under a lettre de cachet and confined a close prisoner for many years, some records say in the Bastille, but Lovat himself says at Angoulême.

The whole affair had little effect in Scotland beyond compassing the disgrace of Queensberry and his temporary loss of office, but it had lasting influence in France and reacted on all future projects of Jacobite action. For, first, it instilled into the French king and his ministers the suspicious feeling that Jacobite adventurers were not entirely to be trusted. And second, Lovat’s account of the fighting quality of the Highlanders and of their devotion to the Stuarts so impressed itself on both the French Court and that of St. Germains that they felt that in the Highlands of Scotland they would ever find a point d’appui for a rising. Lovat’s report, in fact, identified the Highlanders with Jacobitism.

The French Descent, 1708.[3]

Scotland was the scene of the next design for a restoration, and the principal agent of the French Court was a certain Colonel Nathaniel Hooke. Hooke had been sent to Scotland in the year 1705, to see if that country was in such a state as to afford a reasonable prospect of an expedition in favour of the exiled Stuart. In the year 1707, while the Union was being forced upon an unwilling population, and discontent was rife throughout the country on account of that unpopular measure, Hooke was again sent, and although not entirely satisfied with all he saw and heard, he returned with favourable accounts on the whole. Among other documents he brought with him was a Memorial of certain Scottish lords to the Chevalier, in which, among other things, it was stated that if James, under the protection of His Most Christian Majesty (Louis XIV.), would come and put himself at the head of his people in Scotland, ‘the whole nation will rise upon the arrival of its King, who will become master of Scotland without any opposition, and the present Government will be intirely abolished.’ It was some months before the French king gave any answer. St. Simon in his Memoires says that Louis XIV. was so disheartened by his previous failure that he would not at first listen to the suggestion of a French expedition; and it was only through the efforts of Madame de Maintenon that he was persuaded to sanction an invading force. Even then much time was wasted, and it was not until the spring of 1708 that a squadron was equipped under the command of the Admiral de Forbin, and a small army under the Comte de Gasse. Even when ready to sail, the constant and proverbial ill-luck of the Stuarts overtook the poor Chevalier. He caught measles, which still further delayed the expedition. By this time, naturally, the British Government had learned all about the scheme, and made their naval preparations accordingly. At last, on the 17th March, James, hardly convalescent, wrapped in blankets, was carried on board the flagship at Dunkirk. The squadron was to have proceeded to the Firth of Forth and to have landed the Chevalier at Leith, where his partisans were prepared to proclaim him king at Edinburgh. Possibly because of bad seamanship, possibly because of treachery,[4] the French admiral missed the Firth of Forth, and found himself off Montrose. He turned, and could proceed no nearer Edinburgh than the Isle of May, off which he anchored. There the British Fleet, which had followed him in close pursuit, discovered him. The admiral weighed anchor, and fought a naval action in which he lost one of his ships. He then retreated towards the north of Scotland. James implored to be set ashore even if it were only in a small boat by himself, but his solicitations were in vain. The admiral positively refused, saying that he had received instructions from the French king to be as careful of the Chevalier as if he were Louis himself; so Forbin carried him back to Dunkirk, where the heart-broken exile was landed on the 6th of April, having been absent only twenty days, and having lost one of the most likely opportunities that ever occurred for his restoration to his ancient kingdom of Scotland, if not to England.

Expulsion from France, 1713.

After his return to France the Chevalier joined the French army. In 1708 he fought at Oudenarde and Lille, and the following year at Malplaquet. His gallant conduct won golden opinions from Marlborough and his troops. The British soldiers drank his health. James visited their outposts and they cheered him. What Thackeray puts into the mouth of a British officer well describes the situation: ‘If that young gentleman would but ride over to our camp, instead of Villars’s, toss up his hat and say, “Here am I, the King, who’ll follow me?” by the Lord the whole army would rise and carry him home again, and beat Villars, and take Paris by the way.’[5] But James stayed with the French, and the war ended with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This treaty gave the crown of Spain to the Bourbons, Gibraltar and the slave-trade to the British, and pronounced the expulsion of the Stuarts from France. A new asylum was found for the Chevalier in Lorraine, which, though an independent duchy, was largely under the domination of France. The Chevalier’s residence was fixed at Bar-le-Duc, and there he went in February 1713.

In August 1714, on the death of Queen Anne, James made a trip to Paris to be ready for action should his presence be required, but the French Government sent him back to Bar-le-Duc. The death of Louis XIV. on 1st September 1715 (N.S.) was the next blow the Jacobite cause sustained. The government of France passed to the Duke of Orleans as Regent, and his policy was friendship with the British Government.

The Fifteen.[6]

Then came the Rising of 1715, which began at Braemar on 6th September, followed by the English rising in Northumberland under Forster. The movement in England was crushed at Preston on 13th November, the same day that the indecisive battle was fought at Sheriffmuir in Perthshire.

Lord Mar made Perth his headquarters, and invited James to join the Scottish army. The Chevalier, who had moved to Paris in October, in strict secrecy, and in disguise, being watched by both French and English agents, managed, after many remarkable adventures, checks, and disappointments, to get away from Dunkirk on 16th December (27th N.S.), and to reach Peterhead on the 22nd. Thence he went to Perth, where he established his Court at the ancient royal palace of Scone. He was proclaimed king and exercised regal functions; some authorities say that he was crowned.[7] But James had come too late; mutual disappointment was the result. He had been assured that the whole kingdom was on his side, but he found only dissension and discontent. His constant melancholy depressed his followers. No decisive action was taken; the project had failed even before he arrived, and Lord Mar persuaded him that he would serve the cause best by retiring and waiting for a happier occasion.

James was forced to leave Scotland on 5th February 1716 (O.S.). He landed at Gravelines on 10th February (21st N.S.), went secretly to Paris, and concealed himself for a week in the Bois de Boulogne. Thence he went to Lorraine, where he was sorrowfully told by the Duke that he could no longer give him shelter. The power of Britain was great; no country that gave the exile a home could avoid a quarrel with that nation. The Pope seemed to be the only possible host, and James made his way to Avignon, then papal territory. But even Avignon was too near home for the British Government, which, through the French regent, brought pressure to bear on the Pope; the Chevalier was forced to leave Avignon in February 1717, and to cross the Alps into Italy. Here for some months he wandered without a home, but in July 1717 he settled at Urbino in the Papal States.

Marriage to Clementina, 1719.[8]

For a time the cares of the Jacobite Court were centred on finding a wife of royal rank for the throneless king. After various unsuccessful proposals, the Chevalier became engaged to the Princess Clementina Sobieska, whose grandfather had been the warrior King of Poland. The Sobieski home was then at Ollau in Silesia; and in October 1718 James sent Colonel Hay to fetch his bride. The British Government determined to stop the marriage if possible. Pressure was put on the Emperor, who had Clementina arrested at Innsbruck while on her journey to Italy. Here the Princess remained a prisoner until the following April. The story of her rescue by Colonel Wogan is one of the romances of history, and has recently been the theme of an historical romance.[9] Wogan brought the princess safely to Bologna, and there she was married by proxy to James on 9th May 1719. While Wogan was executing his bridal mission, the Chevalier, who had almost given up hope of the marriage, had been called away to take his part in a project which seemed to augur a chance of success.

The Swedish Plot, 1716-17.

On the collapse of the rising of 1715, the Jacobite Court, despairing of assistance from France or Spain, had turned for aid to Charles XII. of Sweden. Charles had conceived a violent hatred for George I., who had acquired by purchase from the King of Denmark two secular bishoprics which had been taken from Sweden by the Danes, and which had been incorporated in the electorate of Hanover. As early as 1715 Charles listened to a project of the Duke of Berwick, by which he should send a force of Swedish troops to Scotland, but he was then too busy fighting the Danes to engage in the scheme. In 1717 the Jacobites renewed negotiations with Sweden, and a plan was formed for a general rising in England simultaneously with an invasion of Scotland by the Swedish king in person at the head of an army of 12,000 Swedes. The plot came to the knowledge of the British Government in time; the Swedish ambassador in London was arrested; the project came to nothing; but in the following year a more promising scheme for a Stuart restoration was formed.

The Spanish Expedition of 1719.[10]

Spain, smarting under the loss of her Italian possessions, ceded to Austria by the Peace of Utrecht, had declared war on the Emperor and had actually landed an army in Sicily. In compliance with treaty obligations, Great Britain had to defend the Emperor, and in August 1718 a British squadron engaged and destroyed a Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro. Alberoni, the Spanish minister, was furious and determined on reprisals. He entered into an alliance with the Swedish king; a plan for invading Great Britain was formed, and negotiations were opened with the Jacobite Court. The death of Charles XII. in December detached Sweden from the scheme, but Alberoni went on with his preparations. A great armada under Ormonde was to carry a Spanish army to the west of England, and a subsidiary expedition under the Earl Marischal was to land in north-western Scotland. The Chevalier was summoned to Spain to join the expedition, or failing that to follow it to England. The fleet sailed from Cadiz in March 1719. James had left Rome in February, travelling by sea to Catalonia and thence to Madrid and on to Corunna. He reached the latter port on 17th April, only to learn of the dispersal of the Spanish fleet by a storm and the complete collapse of the adventure.

The auxiliary Scottish expedition, unconscious of the disaster, landed in the north-western Highlands; but after some vicissitudes and much dissension the attempt ended with the Battle of Glenshiel on the 10th of June—the Chevalier’s thirty-first birthday—and the surrender next day of the remainder of the Spanish troops, originally three hundred and seven in number.

James returned from Corunna to Madrid, where he lingered for some time, a not very welcome guest. There he learned of the rescue of Princess Clementina and of his marriage by proxy. Returning to Italy in August, he met Clementina at Montefiascone, where he was married in person on September 1st, 1719.

From this time forward until the end of his life, forty-seven years later, the Chevalier’s home was in Rome, where the Pope assigned him the Muti Palace as a residence, along with a country house at Albano, some thirteen miles from Rome.

Birth of Charles Edward, 1720.

In 1720, on December 20th by British reckoning (Dec. 31st by the Gregorian calendar), Prince Charles Edward was born at Rome, and with the birth of an heir to the royal line, Jacobite hopes and activities revived.

The Atterbury Plot, 1721-22.[11]

At this time the Jacobite interests in England were in charge of a Council of five members, frequently termed ‘the Junta.’ The members of this Council were the Earl of Arran, brother of Ormonde, the Earl of Orrery, Lord North, Lord Gower, and Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester. Of these Atterbury was by far the ablest, and in England was the life and soul of Jacobite contriving. A great scheme was devised, which is known in history as the Atterbury Plot. The details are somewhat obscure, and the unravelling of them is complicated by the existence of another scheme contemporaneous with Atterbury’s, apparently at first independent, but which became merged in the larger design. The author of this plot was Christopher Layer, a barrister of the Middle Temple. Generally, his scheme was secretly to enlist broken and discharged soldiers. They were to seize the Tower, the Bank, and the Mint, and to secure the Hanoverian royal family, who were to be deported. The larger scheme of the Junta was to obtain a foreign force of 5000 troops to be landed in England under the Duke of Ormonde, and risings were to be organised in different parts of the kingdom. The signal for the outbreak was to be the departure of George I. for Hanover, which was expected to take place in the summer.

Layer, who does not seem to have been acting with Atterbury and the Junta until later, was in Rome in the early months of 1721, and there he unfolded his plan to the Jacobite Court. After he left, a plan of campaign was arranged which, however, seems to have been modified afterwards. The original intention was to begin the movement in Scotland, whither Lord Mar and General Dillon[12] were to proceed; and to accentuate the latter’s position as commander in Scotland he was created an earl in the Scottish peerage, although already an Irish (Jacobite) viscount. Lord Lansdowne was to command in Cornwall, Lord Strafford in the north, Lord North in London and Westminster, and Lord Arran was to go to Ireland. The Chevalier was to leave Rome when Mar and Dillon left Paris, and to make his way to Rotterdam via Frankfort, and there await events before deciding where it would be best to land. Things seemed to be prospering, but the English Jacobites did not sufficiently respond to the call for financial support. James, deeply disappointed, appealed to the Pope for help, only to be more bitterly mortified by his refusal. The Pope, in so many words, said that if the English Jacobites wanted a revolution they must pay for it themselves. The original orders for invasion were cancelled in April; but negotiations seem to have been continued with Spain through Cardinal Acquiviva, Spanish envoy at Rome, ever James’s friend. A revised plan of action was prepared. Wogan, who had been sent to Spain, had succeeded in procuring assistance from that country; ships had been prepared to carry a force of 5000 or 6000 men to Porto Longone, in the Isle of Elba, where James was to embark. In July, James was on the outlook for a Spanish fleet under Admiral Sorano.[13] But it was too late. The plot had been discovered, the demand for troops reaching the knowledge of the French ministers, who informed the British ambassador. Spain was compelled to prevent the embarkation, and King George did not go to Hanover that summer.

Mar had used the post office in spite of a warning by Atterbury not to do so; his correspondence was intercepted, and a letter was found which incriminated Atterbury and his associates. Government was not hasty in acting, and the first conspirator to be arrested was George Kelly, a Non-juring Irish clergyman who acted as Atterbury’s secretary. He was seized at his lodgings on May 21st; and he very nearly saved the situation. His papers and sword being placed in a window by his captors, Kelly managed during a moment of negligence to recover them. Holding his sword in his right hand he threatened to run through the first man who approached him, while all the time he held the incriminating papers to a candle with his left hand, and not till they were burned did he surrender. It was not until the end of August that Bishop Atterbury was taken into custody and committed to the Tower. His trial did not begin until the spring of the following year. Layer, who was betrayed by a mistress, was arrested in September and tried in November. He was condemned to death, but was respited from time to time in the hope that he would give evidence to incriminate Atterbury and his associates. Layer refused to reveal anything and was executed at Tyburn in May 1723, at the very time when the bishop’s trial was taking place in the House of Lords. Atterbury was found guilty: he was sentenced to be deprived of all his ecclesiastical benefices and functions, to be incapacitated from holding any civil offices, and to be banished from the kingdom for ever. His associates of the Junta escaped with comparatively light penalties. Kelly, sentenced to imprisonment during the King’s pleasure, was kept in the Tower until 1736, when he managed to escape, to reappear later in the drama. Atterbury went abroad and entered the Chevalier’s service. He died in exile at Paris in 1732, but he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The failure of the schemes of Atterbury had a remarkable effect on the unfortunate Chevalier. Apparently weary of failure and longing for action, he wrote to the Pope on August 29th, 1722, offering to serve in a crusade against the Turks; but he was told it would not do, he must stick to his own task. To it he accordingly returned; and implicitly believing that his people were longing for his restoration, he issued a manifesto dated September 22nd, proposing ‘that if George I. will quietly deliver to him the throne of his fathers he will in return bestow upon George the title of king in his native dominions and invite all other states to confirm it.’[14] The manifesto was printed and circulated in England; it was ordered to be burned by the common hangman.

It is somewhat remarkable that although the Atterbury Expedition was to have been begun in Scotland, the records of the period make no mention of the project, nor do there seem to have been any preparations for a rising. The only suggestion of secret action being taken that I know of—and it is no more than a suggestion—is that in 1721, on the same day that General Dillon, who was to command in Scotland, was created a Scottish earl, a peerage was given to Sir James Grant of Grant by the Chevalier de St. George.[15] What the occasion of this honour may have been has never, so far as I know, been revealed.[16]

Affairs in Scotland.

Jacobite affairs in Scotland at that time were administered by a Lanarkshire laird, George Lockhart of Carnwath. Lockhart had been a member of the old Scots Estates before the Union of the kingdoms in 1707, and after the Union he sat in the Imperial Parliament until 1715. In that year he raised a troop of horse for the Jacobite cause, and after the rising he suffered a long imprisonment, but was eventually released without trial. From 1718 to 1727 he acted as the Chevalier’s chief confidential agent in Scotland. His system of Jacobite management was by a body of trustees, which was organised in 1722, and acted as a committee of regency for the exiled king. In 1727 Lockhart’s correspondence fell into the hands of Government and he had to fly the country. He was permitted to return in the following year, but lived for the rest of his life in retirement, and took no further part in Jacobite affairs.[17]

For some years after Lockhart’s flight, Scotland seems to have been without any official representative of the Jacobite Court. In May 1736, however, Colonel James Urquhart[18] was appointed, though under circumstances which have not yet been made known.

The proposed expedition connected with the Atterbury Plot was the last project for an active campaign of restoration in which the Chevalier was personally to embark. Scheming, of course, went on, but only once after this did James leave Italy. In 1727, on the death of George I., he hurried to Nancy to be ready for any emergency, but the Duke of Lorraine had reluctantly to refuse him hospitality. He retired to Avignon, but, as before, the British Government brought pressure to bear, and he had to go back to Rome. Six years later, on the death of Augustus the Strong, he was offered the elective throne of Poland; but this he declined, saying that his own country engaged his whole heart and all his inclinations, though he regretted that his second son, Henry, then eight years old, was too young to be a candidate for the crown worn by his Sobieski ancestor.

Charles Edward grows up.

The Cause languishes.

Meanwhile his elder son, Charles Edward, was growing up, and the hopes of the party were fixed on his future. His father wished him to learn the art of war, so in August 1734 he was sent to join a Spanish army under his cousin, the Duke of Berwick,[19] who was engaged in the campaign against Austria, which brought the crown of Naples to the Spanish Bourbons. Charles, then not quite fourteen, took part in the siege and capture of Gaeta, a fortress in Campania, and accompanied Don Carlos in his triumphant entry into Naples as king on August 9th. The Prince won much credit for his conduct in the field, but this was the end of his experience of war, and his campaign had lasted only six days. His father was anxious to extend his military education, but France and Spain in turn declined to allow him to serve with their armies. Even the Emperor, about to make war on the Turks in 1737, refused to allow the young prince to accompany his army. European potentates were unwilling to receive Charles Edward even as a visitor. The Venetian minister in London was ordered to quit England on twenty-four hours’ notice, because his Government had shown civilities to the Prince on a visit to Venice. The British Government was too vigilant to hoodwink, too strong to offend. Peace reigned throughout Europe: Jacobite activity was dormant both in England and in Scotland: the royal exiles were isolated at Rome, and it seemed as if all hope of a Stuart Restoration had been abandoned.

The Mission of Glenbucket.

The first to inspire the Jacobite Court with new life and hope, and set in motion the events which led up to the great adventure of ’Forty-five was John Gordon of Glenbucket. This remarkable man was no county magnate nor of any particular family. At this time he possessed no landed property; he was merely the tenant of a farm in Glenlivet, which he held from the Duke of Gordon. His designation ‘of Glenbucket’ was derived from a small property in the Don valley which had been purchased by his grandfather, and which he inherited from his father. He was not a Highlander, having been born in the Aberdeenshire lowland district of Strathbogie, but he had so thoroughly conformed himself to Highland spirit and manners that he had won the affection and confidence of the Highlanders of Banffshire and Strathspey. Glenbucket was at this time about sixty-four years old. In his younger days he had been factor or chamberlain to the Duke of Gordon, a position which conferred on him considerable influence and power, particularly over the Duke’s Highland vassals. In the ’Fifteen he had commanded a regiment of the Gordon retainers, and behaved with gallantry and discretion throughout the campaign.[20] About the year 1724 he had ceased to be the Duke’s representative, but his connection with the Highlanders was continued by the marriages of his daughters. One of them was the wife of Forbes of Skellater, a considerable laird in the Highland district of Upper Strathdon; another was married to the great chief of Glengarry; and a third to Macdonell of Lochgarry.[21]

In the year 1737 Gordon sold Glenbucket, for which he realised twelve thousand marks (about £700); and he left Scotland to visit the Chevalier at Rome. On his way he passed through Paris, where he had an interview with Cardinal Fleury, the French prime minister. To the Cardinal he suggested a scheme of invasion, by which officers and men of the Irish regiments in the French service quartered near the coast could be suddenly and secretly transported to Scotland.[22] The Cardinal, whose general policy was peace at any price,[23] gave no encouragement to the scheme.

Message to the English Jacobites.

Glenbucket went on to Rome in January 1738: he delivered his message, was rewarded with a major-general’s commission,[24] and returned to Scotland. Immediately the Jacobite Court was filled with sanguine activity. What the terms of Glenbucket’s mission were, or whom he represented, have never been categorically stated. Murray of Broughton hints that he only represented his son-in-law Glengarry and General Alexander Gordon.[25] Even if this limitation were true, it meant much. Glengarry was one of the greatest of Highland chiefs, while General Gordon was that Nestor of Scottish Jacobites who had been commander-in-chief after the Chevalier left Scotland in 1716, and whose opinions must have carried much weight. Although there is no direct statement of the terms of Glenbucket’s mission, its significance can readily be understood from the communication made to the English Jacobites. The Chevalier at once wrote off to Cecil, his official agent in London, informing him of the encouraging news he had received. The zeal of his Scottish subjects, he said, was so strong that he considered it possible to oppose the Scottish Highlanders to the greater part of the troops of the British Government then available, and there was good cause to hope for success even without foreign assistance, provided the English Jacobites acted rightly.[26]

At the time that the Chevalier’s message reached his adherents there happened to be in England a personage who bore the name and designation of Lord Sempill.[27] Though of Scots descent he was French by birth and residence. He was not familiar with English ways, and he did not understand English political agitation. Mingling for the most part with Jacobites avowed or secret, his ears were filled with execration of the reigning dynasty. On every side he heard the Whig Government denounced, and he saw it tottering and vacillating. He mistook general political dissatisfaction for revolutionary discontent, and he came to the conclusion that the country longed for a restoration of the old royal line. Constituting himself an envoy from the English Jacobites,[28] he hurried off to Rome and reported to the Chevalier that the party was stronger than was generally believed, and that affairs in England were most favourable for action.

It is necessary here to relate how Glenbucket’s mission to Rome affected the Scottish Jacobites, and to introduce into the narrative the name of one who for five years was a mainstay of the Cause, though in the end he turned traitor.

Murray of Broughton.

John Murray of Broughton, a younger son of Sir David Murray of Stanhope (a Peeblesshire baronet of ancient family who in his day had been an ardent Jacobite), entered the University of Leyden in 1735, being then twenty years of age. In 1737 he had completed his studies and went on a visit to Rome, where he mixed in the Jacobite society of the place. Although he never had an interview with James himself, he frequently met the young princes, and he acquired the friendship of James Edgar, the Chevalier’s faithful secretary. Murray’s father had once been proposed as an official Jacobite agent in Scotland, and it seems highly probable that Edgar persuaded the son to look forward to assuming such a position. Murray left Rome to return to Scotland shortly before Glenbucket’s arrival in January 1738.

The Concert of Scots Jacobites.

Glenbucket’s message had convinced James of the devotion of the Highlanders and the Jacobites of north-eastern Scotland, but he wished to know more of the spirit of the Scottish Lowlands. At the same time that he wrote to the English Jacobites, he despatched William Hay, a member of his household, to Scotland to make inquiries and to report. Hay overtook Murray who was lingering in Holland, and induced him to accompany him, as he was anxious to be introduced to Murray’s cousin, Lord Kenmure, an ardent Kirkcudbrightshire Jacobite. The acquaintance was duly made, and although no record is yet known of Hay’s actual transactions in Scotland, they can be conjectured with a fair amount of certainty from the results which followed them in spite of Murray’s disparaging remarks on his mission.[29] Hay visited the leading Jacobites, and it is difficult to doubt that he set in motion a scheme for concerted action. What is known is that he returned to Rome after three months’ absence greatly satisfied with what he had found. In the same year, presumably as the outcome of Hay’s mission, an Association of Jacobite leaders was formed, sometimes termed ‘the Concert,’ designed with the object of bringing together Highland chiefs and lowland nobles,[30] pledged to do everything in their power for the restoration of the exiled Stuarts. These Associators, as they were called, were: the Duke of Perth; his uncle, Lord John Drummond; Lord Lovat; Lord Linton, who in 1741 succeeded as fifth Earl of Traquair; his brother, the Hon. John Stuart; Donald Cameron, younger of Lochiel; and his father-in-law, Sir John Campbell of Auchenbreck, an Argyllshire laird. The position of manager was given to William Macgregor (or Drummond), the son of the Perthshire laird of Balhaldies.[31] In contemporary documents Macgregor[32] is generally termed ‘Balhaldy,’[33] and that designation has been used in this volume. Murray of Broughton did not belong to the Association, nor was he taken into its confidence until 1741. He, however, attached himself to Colonel Urquhart, the official Jacobite agent, and assisted him with his work. In 1740, when Urquhart was dying of cancer, Murray was appointed to succeed him.

In December 1739 Balhaldy was sent by the Associators to Paris, and from thence he went on to Rome. The Chevalier, greatly cheered by what he had to tell, instructed him to return to Paris and there to meet Sempill, who had become one of James’s most trusted agents. Sempill would introduce him to Cardinal Fleury, before whom they would lay the views of both the English and Scottish Jacobites.

Balhaldy returned to Paris, made the acquaintance of Sempill, an acquaintance which subsequently ripened into a strong political, perhaps personal, friendship. The interview with Fleury was obtained, and negotiations commenced in the beginning of 1740, about three months after the war with Spain, forced upon Walpole, had broken out.[34]

It is no part of my task to follow the intricacies of the negotiations between the French Ministry and the English Jacobites, except when they affect the affairs of the Scots, but here it is necessary to turn back for a moment to relate what took place after the English Jacobites received the Chevalier’s communication of Glenbucket’s message from Scotland.

English reception of Scots Proposals.

Sempill, who had gone from England to Rome in the spring of 1738, was sent back in October with the Chevalier’s instructions to his English adherents to arrange for concerted action with the Scots. The English Jacobites formed a council of six members to serve as a directing nucleus. This council communicated the English views on the Scottish proposal to the Chevalier as follows. Although the Government, they said, had only 29,000 regular troops in the British Isles, of which 13,000 were in England, 12,000 in Ireland, and 4000 in Scotland, yet the rising of the Scots could not take place, as the King hoped, without foreign assistance. It would be a difficult matter to provide the Scots with sufficient arms and munitions, and even if this difficulty could be surmounted, it would take two months after they had been supplied before their army could assemble and establish the royal authority in Scotland; that it would take another month before the Scots could march into England. Meantime the English leaders would be at the mercy of the professional army of the Government which their volunteer followers, entirely ignorant of discipline, could never oppose alone. The principal royalists would be arrested in detail, and their overawed followers would hold back from joining the Scots. There were 13,000 regular soldiers in England. Government would probably transfer 6000 from Ireland, and the army would be further augmented by the importation of Dutch and Hanoverian troops. Probably 8000 men would be sent to the frontier of Scotland. From this they concluded that a rising in Scotland without foreign assistance would involve possible failure and in any case a disastrous civil war, while, on the other hand, the landing of a body of regular troops would provide a rallying point for the insurgents. This force should be equal to the number of troops generally quartered about London and able to hold them, while the volunteer royalists would march straight to the capital which was ready to declare in their favour. They would then acquire the magazines and arsenals at the seat of government, and almost all the treasures of England (‘presque toutes les richesses d’Angleterre’). If at that juncture the Scots would rise, the Hanoverians would be driven to despair. No ally of the Elector, however powerful, would venture to attack Great Britain reunited under her legitimate sovereign. The requirement of the English would be 10,000 to 12,000 regular troops sent from abroad; without such a disciplined force the English Jacobites would not risk a rising.[35]

Sempill was sent by the Chevalier to Paris to lay these views before Cardinal Fleury. The Cardinal, peace lover though he was, felt that it would be absurd to neglect the assistance that the Jacobites might afford him in the complications which were certain to arise when the death of the Emperor Charles VI., then imminent, should occur.[36] When the English views of requirement were presented to him he received them sympathetically; said that the King of France would willingly grant the help the English Jacobites desired, but two things were absolutely necessary: he must have more exact information than had been given him with regard to what royalist adherents would join his troops on landing, and also as to those who would rise at the same time in the provinces. If the English leaders could satisfy His Majesty on these two points they might expect all they asked for.[37]

Balhaldy’s interview with Fleury.

Such was the state of Jacobite affairs at the French Court when Sempill introduced Balhaldy to Fleury. I know of no categorical statement of the requirements that Balhaldy was to lay before the Cardinal, but from a memorandum he wrote[38] it may be inferred that the Associators had asked for 1500 men with arms, ammunition, and money. Fleury replied that his sovereign was greatly pleased with the proposals of the Scots, and that he approved of their arrangements on behalf of their legitimate king. France, however, was at peace with Great Britain, while Spain was at open war. King Louis would ask the Spanish Court to undertake an expedition in favour of King James to which he would give efficient support.[39] Shortly afterwards, the Cardinal was obliged to tell Balhaldy that Spain declined to entertain the proposal. The Spanish Court disliked the war with England, and was quite aware that it had been forced on Walpole by the Jacobites and the Opposition.[40] Spain was not going to embarrass the British Government by embarking on a Jacobite adventure.

Fleury then made a proposal that the Spanish Government should finance a scheme by which an army of 10,000 Swedish mercenaries should be engaged to invade Great Britain. While secret negotiation was going on between the French and Spanish Governments, knowledge of the proposal came to Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain. Elizabeth, fearing that a successful movement for a Stuart restoration would put an end to the war with Great Britain which she strongly favoured, inspired a paragraph in the Amsterdam Gazette, which exploded the design before it could be accomplished.[41]

Driven at last from his hope of using Spain as a catspaw, Fleury informed Balhaldy that his master the King, touched with the zeal of the Scots, would willingly send them all the Irish troops in his service, with the arms, munitions, and the £20,000 asked for to assist the Highlanders.[42]

Balhaldy hurried back to Scotland with this promise and met the Associators in Edinburgh. Although the Jacobite leaders were disappointed that French troops were not to be sent, they gratefully accepted Fleury’s assurances, and in March 1741 they despatched the following letter to the Cardinal, which was carried back to Paris by Balhaldy.

Lettre de quelques Seigneurs écossais au Cardinal de Fleury.[43]

Monseigneur,—Ayant appris de Monsieur le baron de Balhaldies l’heureux succès des représentations que nous l’avions chargé de faire à Votre Eminence sous le bon plaisir de notre souverain légitime, nous nous hâtons de renvoyer ce baron avec les témoignages de notre vive et respectueuse reconnaissance et avec les assurances les plus solennelles, tant de notre part que de la part de ceux qui se sont engagés avec nous à prendre les armes pour secouer le joug de l’usurpation, que nous sommes prêts à remplir fidèlement tout ce qui a été avancé dans le mémoire que my lord Sempill et ledit sieur baron de Balhaldies eurent l’honneur de remettre, signé de leurs mains, entre celles de Votre Eminence au mois de mai dernier.

Les chefs de nos tribus des montagnes dont les noms lui ont été remis en même temps avec le nombre d’hommes que chacun d’eux s’est obligé de fournir,[44] persistent inviolablement dans leurs engagements et nous osons répondre à Votre Eminence qu’il y aura vingt mille hommes sur pied pour le service de notre véritable et unique seigneur, le Roi Jacques Huitième d’Ecosse aussitôt qu’il plaira à S.M.T.C. de nous envoyer des armes et des munitions avec les troupes qui sont nécessaires pour conserver ces armes jusqu’à ce que nous puissions nous assembler.

Ces vingt mille hommes pourront si facilement chasser ou détruire les troupes que le gouvernement présent entretient actuellement dans notre pays et même toutes celles qu’on y pourra faire marcher sur les premières alarmes que nous sommes assurément bien fondés d’espérer qu’avec l’assistance divine et sous les auspices du Roi Très Chrétien les fidèles Ecossais seront en état, non seulement de rétablir en très peu de temps l’autorité de leur Roi Légitime dans tout son royaume d’Ecosse et de l’y affermir contre les efforts des partisans d’Hannover, mais aussi de l’aider puissamment au recouvrement de ces autres Etats, ce qui sera d’autant plus facile que nos voisins de l’Angleterre ne sont pas moins fatigués que nous de la tyrannie odieuse sous laquelle nous gémissons tous également et que nous savons qu’ils sont très bien disposés à s’unir avec nous ou avec quelque puissance que ce soit qui voudra leur donner les recours dont ils out besoin pour se remettre sous un gouvernement légitime et naturel. Nous prenons actuellement des mesures pour agir de concert avec eux.

Quant au secours qui est nécessaire pour l’Ecosse en particulier, nous aurions souhaité que S.M.T.C. eût bien voulu nous accorder des troupes françaises qui eussent renouvelé parmi nous les leçons d’une valeur héroïque et d’une fidélité incorruptible que nos ancêtres ont tant de fois apprises dans la France même; mais puisque V.E. juge à propos de nous envoyer de sujets de notre Roi, nous les recevrons avec joie comme venant de sa part, et nous tâcherons de leur faire sentir le cas que nous faisons et de leur attachement à notre souverain légitime et de l’honneur qu’ils out acquis en marchant si longtemps sur les traces des meilleurs sujets et des plus braves troupes en l’Univers.

Monsieur le baron de Balhaldies connaît si parfaitement notre situation, les opérations que nous avons concertées, et tout ce qui nous regarde, qu’il serait inutile d’entrer ici dans aucun détail. Nous supplions V.E. de vouloir bien l’écouter favorablement et d’être persuadée qu’il aura l’honneur de lui tout rapporter dans la plus exacte vérité.

Si les ministres du gouvernement étaient moins jaloux de nos démarches ou moins vigilants, nous engagerions volontiers tous nos biens pour fournir aux frais de cette expédition; mais nuls contrats n’étant valables, suivant nos usages, sans être inscrits sur les registres publics, il nous est impossible de lever une somme tant soit peu considérable avec le secret qui convient dans les circonstances présentes. C’est uniquement cette considération qui nous empêche de faire un fond pour les dépenses nécessaires, [ce qui serait une preuve ultérieure que nous donnerions avec joie de notre zèle et de la confiance avec laquelle nous nous rangeons sous l’étendard de notre Roi naturel; mais le bien du service nous oblige de nous contenir et] d’avoir recours à la générosité de S.M.T.C. jusqu’à ce que l’on puisse lever les droits royaux dans notre pays d’une manière régulière.

Nous sommes persuadés que l’on pourra y parvenir dans l’espace de trois mois après l’arrivée des troupes irlandaises et nous ne doutons point que notre patrie, réunie alors sous le gouvernement de son Roi tant désiré ne fasse des efforts qui donneront lieu à V.E. de prouver à S.M.T.C. que les Ecossais modernes sont les vrais descendants de ceux qui ont eu l’honneur d’être comptés pendant tant de siècles les plus fidèles alliés des Rois, ses prédécesseurs.

Nous sommes bien sensiblement touchés des mouvements que V.E. s’est donnés et qu’elle veut bien continuer pour faire entendre au Roi Catholique les avantages qu’il y aurait à agir en faveur du Roi notre maître dans la conjoncture présente. Nous avions cru que ces avantages ne pouvaient échapper aux ministres Espagnols; mais quelque travers qu’ils prennent dans la conduite de cette guerre, V.E. prend une part qui ne saura manquer de les en tirer heureusement et de frustrer l’attente injuste des nations qui sont prêtes à fondre sur les trésors du nouveau monde.

Nous en louons Dieu, Monseigneur, et nous le prions avec ferveur de vouloir bien conserver V.E. non seulement pour l’accomplissement du grand ouvrage que nous allons entreprendre sous sa protection mais aussi pour en voir les grands et heureux effets dans toute l’Europe aussi bien que dans les trois royaumes britanniques, auxquels son nom ne sera pas moins précieux dans tous les temps à venir qu’à la France même qui a pris de si beaux accroissements sous son ministère et dont la gloire va être élevée jusqu’au comble en faisant vigorer la justice chez ses voisins. Nous avons l’honneur d’être avec une profonde vénération et un parfait dévouement, Monseigneur, de votre Eminence, les très humbles et très obéissants serviteurs,

• Le duc de Perth
• Le lord Jean Drumond de Perth
• My lord Lovat
• Milord Linton
• Cameron, baron de Locheil
• Le chevalier Campbell D’Achinbreck
• M’Grieger baron de Balhaldies.

à Edimbourg, ce 13ème Mars 1741.

[Translation.]

Having learned from the Baron of Balhaldies of the happy success of the representations that we had instructed him to make to Your Eminence, with the approval of our legitimate Sovereign, we now hasten to send this Baron back with the proofs of our lively and respectful gratitude, and with the most solemn undertaking, both by ourselves and by those who are engaged along with us, to take up arms to throw off the yoke of the usurpation, that we are ready to fulfil faithfully all that was put forward in the Memorial, which my lord Sempill and the said Baron of Balhaldies signed with their own hands, and had the honour to place in the hands of Your Eminence last May.

The chiefs of our Highland clans, whose names we have sent at the same time with the number of men that each binds himself to furnish, will without fail keep their engagements, and we venture to be responsible to Your Eminence that there will be 20,000 men on foot for the service of our true and only lord, King James VIII. of Scotland, as soon as it will please His Most Christian Majesty to send us arms and munitions, and the troops that are necessary to guard those arms until we shall be able to assemble.

These 20,000 men will be able so easily to defeat or to destroy the troops that the Government employs at present in our country, and even all those that it may be able to despatch upon the first alarm, so that we feel entirely justified in hoping that with divine assistance and under the auspices of the most Christian King, the loyal Scots will be in a condition, not only in a short time to re-establish the authority of their legitimate King throughout the whole Kingdom of Scotland, and to sustain him there against the efforts of the partisans of Hanover, but also to aid powerfully in the recovery of these other States, which will be all the easier since our neighbours of England are not less wearied than we are of the odious tyranny under which we all equally groan; and we know that they are thoroughly determined to unite with us, and with any power whatever that would give them the opportunity they require to place themselves once more under a legitimate and natural Government. We are at present taking measures to act along with them.

As to the assistance that is necessary for Scotland in particular, we should have preferred that His Most Christian Majesty might have been willing to grant us French troops, who would have renewed among us the lessons of heroic bravery and incorruptible fidelity, that our ancestors have so often learned in France itself, but since Your Eminence thinks fit to send subjects of our King, we will receive them with joy as coming from him, and we will endeavour to make them feel the value that we attach to their devotion to our legitimate Sovereign, and the honour that they have acquired in treading so long in the footsteps of the best subjects and of the bravest troops in the Universe.

The Baron of Balhaldies knows so perfectly our situation, the plans that we have concerted, and everything that affects us, that it will be unnecessary to enter into any detail. We implore Your Eminence to listen to him favourably, and to be assured that he will have the honour of reporting to you with the utmost accuracy.

If the ministers of the Government were only less suspicious of our actions or less watchful, we would willingly pledge all our belongings to defray the cost of this expedition, but as no contracts (of loan or sale) are binding by our customs unless they have been inscribed in the public registers, it is not possible for us to raise a sum that would be sufficient, with the necessary secrecy that present circumstances require. It is this consideration alone that prevents us from raising a fund for the necessary expense, the raising of which would bear further proof of our zeal, which we should give with pleasure, and of the confidence with which we place ourselves under the standard of our natural King; but the good of the service obliges us to restrain our wishes and to have recourse to the generosity of His Most Christian Majesty until it is possible to establish the royal rights in our country in a regular manner.

We are persuaded that it would be possible to accomplish this three months after the arrival of the Irish troops, and we do not doubt that our country, reunited under the Government of its king, so much desired, would make such efforts as would enable Your Excellency to prove to His Most Christian Majesty that the modern Scots are the true descendants of those who have had the honour of being counted during so many centuries the most faithful allies of the kings, his predecessors.

We are very sensibly touched by what Your Eminence has done, and will continue to do, to make the Catholic king understand the advantages that he would have in acting in favour of the King our master in the present juncture. We had believed that these advantages could not escape the notice of the Spanish Ministers, but whatever strange things they may have done in the conduct of this war, your Eminence is now acting in such a way as cannot fail happily to extricate them from the consequences of their mistakes, and to frustrate the unjust attitude of those nations who are ready to fall upon the treasures of the new world.

We praise God, Monseigneur, and we pray with fervour that He would preserve Your Eminence, not only for the accomplishment of the great work which we are going to undertake under your protection, but also that you may see the great and happy effects throughout Europe as well as in the three kingdoms of Britain in which your name will be not less precious in all time to come than in France itself, which has been enlarged so remarkably under your ministry; and that the glory of your name will be raised to the highest pitch by making justice flourish among your neighbours. We have the Honour to be, with profound veneration and perfect devotion, Monseigneur, Your Eminence’s very humble and obedient servants.

The promises of assistance from the French Court brought by Balhaldy, and the letter of acceptance by the lords of the Concert constituted the treaty between France and the Scottish Jacobites which formed the foundation of all subsequent schemes undertaken in Scotland. Even in the end it was detachments of the Irish regiments, whose use was originally suggested by Glenbucket, together with a Scottish regiment raised later than this by Lord John Drummond, that formed the meagre support that was actually sent over from France in 1745.

Balhaldy returned to France almost immediately, and in the winter of 1740-41, he went to England where he met the Jacobite leaders, of whom he particularly mentions the Earls of Orrery and Barrymore, Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, and Sir John Hinde Cotton. With them he endeavoured to form a scheme of concert between the English and the Scottish Jacobites, but without much success.[45]

Murray taken into the confidence of the Concert.

It was not until after the signing of the letter to Fleury that Murray was taken into the confidence of the Jacobite leaders, and it was at this time that he first met Lord Lovat. This was also the occasion of his first meeting with Balhaldy; their relations at this time were quite friendly; Balhaldy handed over to Murray the negotiation of a delicate ecclesiastical matter with which he had been entrusted by the Chevalier.[46]

Another early duty was to raise money for the Cause, but to Murray’s mortification, he had to give up the scheme of a loan, because all the sympathisers to whom he applied declined to subscribe; not, they said, because they objected to giving their money, but each and all refused to be the first to compromise himself by heading the subscription list. At this time Murray was not permitted to undertake any active propaganda for a rising, as the associated leaders feared that by increasing the numbers in the secret there would be too great danger of leakage. The Associators preferred to keep such work in their own hands, and each of them had a district assigned to him.

After Balhaldy’s departure the unfortunate Associators were kept in a state of agonising suspense, for nothing was heard from France until the end of 1742. In December of that year, Lord Traquair received a letter from Balhaldy couched in vague terms, assuring him that troops and all things necessary for a rising would be embarked early in the spring. The scheme, he wrote, was to make a landing near Aberdeen and another in Kintyre. The whole tone of the letter was so confident that the Associators felt that a French expedition might be expected almost immediately, and they were profoundly conscious that Scotland was not ready. So alarmed were the leaders at the possibility of a premature landing, and so uncertain were they about the promises vaguely conveyed in Balhaldy’s letter, that they determined to send Murray over to Paris to find out what the actual French promises were, and how they were to be performed; and moreover to warn the Government of King Louis how matters stood in Scotland.

Murray set off in January 1743. On his way he visited the Duke of Perth, then residing at York, making what friends he could among the English Jacobites. When Murray got to London, he was informed of Cardinal Fleury’s death,[47] which somewhat staggered him, but he determined to go on to France to find out how matters stood.

Murray’s visit to Paris, 1743.

On arriving in Paris, Murray met Balhaldy and Sempill. Balhaldy was surprised and not particularly glad to see him, but he treated him courteously, and discussing affairs with Murray, he patronisingly informed him that he had not been told everything. Sempill was very polite. He told Murray that a scheme had been prepared by Fleury, but that the Cardinal’s illness and death had interrupted it.[48] Sempill also told him that luckily he had persuaded the Cardinal to impart his schemes to Monsieur Amelot, the Minister for Foreign Affairs. An interview with the Minister was obtained at Versailles, and on Murray’s explaining the reason of his visit, Amelot frankly told him that the King of France had full confidence in the Scots, but that nothing could be done without co-operation with the English. He further warned the Scotsmen that an enterprise such as they proposed was dangerous and precarious. The King, he said, was quite willing to send ten thousand troops to help James his master, but the Jacobites must take care not to bring ruin on the Cause by a rash attempt. Murray was startled at Amelot’s answer after the assurances he had had from Sempill and Balhaldy of the minister’s keenness to help; he was further distressed that some arrangements, which Sempill had confidently mentioned to him as being made, were unknown to Amelot, while the minister owned that he had not read the Memorials, but promised to look into them.

It was on this occasion that Murray first became suspicious of the behaviour of Balhaldy and Sempill, a state of mind which grew later to absolute frenzy. When arranging for the interview with Amelot, they hinted very plainly to Murray that he must exaggerate any accounts he gave of preparations in Scotland. He came to the conclusion that they were deceiving the French minister by overstating Jacobite prospects at home, and after the interview he was further persuaded that Balhaldy and Sempill were similarly deceiving the Jacobite leaders with exaggerated accounts of French promises. He was further mortified to find that the Earl Marischal, who was much respected in Scotland, and to whom the Jacobite Scotsmen looked as their leader in any rising, would have nothing to do with Sempill and Balhaldy; while, on their part, they described the earl as a wrong-headed man, continually setting himself in opposition to his master and those employed by him, and applied to him the epithet of ‘honourable fool.’

Apparently about this time the preparations of the English Jacobites were languishing, and Balhaldy, proud of the Scottish Association which he looked upon as his own creation, volunteered to go over to England and arrange a similar Concert among the English leaders. He and Murray went to London together, and there Murray took the opportunity of privately seeing Cecil, the Jacobite agent for England. Cecil explained his difficulties, told him of the dissensions among the English Jacobites, and of their complaints about Sempill, who, he considered, was being imposed upon by the French Ministry. It is characteristic of Jacobite plotting to find that Murray concealed, on the one side, his interviews with Cecil from Balhaldy, and, on the other, he kept it a secret from Cecil that he had ever been in France.[49] Disappointed with his mission both in France and England, Murray returned to Edinburgh in March or April.

Butler’s mission to England.

Meanwhile, Balhaldy was busy getting pledges in England and making lists of Jacobite adherents avowed and secret. Though they said they were willing to rise, he found they absolutely refused to give any pledge in writing, and he suggested, through Sempill, that the French minister should send over a man he could trust to see the state of matters for himself. Amelot selected an equerry of King Louis’s of the name of Butler, an Englishman by birth. Under pretence of purchasing horses, Butler visited racecourses in England, where he had the opportunity of meeting country gentlemen, and was astonished to find that at Lichfield, where he met three hundred lords and gentlemen, of whom, he said, the poorest possessed £3000 a year, he found only one who was not opposed to the Government. On his return to France, Butler sent in a long report on the possibilities of an English rising. He told the French Government that after going through part of England, a document had been placed in his hands giving an account of the whole country, from which it appeared that three-quarters of the well-to-do (‘qui avaient les biens-fonds’) were zealous adherents of their legitimate king, and that he had been enabled to verify this statement through men who could be trusted, some of whom indeed were partisans of the Government. He was amazed that the Government was able to exist at all where it was so generally hated. The secret, he said, was that all positions of authority—the army, the navy, the revenue offices—were in the hands of their mercenary partisans. The English noblesse were untrained to war, and a very small body of regular soldiers could easily crush large numbers of men unused to discipline. It would be necessary then to have a force of regular troops from abroad to make head against those of the Government.

French determine on an Invasion.

Letter of Louis XV. to Philip V.

Butler and Balhaldy returned to France in October. During their absence things had changed; the battle of Dettingen had been fought (June 27th, 1743), although Great Britain and France were technically at peace. King Louis was furious, and he took the matter up personally, and gave instructions to prepare an expeditionary force for the invasion of England. The main body was to consist of sixteen battalions of infantry and one regiment of dismounted dragoons, under Marshal Saxe, and was to land in the Thames. It was further suggested that two or three battalions should be sent to Scotland. Prince Charles Edward was invited to accompany the expedition, and was secretly brought from Rome, arriving in Paris at the end of January 1744. There was no affectation of altruism for the Stuart exile in King Louis’s mind, but the zeal of the Jacobites was to be exploited. He wrote his private views to his uncle, the King of Spain, communicating a project that he had formed, he said, in great secrecy, which was to destroy at one blow the foundations of the league of the enemies of the House of Bourbon. It might, perhaps, be hazardous, but from all that he could learn it was likely to be successful. He wished to act in concert with Spain. He sent a plan of campaign. Everything was ready for execution, and he proposed to begin the expedition on the 1st of January. It would be a very good thing that the British minister should see that the barrier of the sea did not entirely protect England from French enterprise.[50] It might be that the revolution to be promoted by the expedition would not be so quick as was expected, but in any case there would be a civil war which would necessitate the recall of the English troops in the Netherlands. The Courts of Vienna and Turin would no longer receive English subsidies, and these Courts, left to their own resources, would submit to terms provided they were not too rigorous.[51]

Collapse of French Expedition.

The story of the collapse of the proposed invasion is too well known to need description. Ten thousand troops were on board ship. Marshal Saxe and Prince Charles were ready to embark. On the night of the 6th of March a terrible storm arose which lasted some days. The protecting men-of-war were dispersed, many of the transports were sunk, a British fleet appeared in the Channel, and Saxe was ordered to tell the Prince first that the enterprise was postponed, and later that it was abandoned. Charles, nearly broken-hearted, remained on in France, living in great privacy, and hoping against hope that the French would renew their preparations. For a time he remained at Gravelines, where Lord Marischal was with him. He longed for action, and implored the earl to urge the French to renew the expedition to England, but Marischal only suggested difficulties. Charles proposed an expedition to Scotland, but his lordship said it would mean destruction. Then he desired to make a campaign with the French army, but Lord Marischal said it would only disgust the English. Charles removed to Montmartre, near Paris, but he was ordered to maintain the strictest incognito. He asked to see King Louis, but he was refused any audience. His old tutor, Sir Thomas Sheridan, was sent from Rome to be with him; also George Kelly, Atterbury’s old secretary, who, since his escape from the Tower, had been living at Avignon. He took as his confessor a Cordelier friar of the name Kelly, a relative of the Protestant George Kelly, and, sad to say, a sorry drunkard, whose example did Charles no good. These Irish companions soon quarrelled with Balhaldy and Sempill, who wrote to the Chevalier complaining of their evil influence, while the Irishmen also wrote denouncing Balhaldy and Sempill.

Charles left Montmartre. His cousin, the Bishop of Soissons, son of the Marshal Duke of Berwick, kindly lent him his Château Fitzjames, a house seven posts from Paris on the Calais road, where he remained for a time. Another cousin, the Duke of Bouillon, a nephew of his mother, also was very kind, and entertained him at Navarre, a château near Evreux in Normandy. But his life was full of weary days. He could get nothing from the French, and ‘our friends in England,’ he wrote to his father, are ‘afraid of their own shadow, and think of little else than of diverting themselves.’ Things seemed very hopeless: the Scots alone remained faithful.

Suspense in Scotland.

From the time that Murray left London in the spring of 1743, the Jacobite Associators had received no letters from Balhaldy. The suspense was very trying; indeed Lord Lovat felt for a time so hopeless that he proposed to retire with his son to France and end his days in a religious house.[52] Lovat’s spirits seem to have risen shortly after this owing to some success he had in persuading his neighbours to join the Cause, and he eventually resolved to remain in Scotland. It was only from the newspapers the Jacobite leaders knew of the French preparations, but towards the end of December a letter was received from Balhaldy, which stated that the descent was to take place in the month of January. Other letters, however, threw some doubt on Lord Marischal’s part of the enterprise, which included an auxiliary landing in Scotland, and once more the Jacobite leaders were thrown into a state of suspense. They felt, however, that preparations must be made, and an active propaganda began among the Stuart adherents.

Murray’s interview with Prince Charles, August 1744.

In due course news of the disaster to the French fleet reached Scotland, but no word came from Balhaldy or Sempill, and it was then determined to send John Murray to France to find out the state of matters. Murray tells the story of his mission in his Memorials. He met Prince Charles at Paris on several occasions, and told him that so far from there being 20,000 Highlanders ready to rise, as was the boast of Balhaldy, it would be unwise to depend on more than 4000, if so many. But in spite of this discouraging information, the Prince categorically informed Murray that whatever happened he was determined to go to Scotland the following summer, though with a single footman.[53]

Murray hastened home, and at once began an active canvass among the Jacobites; money and arms were collected, and arrangements were made in various parts of the country. Among other expedients was the establishment of Jacobite clubs, and the celebrated ‘Buck Club’ was founded in Edinburgh. The members of these clubs were not at one among themselves. Some of them said they were prepared to join Prince Charles whatever happened, but others only undertook to join if he were accompanied by a French expedition. At a meeting of the Club a document was drawn up by Murray representing the views of the majority present, which insisted that unless the Prince could bring them 6000 regular troops, arms for 10,000 more, and 30,000 louis d’or, it would mean ruin to himself, to the Cause, and to his supporters.[54] This letter was handed to Lord Traquair, who undertook to take it to London and have it sent to Prince Charles in France. By Traquair it was delayed, possibly because he was busy paying court to the lady who about this time became Countess of Traquair,[55] but to the expectant Jacobites for no apparent reason save apathy. After keeping the letter for four months he returned it in April 1745, with the statement that he had been unable to find a proper messenger. Another letter was then sent by young Glengarry, who was about to proceed to France to join the Scottish regiment raised by Lord John Drummond for service in the French army. It was, however, too late; the Prince had left Paris before the letter could be delivered.

Distressed that the King of France would not admit him to his presence; wearied with the shuffling of the English Jacobites and the French ministers; depressed by Lord Marischal, who chilled his adventurous aspirations; plagued, as he tells his father, with the tracasseries of his own people, Charles determined to trust himself to the loyalty of the Scottish Highlanders. He ran heavily into debt; he purchased 40,000 livres’ worth of weapons and munitions,—muskets, broadswords, and twenty small field-pieces; he hired and fitted out two vessels. With 4000 louis d’or in his cassette he embarked with seven followers at Nantes on June 22nd (O.S.).

On July 25th he landed in Arisaig,—the ’Forty-five had begun.

PAPERS OF JOHN MURRAY OF BROUGHTON

These papers, picked up after Culloden, are fragmentary and are not easy reading without a knowledge of their general historical setting, and this I have endeavoured to give in brief outline in the preceding pages. They are particularly interesting as throwing glimpses of light on the origins of the last Jacobite rising. They were written before the collapse of that rising and before Murray, after the great betrayal, had become a social outcast. Murray’s Memorials, edited for the Scottish History Society by the late Mr. Fitzroy Bell, were written thirteen years after Culloden as a history and a vindication. These papers may be considered as memoranda or records of the business Murray had been transacting, and they view the situation from a different angle.

Some of the events mentioned in the Memorials are told with fuller detail in these papers; they also contain thirteen hitherto unpublished letters, consisting for the most part of a correspondence between Murray and the Chevalier de St. George and his secretary James Edgar. But to my mind the chief interest of the papers lies in the fact that they present a clue to the origin of the Jacobite revival which led up to the ’Forty-five; that clue will be found in Murray’s note on page 25.

In 1901 the Headquarters Staff of the French Army issued a monograph based on French State Papers, giving in great detail the project for the invasion of Great Britain in 1744, and the negotiations which led up to it. The book is entitled Louis XV. et les Jacobites, the author being Captain Jean Colin of the French Staff. In his opening sentence Captain Colin tells how the Chevalier de St. George was living tranquilly in Rome, having abandoned all hope of a restoration, when about the end of 1737 he received a message from his subjects in Scotland informing him that the Scottish Highlanders would be able, successfully, to oppose the Government troops then in Scotland. In no English or Scottish history, so far as I am aware, has this message from Scotland been emphasised, but in the French records it is assumed as the starting-point of the movement on the part of the French Government to undertake an expedition in favour of the Stuarts. Murray refers to Glenbucket’s mission in the Memorials (p. 2), though very casually, and as if it were a matter of little moment, but the insistence in French State Papers of the importance of the Scottish message made it necessary to investigate the matter further.

The first step to discover was the date of the sale of the estate of Glenbucket, the price of which was probably required for the expenses of the mission, and it was found from Duff family papers, kindly communicated by the authors of The Book of the Duffs, that Glenbucket sold his estate to Lord Braco in 1737. The next step is told in the pages of James Francis Edward, where it is narrated that Glenbucket was in Paris about the end of that year, that he there presented to Cardinal Fleury a scheme for a rising in Scotland, which he proposed should be assisted by the Irish regiments in the service of Louis XV. The same work tells how Glenbucket went on to Rome in January 1738, and there conveyed to the Chevalier satisfactory assurances from the Highlands, but few from the Lowlands.[56] The result was that William Hay was sent to Scotland on the mission which eventuated in the ‘Concert’ of Jacobite leaders, Highland and Lowland, and Balhaldy’s subsequent mission to Paris and Rome.

It would be interesting to know who the Highlanders were who entrusted Glenbucket with the message to Rome. Murray, in his jealous, disparaging way, remarks that it could only be Glengarry and General Gordon, but either he did not know much about Glenbucket or he was prejudiced. In an account of the Highland clans preserved in the Public Record Office, and evidently prepared for the information of the Government after he had turned traitor, Murray writes: ‘I have heard Gordon of Glenbucket looked upon as a man of Consequence, whereas, in fact, he is quite the reverse. He is not liked by his own name, a man of no property nor natural following, of very mean understanding, with a vast deal of vanity.’[57] But this word-portrait does not correspond with that drawn by a writer who had better opportunities of knowing Glenbucket. The author of the Memoirs of the Rebellion in the Counties of Aberdeen and Banff particularly emphasises the affection he inspired in the Highlanders, and significantly adds:—

‘It is generally believed he was very serviceable to the court of Rome, in keeping up their correspondence with the Chiefs of the Clans, and was certainly ... of late years over at that court, when his Low Country friends believed him to be all the while in the Highlands.’[58]

It may be that Lovat was one of those Highlanders who joined in Glenbucket’s message. About this time he had been deprived of his sheriffship and of his independent company, and, furious against the Government, had almost openly avowed his Jacobitism. In 1736 he, as sheriff, had released the Jacobite agent John Roy Stewart from prison in Inverness and by him had despatched a message of devotion to the Chevalier,[59] but of his co-operation with Glenbucket I have found no hint. The sequence of events here narrated make it plain that whoever it was for whom he spoke, it was Gordon of Glenbucket whose initiative in 1737 originated the Jacobite revival which eventually brought Prince Charles to Scotland.

Analysis of the papers is unnecessary after the admirable introduction to the Memorials by Mr. Fitzroy Bell, but it may interest readers of that work to refer to two letters mentioned in the Memorials. The first of these was a letter Murray says he wrote to the Chevalier giving an account of his interview with Cecil in London.[60] Mr. Bell searched the Stuart Papers at Windsor, but failed to find it. I think the letter printed on page 20 is the letter that was intended, though it is addressed not to James but to his secretary Edgar. The other letter mentioned in the Memorials was one to the Earl Marischal written about the same time. It was entrusted for delivery to Balhaldy and Traquair, but to Murray’s intense indignation they destroyed it. In the Memorials he expresses his regret that he has not a copy to insert. There is little doubt that the letter on page 27 of these papers is the draft of the letter referred to.

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.

Of Alexander Macbean’s ‘Memorial’ it is perhaps enough to say that it is, considering the times, fairly impartial, and corresponds on the whole with authentic information gleaned from other sources. I have taken the opportunity of supplementing, perhaps overloading, his text with notes detailing, so far as I have been able to discover them from various sources, the names of the principal Highland gentlemen who were concerned in the Rising of the ’Forty-five.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE LATE REBELLION FROM ROSS AND SUTHERLAND

The author of this narrative was Daniel Munro, minister of the parish of Tain. His origin was probably humble, as in Scott’s Fasti it is stated that owing to his knowledge of the Irish (i.e. Gaelic) language, he was educated on the Church’s charitable funds, and held a bursary from the Synod of Ross at Marischal College, and the University of Aberdeen. Munro was minister of the parish of Auldearn, near Nairn, from 1736 to April 1745, when he was translated to Tain, where he remained until his death in 1748. Of his life and work I have found little record. Andrew Henderson, the author of the Edinburgh History of the Rebellion, who knew this country well, says that he was ‘an uncouth man, a monster of impiety, wickedness, and ill nature.’ He further states that he was turned out of his church for ‘fighting and other immoralities.’[61]

This ‘Account’ is a very meagre one. The important fact in the history of Ross in the ’Forty-five was that the head of the house of Seaforth forsook the family tradition and took active part with the Government against the old royal family. It was a heavy blow to Prince Charles when Lord Macleod, eldest son of Lord Cromartie, who went to Glasgow to see the Prince in January 1746, informed him at supper that Seaforth had furnished two hundred men for the service of the Government. Charles turned to the French minister and gasped, ‘Hé, mon Dieu, et Seaforth est aussi contre moi!’

Kenneth Mackenzie, known as Lord Fortrose (which was really a Jacobite title), would have been the sixth Earl of Seaforth but for the attainder. His wife was Lady Mary Stewart, eldest daughter of the Earl of Galloway. She held Jacobite principles and raised many of her husband’s clan for the Prince, while most of Fortrose’s men eventually deserted to the Jacobites.

The principal operations in Ross and Sutherland began after Inverness had been taken by the Jacobite army. Lord Loudoun then retired to the shores of the Dornoch Firth. Lord Cromartie was sent in pursuit. Loudoun had boats, and when Cromartie approached him, he crossed the Firth to Dornoch. The Jacobites had to go round by the head of the Firth, whereupon Loudoun returned in his boats to the southern shore at Tain, and went back to Sutherland when Cromartie came to Ross. Cromartie was superseded by the Duke of Perth. Land operations seeming to be useless, a flotilla of boats was secretly collected at Findhorn and taken to Tain under shelter of a dense fog. On March 20th, 1746, Perth crossed over the Meikle Ferry, and completely defeated Loudoun at the bloodless battle of Dornoch. Lord Loudoun, along with Duncan Forbes, Sir Alexander Macdonald, Macleod of Macleod, fled to the Isle of Skye, while the chief of Mackintosh was taken prisoner.

On March 25th, the Hazard, a sloop of war which had been captured by the Jacobites at Montrose four months previously and sent to France, when returning with money, stores, and recruits, was forced to run ashore in the Kyle of Tongue by four men-of-war. Lord Reay, the Whig head of the Mackays, took possession of the wreck and its contents, including 156 prisoners and £12,000, the money being sorely needed by the army. Lord Cromartie and his son, Lord Macleod, were sent with a force of 1500 men to expostulate with Lord Reay, and if possible to recover the spoil. In this they naturally failed, but they continued the march as far as Thurso, beating up for recruits and levying the land cess upon the inhabitants.[62] On the way back, Cromartie and his son paid a visit to the Countess of Sutherland at Dunrobin. There, on the day before the battle of Culloden, they were made prisoners by the clever trick of a certain Ensign Mackay, while their followers, then at Golspie, were beaten and dispersed in an action sometimes called the battle of the Little Ferry.

MEMOIRS OF THE REBELLION IN THE COUNTIES OF ABERDEEN AND BANFF

This manuscript bears neither signature nor date, and gives no indication of authorship. There can, however, be little doubt that the author of the narrative was a minister belonging to Aberdeen or Banffshire, and that it was written at the same time as the two previous papers, about the end of 1746 or the beginning of 1747.

The story of the events of the Rising in the north-eastern counties is recounted with much fulness of detail, and with a minute knowledge of the country and the people. It is told, moreover, with marked fairness. Although the writer is a Whig, he speaks kindly of the Jacobite leaders, and he does not conceal the cruelties committed by the Government troops.

He tells the story of the skirmish of Inverurie in greater detail than is found elsewhere, and he gives picturesque touches in places that add to the interest of his narrative. Specially graphic is his account of Macleod’s famous piper, MacCrimmon, who was captured in that action.

The condition of parties in the north-eastern counties was not what it had been in the ’Fifteen. At that time the great lords of the counties had been Jacobite, whereas in 1745 most of the Aberdeenshire peers were supporters of the Government. None of them, however, took a prominent lead in the struggle. It is interesting to read the reasons given by the author of these Memoirs for the reticence of the Whig peers. The Duke of Gordon was prevented by indisposition. Lord Findlater’s sickly condition quite disabled him, and Lord Kintore’s incumbrances on his fortune were a drawback. Lord Forbes again had by no means an estate suited to his ability, while Lord Saltoun had no weight in the county. As for Lord Braco (afterwards Earl Fife), the newness of his family would have marred any project of his forming. The author considers, however, that something might have been expected of the Earl of Aberdeen.[63]

These explanations carry no conviction, and there can be little doubt that, in the beginning, these Aberdeenshire lords were more or less sitting on the fence. Nor is this to be wondered at; family tradition and family connection would make them very chary of taking any prominent steps against the Jacobites. The Duke of Gordon, whose mother was a daughter of the Earl of Peterborough, had been brought up a Protestant and a Whig in defiance of the Catholic religion and Jacobite principles of his predecessors. Yet he must have had some sympathy with the family tradition. Early in September his father’s old factor, Gordon of Glenbucket, carried off horses and arms from Gordon Castle while the Duke was there, apparently with his connivance. Moreover, Sir Harry Innes of Innes in writing of this to his brother-in-law, Ludovick Grant, adds: ‘I am sory to tell yow that the Duke is quite wronge.’[64] By the end of November, however, he had pronounced for the Government. Lord Findlater was a Jacobite in the ’Fifteen, and had then been imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. Lord Kintore’s father had fought at Sheriffmuir, and been deprived of his office of Knight-Marischal as a punishment. Lord Braco’s family was deeply concerned on the Jacobite side; his son-in-law, Sir William Gordon of Park, his brother-in-law, William Baird of Auchmedden, his nephew, a son of Duff of Hatton, were all ‘out,’ and his eldest son was only kept by force from joining the Jacobites.[65] Lord Aberdeen had only in March succeeded his father, who, it is known, had intended to join the Stuart cause.[66]

Lord Forbes, whose traditions were Whig, and whose father was Lord-Lieutenant of the county in 1715, might have acted, but his family connections were nearly all Jacobite. He was the brother-in-law of Lord Pitsligo and Gordon of Park, while his three daughters were married to prominent Jacobites.[67]

Nor on the Jacobite side were there any noted personages. The two most prominent Jacobite leaders were Gordon of Glenbucket, a tenant farmer, and Lord Pitsligo. Though of small estate, Lord Pitsligo was universally respected for his high character and his personal piety. He knew his own mind and never faltered. He had been out in the ’Fifteen, and was sixty-seven years of age. In a letter to a friend, he confesses that what really troubled him was the fear of ridicule that a man of his age should take part in the adventure; but he thought, and weighed, and weighed again. His enthusiasm was of the coldest kind, but duty called him and he obeyed. His example influenced many Aberdeen and Banffshire lairds, and he gathered a considerable contingent of horse and foot. It is related that when he was ready to start to join the Prince, and had put himself at the head of his troop, he turned his face upwards and prayed aloud, ‘O Lord, Thou knowest that our cause is just,’ and then quietly gave the order to march.[68]

To understand these Memoirs fully, it is necessary to place them in their historical setting, and to give a brief outline of the military operations during the campaign.

On August 31st the corporation of Aberdeen, thoroughly alarmed at the news of the advance of Prince Charles, determined to put the city into a position of defence. Lists were made of all available citizens, who were embodied into a force of twelve companies of infantry and a detachment of artillery, while arms and ammunition were collected for their equipment. Sir John Cope, who had left Inverness on September 4th, reached Aberdeen on the 11th. Finding guns placed to defend the harbour and citizens fully armed, he commandeered both cannon and small arms, and carried them off, alleging that otherwise they might fall into the enemy’s hands. Cope left Aberdeen by sea for the Firth of Forth on September 15th, the city being left without any defence.

Meantime the Jacobites were not idle. Gordon of Glenbucket, now aged seventy-two, had been bed-ridden for three years, but he no sooner heard of the Prince’s arrival than he experienced ‘a kind of new life.’[69] Although bent nearly double on horseback, he hurried off to the West Highlands, and met Prince Charles at Kinlochmoidart on August 18th. He was back in Banffshire raising men by September 5th.[70] John Hamilton, the Duke of Gordon’s factor in Strathbogie, also quickly raised a contingent, and ten days after Cope’s departure, on September 25th, he marched into Aberdeen, where he proclaimed King James at the Cross, and perpetrated the somewhat ludicrous outrage on the provost and magistrates narrated on page 119. From that time until the last week in February, Aberdeen was under Jacobite government. Men were hurriedly collected; and on October 4th Glenbucket joined Prince Charles at Edinburgh with 400 men from Strathavon and Glenlivet, Hamilton also arrived in the city with 480 from Strathbogie and the Enzie. On the 9th Lord Pitsligo followed with 132 horse and 248 foot.

In the last week of October Lord Lewis Gordon, brother of the Duke of Gordon, a young naval officer who had joined the Prince in Edinburgh, was sent north as Lord-Lieutenant of the counties of Aberdeen and Banff. He found his task harder than he expected, being grossly thwarted by ‘the vile and malicious behaviour of the Prysbiterian ministers.’[71] Towards the end of November, to his intense surprise, his brother, the Duke, instructed his vassals to disregard Lord Lewis’s orders.[72] In spite of discouragement, Lord Lewis worked on. Moir of Lonmay was appointed deputy-governor of Aberdeenshire and Baird of Auchmedden of Banffshire. Three new regiments were raised under Moir of Stonywood (Lonmay’s brother), Gordon of Avochy (Glenbucket’s nephew), and Farquharson of Monaltrie, a cadet of Invercauld; rates and taxes were imposed and collected; and a good deal of hardship was inflicted on the lieges.

After the battle of Prestonpans (September 21st) Lord Loudoun, who there acted as Cope’s adjutant-general, had gone to London, where he received a commission to return to Inverness to command an army of Highlanders friendly to the Government, then being organised by Duncan Forbes of Culloden.

By December Loudoun was able to send an expedition under Munro of Culcairn and Macleod of Macleod to relieve Aberdeen. Lord Lewis Gordon, reinforced by some of the French troops of Lord John Drummond, which had landed in November at Stonehaven, Peterhead, and Montrose, met the invaders at Inverurie on December 23rd. He defeated Macleod completely, and forced him to retire across the Spey, thus freeing Aberdeen and Banff from all enemy troops.

Lord Lewis now collected all his available forces and marched to Stirling to join Prince Charles, who had returned from his English expedition; and by the first week in January 1746 Aberdeen was left without Jacobite troops. The battle of Falkirk was fought on January 17th, and on February 1st the army of Prince Charles began its retreat to the north. One column under Lord George Murray, taking the coast road, marched through Aberdeen and on to Elgin; another proceeded by Glenshee and Braemar, occupying for a time the northern districts of the county; the main body of the Highlanders went by Blair Atholl and Badenoch to Inverness. Two small French contingents landed at Aberdeenshire ports on February 21st and 22nd, but on the 23rd the last of the Jacobite army had left the town of Aberdeen.

Meantime, Cumberland’s army was in full pursuit. It left Perth on February 20th, and the van reached Aberdeen on the 25th, the Duke himself following two days later. The Earl of Albemarle and General Bland, along with Brigadier Mordaunt, occupied Strathbogie, the Jacobites retiring before them. Lord John Drummond was entrusted with the defence of the passage of the Spey, but some troops were left under John Roy Stewart and Major Glascoe to carry on a guerrilla warfare. Glascoe, on March 20th, surprised a detachment of Campbell’s and Kingston’s horse at Keith, and captured nearly the whole garrison.

Hitherto the loyal inhabitants of Aberdeen had murmured at the excesses of the Jacobite troops, but their complaints were more bitter at the excesses of those of the Government.[73] Houses were plundered and burned, the chapels and meeting-houses of Roman Catholics and Episcopalian non-jurors were destroyed, and the inhabitants were more or less terrorised. In the General Order Book of the Duke of Cumberland, an instance is given of the kind of punishment that was meted out. There was a certain loyal schoolmaster in the parish of Glass, who, having learned that John Roy Stewart intended to spring a surprise similar to that at Keith, warned Lord Albemarle of the intention. This warning had the effect of keeping the Government troops on the watch for several nights. No attack was made on them, however, and the General, believing that the intelligence had been given for the purpose of harassing the troops by depriving them of sleep (although in reality he had been saved by the vigilance he had exercised as the result of the schoolmaster’s information), sent the unfortunate informer to headquarters at Aberdeen. The punishment was very severe. In the Order Book, it is stated ‘that Peter Maconachy of Glass, convicted of spreading false intelligence in order to allarm our defence post, to be tied to a cart and whipped and drum’d through the cantoonments of Aberdeen, Old Meldrum, and Strathbogey, with a labell on his breast mentioning his crime. From Strathbogey he is to be turn’d out towards the rebells with orders never to come near where the army may be on pain of being hanged. The woman suspected of inveigling men to list in the French service is to be carried in the same cart.’[74] On April 8th, the Duke of Cumberland left Aberdeen, concentrated his army on Cullen, and crossed the Spey on the 12th, when Lord John Drummond retired before him. Four days later the battle of Culloden was fought.

CAPTAIN DANIEL’S PROGRESS WITH PRINCE CHARLES

This narrative, written by an English officer, who served in Lord Balmerino’s regiment, is occasionally referred to by modern historians of the Jacobite period, but has never been printed. Two manuscripts are known to exist. One, which belongs to an English gentleman, was shown to me by the late Mr. Andrew Lang. It is evidently contemporary, or nearly so, but the spelling is so eccentric that it is exceedingly difficult to read. The second manuscript is preserved at Drummond Castle, and is a certificated copy of the original, but it is written with modern spelling. Both were put at my disposal, but as there was nothing to show that the older version was Daniel’s holograph—indeed the evidence was against it—I preferred to use the Drummond Castle copy. The matter in both was practically identical. Of the writer nothing is known beyond what he tells of himself. Apparently he came from the Fylde country of Lancashire, the district between the Lune and the Ribble, and he was brought up in Jacobite principles.

The narrative is particularly interesting as giving the adventures of an English Jacobite. Daniel, stimulated by the call of conscience, had determined to embrace the cause. He had the good fortune to meet the Duke of Perth when the Prince’s army was near Preston on the march to Derby. The Duke invited him to join, offering him his friendship and patronage. Daniel accepted the offer, and he continued with the army until the end, when he escaped to France in the same ship as the Duke of Perth, whose death he witnessed on the voyage from Arisaig to France in the following May.

On joining, Daniel was attached to the first troop of Life Guards, of which Lord Elcho was colonel, but on the retreat from Derby he was transferred to the second troop of the same regiment, which was commanded by the Hon. Arthur Elphinstone, who about three weeks later succeeded his brother as sixth Lord Balmerino. Daniel conceived a great affection and admiration for his colonel, yet in his laudatory account he mentions a painful characteristic of the times. A gentleman, and a scholar who could recite pages from the Classics, Lord Balmerino was of a noble personage and had the courage of a lion. Moreover he never failed in his military duties. His ‘sole and predominant passion’ was for hard drinking. But for this weakness, ‘he would have shone with the same lustre in the army as he afterwards did on the scaffold.’

In the narrative there is no affectation of impartiality. Daniel is constantly comparing the iniquities of his enemies with the virtues of his friends. There is a curious incident mentioned by him when referring to the death of Sir Robert Munro of Foulis at the battle of Falkirk. He says (page 198), ‘among the slain were ... Sir Robert Munro, who was heard much to blaspheme during the engagement, and as a punishment for which, his tongue was miraculously cut asunder by a sword that struck him directly across the mouth.’ This is rather a startling statement concerning the end of one whom Dr. Doddridge has depicted as a type of the Christian soldier.[75] There seems, however, no necessity to doubt the truth of Daniel’s statement as representing the talk of the Highland camp; for it must be remembered that Sir Robert had served for many years with the army in Flanders whose strong language was proverbial. With the Highlanders on the other hand, profanity was not a common failing, and they may have been shocked at expletives which to an old campaigner were but unmeaning commonplaces of military expression.

Doddridge gives a certain amount of confirmation to Daniel’s story. He tells that when Sir Robert’s body was found the day after the battle, his face was so cut and mangled that it was hardly recognisable.

Daniel on joining the Jacobite army had been befriended by the Duke of Perth, and naturally he heartily disapproved of Lord George Murray. His dislike and distrust are shown frequently in his narrative. He tells, too, how his chief, Lord Balmerino, quarrelled with Lord George; how the hardships the cavalry endured in the campaign nearly drove the men to mutiny, the blame being thrown on the general. Such unreasoning accusations must have made Lord George’s life, hard as it was, more difficult than it would have been had officers and men been really disciplined.

There is another charge which Daniel makes against Lord George Murray—a charge which raised much controversy amongst the Jacobites—namely, the responsibility for fighting the battle of Culloden.

Daniel says: ‘Contrary to the Prince’s inclination, Lord George Murray insisted on standing and fighting that day. The Prince, notwithstanding his great inclination to avoid fighting, was at last obliged to give way to the importunity of Lord George Murray, who even used terms very cutting in case of refusal.’ This attempt to fix the responsibility on Lord George is contrary to impartial evidence, as may be seen by careful examination of contemporary documents.[76] Lord George was against fighting, his scheme being to retire to the mountains, very much as proposed by the Marquis D’Eguilles. The Prince surely must have known this, yet we find that while hiding in South Uist he told Neil Maceachain that ‘he blamed always my Lord George as being the only instrument in loseing the battle, and altho’ that he, the morning before the action, used all his rhetorick, and eloquence against fighting, yet my Lord George outreasoned him, till at last he yielded for fear to raise a dissension among the army, all which he attributed to his infidelity, roguery, and treachery.’ One can only surmise that in his anger against Lord George Murray, the Prince’s recollection of what had actually happened had become confused, and, surrounded by flatterers even in his flight, he had brought himself to lay the responsibility on his Lieutenant-General.

The controversy, which long raged among the Jacobites, may be set at rest once and for all from the report of the Marquis D’Eguilles to Louis XV. D’Eguilles was the accredited envoy of the King of France to the itinerant Court of Prince Charles Edward. On his return to France after a year’s confinement as a prisoner of war, he wrote an official report of his mission to the French king. It is a State document, preserved in the archives of the French Government, but apparently it has never been examined by any British historian. From the text of that document, an extract from which is here given, it will be seen that on the Prince, and the Prince alone, lay the responsibility of fighting the battle of Culloden.

French Envoy’s Official Report to Louis XV. on the Battle of Culloden

Le prince, qui se croyait invincible, parce qu’il n’avait pas encore été vaincu, défié par des ennemis qu’il méprisait trop, voyant à leur tête le fils du concurrent de son père, fier et haut comme il l’était, mal conseillé, peut-être trahi, oubliant en ce moment tout autre projet, ne put se résoudre à lui refuser un seul jour le combat. Je lui demandai un quart d’heure d’audience en particulier. Là, je me jetai en vain à ses pieds; je lui représentai en vain qu’il lui manquait encore la moitié de son armée, que la plupart de ceux qui étaient revenus n’avaient plus de boucliers, espèce d’armes défensives, sans les quelles ils ne sauraient combattre avec avantage; qu’ils étaient tous épuisés de fatigue, par une longue course faite la nuit précédente; que depuis deux jours plusieurs n’avaient pas mangé, faute de pain; qu’il fallait se réduire à défendre Inverness; qu’il serait même encore plus prudent de l’abandonner et de mettre entre les ennemis et nous la rivière, auprès de laquelle cette ville est batie; qu’au pis-aller nous entrerions dans les montagnes voisines; que c’était là qu’il serait véritablement invincible; que nous y resterions les maîtres de la partie de la côte où devait arriver le secours d’armes et d’argent que nous attendions; que dès que nous l’aurions reçu, nous marcherions vers l’Angleterre par cette même côte, ainsi qu’il avait été convenu; que plus les ennemis se seraient avancés vers nous, et plus il leur serait difficile en rebroussant chemin, d’arriver à Londres avant nous; que c’était la prise de cette grande ville qui devait faire son unique objet; que les succès qu’il pourrait avoir ailleurs n’auraient jamais rien de décisif, tandis que tout allait être perdu sans ressource dans une heure, s’il venait à être battu.

Enfin, le trouvant inébranlable dans la résolution prise de combattre à quelque prix que ce fût, je fis céder mon penchant à mon devoir. Je le quittai pour la première fois, je me retirai en hâte à Inverness, pour y brûler tous mes papiers, et y songer aux moyens de conserver à votre Majesté la partie de ses troupes qui ne périrait dans l’action.

Je vis avant la fin du jour le spectacle le plus frappant de la faiblesse humaine: le prince fut vaincu en un instant. Jamais déroute plus entière que la sienne.

TRANSLATION

The Prince who believed himself invincible because he had not yet been beaten, defied by enemies whom he thoroughly despised, seeing at their head the son of the rival of his father; proud and haughty as he was, badly advised, perhaps betrayed, forgetting at this moment every other object, could not bring himself to decline battle even for a single day. I requested a quarter of an hour’s private audience. There I threw myself in vain at his feet. In vain I represented to him that he was still without half his army; that the great part of those who had returned had no longer targets—a kind of defensive armour without which they were unable to fight with advantage; that they were all worn out with fatigue by a long march made on the previous night, and for two days many of them had not eaten at all for want of bread; that it was necessary to fall back to defend Inverness; that it would be even more prudent to abandon that town, and to place between the enemy and ourselves the river near which this town is built; that if the worst came to the worst, we might betake ourselves to the neighbouring mountains—there it was that he would be truly invincible; there we would remain masters of that part of the coast, at which supplies of arms and of money ought to be arriving, and as soon as these reached us, we should march towards England by that same coast as had already been arranged; that the more the enemy should advance towards us, the greater would be their difficulty to retrace their steps so as to get to London before us; the capture of that great city should be made his one object, for successes that he might achieve elsewhere would have no decisive value, while, in a single hour, all would be lost without hope of recovery if he should chance to be beaten.

In the end, finding him immovable in the resolve he had taken to fight at any cost, I made my desire yield to my duty. I left him for the first time. I retired in haste to Inverness, there to burn all my papers, and there to think over the means of preserving for your Majesty that portion of the [French] troops which might survive the action. I saw before the end of the day, the most striking spectacle of human weakness—the Prince was vanquished in an instant; never was a defeat more complete than his.

THE WANDERINGS OF PRINCE CHARLES IN THE HEBRIDES

This narrative by Neil Maceachain, the guide of Prince Charles and Flora Macdonald over the seas to Skye, appeared in the New Monthly Magazine for 1840. As a magazine article three-quarters of a century old is nearly as inaccessible as a manuscript, the Council of the Society authorised its inclusion in this volume as a fitting addition to the numerous narratives of the ’Forty-five collected by the Society.

In the magazine the article is prefaced with a note by the editor, Theodore Hook, who states that it was purchased from a hairdresser in Paris who claimed to be the son of the writer, and who, as Hook believed, must have been a son of Neil Maceachain. This, however, was impossible, as Neil had but one son who survived infancy—a son who had a far more distinguished career.

The fact is that when Neil died, his son was in garrison at Calais. The father’s papers were made over to the custody of a Mr. Macnab, a Highland exile residing in France. At the Revolution, Macnab was imprisoned, his effects were seized and scattered, and Neil Maceachain’s papers were lost. Probably at that time the vendor had obtained the manuscript.

My attention was drawn to the paper about twenty years ago, and I determined to find out what its claims to authenticity might be. In one of my journeys through the Outer Hebrides, when compiling the Itinerary of Prince Charles,[77] I was accompanied by the late Father Allan Macdonald, priest of Eriska and Dean of the Isles. We took a copy of the article with us, and traced on the spot the wanderings here described. We were much gratified; local tradition as well as topography completely corroborated the narrative. It could only have been written by one thoroughly acquainted with the islands. There could be no doubt of its genuineness, and it must have been written by Neil Maceachain.

In the Itinerary there is a short account of Neil, to which the reader is referred. Briefly, he was one of the Macdonald-Maceachains of Howbeg, in South Uist, a sept of the Clanranald. Neil was educated in France for the priesthood, but abandoned his intention of taking orders, and returned to South Uist, where he acted as parish schoolmaster and tutor in the family of Clanranald, who then resided at Nunton in Benbecula. The old chief attached Neil to Prince Charles when in hiding in the islands, believing that his scholarship, his knowledge of languages, and his accomplishments as a musician might be useful to the Prince.

It must be remembered that the narrative can be accepted as trustworthy only for the occasions on which Neil was actually with the Prince. He met him on his first arrival at Benbecula, but he did not accompany him on his journey to Harris and Lewis; he was, however, again with him on his return to Benbecula and South Uist. Neil’s accounts, therefore, of the Prince’s adventures when away from South Uist are only from hearsay and not to be entirely depended on. In the Itinerary I followed for that part of the Prince’s wanderings the narrative of Donald Macleod of Gualtergil, who was then his companion and guide.

Not the least interesting portion of the narrative is the account of the meeting between Flora Macdonald and Prince Charles. So much fiction mingles with accounts of the incident, in prose, in verse, and in pictures, that it is well to get the simple facts of the story. There were no English soldiers in the Hebrides; the duty of hunting the Prince was entrusted to the independent companies of Highlanders generally referred to as the Macdonald, Macleod, and Campbell militia. It must be remembered, however, that the Navy was relentless in the pursuit. Flora’s stepfather, Hugh Macdonald, was one of the chief men of the Sleat Clan which supported the Government, while Flora herself was a Clanranald.[78] She had been educated in her childhood with Clanranald’s family, and later she had been a good deal with Sir Alexander and Lady Margaret Macdonald in Edinburgh. Flora was dearly loved by both the families, and was a very suitable person to conduct Prince Charles from Clanranald territory to Skye. Moreover, the moment was opportune, for Sir Alexander Macdonald was in attendance on the Duke of Cumberland at Fort Augustus, and Lady Margaret, who had taken the utmost interest in the Prince and had secretly sent him comforts to South Uist, was at home at Monkstat.

Hugh Macdonald has always been suspected of collusion with the Prince,[79] but this is the only narrative in which the fact is stated categorically. Charles declared that he felt safe while he was with the Macdonalds.[80] Flora had but one meeting with Charles Edward in South Uist, on June 21st, when the plan of escape to Skye was arranged (p. 251). They met again on the evening of Saturday, June 28th, at Benbecula, whence Flora, Neil, and the Prince went by boat to Skye. Sunday night was spent at Kingsburgh’s house, and the narrative breaks off at the interesting moment when the party was on the way from Monkstat to Kingsburgh. What happened after that is found in various narratives of The Lyon in Mourning. Briefly, the Prince spent the night at Kingsburgh House. Next day, he walked to Portree, changing his female clothes in a wood on the road. The Prince walked by private paths and Flora rode by the main highway. At Portree the Prince said farewell to Flora for ever.

Such is the story, and it needs no embellishment. Flora’s services to the Prince were matchless; she saved him at the moment when General Campbell with his militia and a naval expedition were on the point of capturing him. She herself was taken prisoner a few days later.[81]

At Portree Neil Maceachain also said farewell to Prince Charles, who with Malcolm and Murdoch Macleod went that night to the island of Raasa. The following day the Prince returned to Skye, and left two days later for the mainland. Thus finished his wanderings in the Hebrides.

Neil evaded capture after the escape of Prince Charles from Skye; in September he rejoined him at Arisaig, and in the ship L’Heureux accompanied the Prince to France. There he joined the French army, at first as a lieutenant in the Regiment d’Albanie, of which the command was given to Lochiel, and afterwards in the Scots regiment of Lord Ogilvy, the Jacobite exile. Ogilvy’s regiment was disbanded after the Peace of Paris in 1763, and Neil passed the rest of his life, first at Sedan and afterwards at Sancerre, in the province of Berry, on a pension of three hundred livres (about £30). He died at Sancerre in 1788. When he left Scotland Neil dropped the name of Maceachain, retaining only that of Macdonald.

His only son became famous as one of Napoleon’s generals—Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum.

NARRATIVE OF LUDOVICK GRANT OF GRANT

In 1745 Sir James Grant was the head of the family. His father at the Revolution had taken the side of King William, and had been a member of the Convention of Estates which declared King James’s forfeiture. He had raised a regiment and had incurred heavy expenses in the service of the new Government, but in spite of frequent applications no repayment had ever been made to him. Sir James’s elder brother, Alexander, succeeded his father. He was a distinguished soldier, who served the Government faithfully, and rose to the rank of Brigadier-General. In the ’Fifteen he was Lord-Lieutenant of Banff and Inverness, and was appointed Captain of Edinburgh Castle. In 1717 he was informed that the Government had no further occasion for his services. He died in 1719, and was succeeded by his brother James, who by a special grant inherited the baronetcy of his father-in-law, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Luss. Sir James Grant was member of parliament for the county of Inverness from 1722 to 1741, when a quarrel with Duncan Forbes of Culloden forced him to relinquish the constituency. He then became member for the Elgin burghs, for which he sat until his death in 1747. Although Sir James was a Whig in politics, it may be that at one time he had dealings with the Jacobite Court. It is remarkable that in 1721, while the Atterbury Plot was being hatched, and at the very time that Christopher Layer was in Rome on that business, Sir James Grant was created a peer by the Chevalier.[82]

On his arrival in Scotland, Prince Charles wrote to Grant requesting his co-operation in much the same terms as he wrote to known Jacobite adherents.[83] Sir James, who was now sixty-six years old, determined to keep out of trouble. He handed over the management of his clan and property to his eldest son, Ludovick, and on the pretext of attending to his parliamentary duties, he went to London, where he remained throughout the Rising.

Before leaving Scotland, Sir James pointed out to his son that the family had received scant reward for eminent services in the past, and he advised him that whatever happened the clan should not be subdivided. He strongly opposed Duncan Forbes’s scheme of independent companies. The clan should remain passive, prepared to defend its own territory, and only act in the event of its being attacked. This policy Ludovick carried out, and in doing so incurred the grave suspicion of the Government. It is indeed difficult to believe that, until the final retreat of the Jacobites and the approach of Cumberland, the acting Chief of the Grants was not sitting on the fence.

The Grant estates were in two distinct portions, those around Castle Grant in Strathspey and those in Urquhart and Glenmoriston on the western side of Loch Ness. Although the Strathspey Grants were accounted a Whig clan, the Grants of Urquhart and Glenmoriston were notoriously Jacobite. When the Rising took place, Ludovick Grant wrote to his outlying retainers, not forbidding them to join the Prince, but peremptorily forbidding them to move without his sanction. Eventually they went ‘out’ in spite of his orders, but the Strathspey men stood loyally by their chief.

The whole story of the rising in Urquhart and Glenmoriston and the action of Ludovick Grant towards the Government and his clansmen has been told within recent years in a most interesting volume by Mr. William Mackay,[84] to which the reader is referred. The narrative printed here is Grant’s own apologia to the Government, prepared with legal assistance after the Rising. The text tells its own story, but four points may be referred to here, points which it gave Ludovick Grant much trouble to explain. First, when Sir John Cope marched north in August 1745 he passed within ten miles of Castle Grant, yet the young chief neither visited him nor sent him assistance.[85] Second, when President Duncan Forbes asked him to furnish two independent companies for the service of Government, he declined, on the ostensible ground that two companies were too insignificant a contingent for so important a clan as the Grants. He eventually was persuaded to send one company,[86] whose only service was to garrison Inverness Castle under Major George Grant, Ludovick’s uncle. The castle surrendered to Prince Charles in February after two days’ siege, and the commandant was dismissed the service. Third, Grant marched his men to Strathbogie to attack Lord Lewis Gordon’s men in December without orders from Lord Loudoun, then commanding in the north,[87] for which he incurred Lord Loudoun’s censure. Fourth, when Grant had gone to Aberdeen in March, five of his principal gentlemen made a treaty of neutrality[88] with the Jacobites under Lord George Murray and Lord Nairn, by which the Prince’s people were to get supplies from the Grant country in return for protection from raiding.

This narrative is occasionally referred to in Sir William Fraser’s Chiefs of Grant, but is not included in that work. The text is printed from the original manuscripts in the Public Record Office.

THE CASE OF THE REV. JOHN GRANT AND OF GRANTS OF SHEUGLY

To show his zeal for the Government after Culloden, Ludovick Grant marched his Strathspey men, eight hundred strong, into Urquhart and Glenmoriston, and under threat of fire and sword arrested his clansmen who had been ‘out.’ The fighting men were handed over to the Duke of Cumberland, and most of them were transported. Grant of Sheugly and his eldest son had not actually been out but were accused of urging their people to join the Jacobites. They were sent to London as prisoners along with the Reverend John Grant, minister of Urquhart. Ludovick asserted to the Duke of Newcastle that the minister ‘was at all their consultations and never attempted to dissuade the people from joining the rebells, but on the contrary gave over praying for his Majesty, and after the battle of Culloden he concealed some of the rebells and had their money in keeping.... Mr. Grant concealed from me where three of the rebells were hid by his direction....’[89]

The reader will find the minister’s own story in the text, and must judge of its truth. Perhaps Grant protests too much, for Mr. Mackay informs me that the tradition of the parish is that he was a thorough Jacobite. It is perfectly evident, however, that the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General thought lightly of the case both against the minister and young Sheugly, or they would never have remitted them to the court at Edinburgh, when it was notorious that no Scottish jury would convict a Jacobite.

The prisoners, on December 4th, ‘sisted [surrendered] themselves in court [at Edinburgh] to answer for alleadged Rebellion and all such matters as on his Majesty’s behalf should be objected against them.’[90] They were admitted to bail and there the matter ended.

The Presbytery records show that no ecclesiastical proceedings were taken against the minister, though probably that does not mean much. At that time it may well be believed that every minister and elder in the Highlands sympathised with the hunted Jacobites. The only minister of the Church of Scotland who was dealt with for disloyalty in the ’Forty-five was Thomas Man, minister of Dunkeld. He was tried before the Commission of General Assembly in May 1747. The libel against him was found relevant, and the charges partly confessed or found proven. The sentence was gentle—five months’ suspension from his duties.[91]

The manuscript of this case is preserved in the Record Office.

GROSSETT’S MEMORIAL AND ACCOUNTS

Walter Grossett[92] of Logie was the grandson of a certain Alexander Grossett, or Grosier, or Grosiert, a Frenchman, who came over to Great Britain in the Civil Wars and served King Charles I. in the army. He settled in Scotland, and died there, leaving a son Alexander. This son purchased the small estate of Logie, near Dunfermline. He was an ardent Covenanter, and retired to Holland at the time of the persecutions. Alexander left an only son, Archibald, who married Eupham Muirhead, a daughter of the laird of Bredisholm, in North Lanarkshire, by whom he had three sons; of these Walter was the eldest. Through his mother, he was a cousin of Sir John Shaw of Greenock, and was also nearly connected with the families of Lord Blantyre and the Earl of Cathcart.

In 1745 this Walter Grossett was Collector of Customs at Alloa, an office he had held for seventeen years. He was exceedingly active in his vocation, and very successful in the prosecution of smugglers. A short time before the Rising, at great risk to himself, he made one of the largest seizures of smuggled tobacco ever made in Scotland, thus enriching the Treasury by several thousand pounds.[93] Early in the ’Forty-five, eight days before Prince Charles entered Edinburgh, Grossett was commissioned by Lord Advocate Craigie to seize the boats and shipping on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth to prevent their falling into the hands of the Jacobite army, then assembling at Perth. Apparently his performance gave satisfaction, for he was promoted to be Collector at Leith, and he was constantly employed thereafter by the military authorities and the Lord Justice-Clerk, both in executive work and in secret service. His services were so highly approved by the Duke of Cumberland that H.R.H. promised him ‘his countenance on every occasion.’[94] After the suppression of the Rising, he was employed by the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State, to collect evidence for the prosecution of the rebel lords and other Jacobite prisoners, and to escort the witnesses for the prosecution to London. For his services to Government he was promoted to the office of Inspector-General of Customs in 1747, on the recommendation of the Duke of Cumberland.[95]

Grossett must have been a man of great personal courage, for he went about with his life in his hand. On one occasion, it is related, he saved the life of his cousin Sir John Shaw by entering the Jacobite camp (it is not stated when or where) and carrying him off in the disguise of a Jacobite officer.[96] His enemies, whether Jacobites or smugglers, perhaps both, wreaked terrible vengeance on his house and his family, treating his wife so harshly that she died shortly afterwards.[97]

It is pleasant to find on record a friendly action of Grossett to a condemned prisoner. Patrick Murray, a goldsmith of Stirling, was taken prisoner at Airdrie in November 1745 by some country people. To Grossett, who was present, he declared that he surrendered in accordance with Marshal Wade’s proclamation of 30th October offering his Majesty’s clemency to all rebels who would surrender before 11th November.[98] Grossett had been summoned to Murray’s trial at Carlisle as a witness for the defence, but was prevented from being present owing to his secret services detaining him in London. Murray was tried on September 24th, 1746, found guilty, and condemned to death. The terms of his surrender were not pled at his trial, and Grossett sent in a memorial stating the facts of the arrestment:[99] it was of no avail, Murray was executed on November 15th.

Grossett tells the story of his executive work and of the expenses he incurred in the pages printed in this volume. He mentions that he gave evidence in 1747 at the trial of Lord Provost Archibald Stewart for losing Edinburgh to Prince Charles, but he does not mention the lines in which he is held up to shame and ridicule, along with the magistrates and the clergy of Edinburgh, in a poem published after the trial, which was burned by the hangman, and which brought the printer to the pillory and to ruin:

‘And stupid Gr—t next must take the field,

And He, (with fifty,) swore he would not yield,

To those brave Hundreds (who deserv’d the rope,)

That did beat Thousands under Sir J—n C—pe.’[100]

Judging from the report of the Duke of Cumberland’s Secretary and the Solicitor to the Treasury (p. 400), Grossett’s claim for £3709 was justified. I have, however, failed to discover if the sum was actually paid, and family papers throw some doubt on this. In a memorandum by his eldest son it is stated that he was a sufferer for his services to Government by many thousand pounds. This may mean that his claim was never liquidated, though after the report of the official scrutineers that hardly seems probable. It is more likely that young Grossett refers to the legal expenses incurred by his father in defending himself against the ‘scandalous Libells and groundless and vexatious lawsuits,’ which he had to meet as the result of his anti-Jacobite and anti-smuggling zeal, together with the loss of professional perquisites referred to on pp. 336 and 337.[101]

A gauger has always been a most unpopular personage in Scotland, and Grossett rendered himself doubly odious by his action as informer against the unfortunate Jacobite prisoners. He was the victim of shoals of frivolous actions in the courts, brought by persons determined to wear him out in law expenses. He was strongly advised by the Secretary of State to leave the country and go abroad for a few years, and he was told that the Treasury would give him full pay as Inspector-General during his absence on leave. How long this leave on full pay continued I do not know, but Grossett went to Italy. His wife had been a Miss de Vlieger, the daughter of a Dutch merchant and Government financier, and it may be that this fact stimulated Grossett to international financial enterprise. Along with the Earl of Rochfort, British minister at the Sardinian Court, and other gentlemen, he entered into silver and copper mining adventures in Savoy, which proved utter failures. He returned to England a completely ruined man, and died broken-hearted, in 1760, at his son’s house in London.

Walter Grossett had been heir-presumptive to his uncle, John Muirhead of Bredisholm, the last of the male representatives of that ancient family and of the Muirheads of that Ilk. Muirhead had helped Grossett in his mining speculations, and had become so involved that he was obliged to sell the reversion of the estate in order to live. He wished the property kept in the family, so he sold it to Walter Grossett’s nephew, the son of his youngest brother, James, a prosperous merchant of Lisbon, who assumed the name of Muirhead. James’s son John married a granddaughter of Lord George Murray—Lady Jean Murray, daughter of the third Duke of Atholl.[102] He is the ancestor of the family which, in the female line but retaining the name of Muirhead, still possesses the property of Bredisholm.

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.

A valuable library was about to be dispersed in Paris, which contained a rare copy or edition of the Bible, and George III. commissioned his bookseller, Mr. Nichol, to procure it for him at a certain limit as to price. Mr. Nichol, intimate with Mr. Lumisden, whose literary character qualified him to pronounce as to the authenticity and value of this work, employed him to examine, and, on approval, to make this purchase, which he did, obtaining it at a far lower price than had been mentioned. The king, delighted with his acquisition, asked Mr. Nichol how he had managed to get it. Mr. Nichol replied he had ‘applied to a friend of his much connected with literature, whom he could trust,’ etc., etc. ‘Well, but who is your friend,’ said the king, ‘I suppose he has a name?’ ‘A gentleman named Lumisden, your Majesty,’ said Mr. Nichol. ‘Oh!’ replied the king, ‘the Prince’s secretary.’ The king, with true courtesy, never called Charles Edward aught but ‘the Prince.’ ‘Yes, your Majesty,’ said Mr. Nichol shyly, ‘the same.’ ‘Well, Nichol,’ said the king, ‘I am much obliged by the trouble Mr. Lumisden has taken; pray, make him my compliments, and tell him so; and I should like to send him some little token of this. What shall it be?’ Nichol suggested ‘a book, perhaps,’ and it is said the king laughed and said, ‘Oh, yes! a book, a book! that would suit you!’ However, the message was sent, and Mr. Lumisden’s reply was, that he should be gratified by the possession of a copy of Captain Cook’s Voyages, then just published, in which he took a deep interest, and considered they owed their success to the individual patronage given them by the king himself.

A very handsome copy of Anson’s and Cook’s Voyages, in nine quarto volumes, was sent to Mr. Lumisden by the king. They were left by Mr. Lumisden to my father [Sir Thomas Strange], and he bequeathed them to his son James, now Admiral Strange, in whose possession they are. [Written in 1883.]

In 1797 Lumisden published a volume at London entitled Remarks on the Antiquities of Rome and its Environs ... with Engravings, his only literary legacy excepting this account of the battles in Scotland. I have failed to discover at what period of his life this manuscript was written.

Lumisden died in Edinburgh in 1801. His usual lodging had been in the Luckenbooths, the very heart of the old town, but he had recently changed his quarters to the then new Princes Street, and to the very newest part of that street, the section west of Castle Street. To the imagination it seems strangely incongruous, yet as a link between the past and the present not entirely unfitting, that this aged partisan of the House of Stuart, probably the last Scottish gentleman who personally served that dynasty whose capital was the ancient city, should meet his death in the newest part of that modern street which is the glory of the Edinburgh that the Stuarts never knew.

ORIGINS OF THE ’FORTY-FIVE
PAPERS OF JOHN MURRAY OF BROUGHTON

A COPY OF ORIGINAL PAPERS written by John Murray, Esq., Secretary to the Young Pretender, containing a History of the first Rise and Progress of the Late Rebellion from the End of the year 1742 to 1744.

N.B.—The original is written by Mr. Murray’s own hand and was found after the Battle of Culloden, and seems to have been originally design’d as Memoirs, etc.

Copy of a shattered Leaf belonging to the original Manuscript

Edgar to Murray

During all this winter[108] my Lord T[ra]q[uai]r,[109] as I observed before, was at London with Lord Semple[110] and Mr. Drummond,[111] and the gentlemen in the Highlands immediately concerned in his Majesties affairs were employed in cultivating his interest amongst their vassals and neighbours, which was the more easily done as the most part of that country are naturally Loyal and at the same time ... run so high against the Government, that any scheme proposed ... was most acceptable. It seems after his Lordship had been there sometime, he wrote a letter to his Majestie, in answer to which I received one enclosed to me from Mr. Edgar,[112] dated the 5th of July 1742, which was this.... It is a long time since I had the pleasure of writting to you which has been occasioned by my knowing you was informed of everything by Bahady, and that being the case I did not care to ... venture all ... time when I shall ... to say to you as I ha ... view of recommending them ... for Lord [Tra]q[uai]r to your care ... of it with much satisfaction ... to assure you of my best respect and of the longing I have to tell you by word of mouth how much I am yours. As Lord T[ra]q[uai]r has been lately at London and knew there how things were going it is useless for me to enter here ... matters and as the King has particular directions to give you ... sent I shall add nothing ... but by his Majesties Com ... kind compliments ... that the family a ... I am with all my h....

After his Lordships return ... taken to inform the Highlands of the favourable situation there seemed to ... from the information he had got from Lord Semple and Drummond ...

The rest of this page torn away.

Copy of another shattered Leaf

Which message tho’ they began to languish a little, yet kept up their spirits. As nothing is more common than for people to believe what they wish and hope for, however specious the encouragement may be. Upon Mr. Drummond parting with His Lordship at London, he assured him he would write particularly whatever Resolutions the Cardinal[113] should come to after his arrival, imagining, as he said, that the promises they had gott in England from the King’s friends there would suffice to determine the old man to act strenuously in his Majesty’s favours; upon which we waited impatiently to hear from him. In the beginning of Winter Locheal came to town with whom I had occasion often to converse on these subjects, and always found him the man the most ready, and willing chearfully to enter into any scheme that would conduce to His Majesty’s interest: and must here declare that I really believe he is the most sincere honest man the Country produces, without the least shew of self interest. After several months had passed without my hearing from Rome, or any letters coming from My L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r received one from Mr. Drummond about the beginning of December and dated ... of ... which alarmed us very much, as it gave us ground to believe that things were much nearer Action, than we had any notion of, and indeed it seemed to us only fitt to be written a few weeks before a descent; but to make the reader Judge, I shall here insert a letter itself.

Copy Mr. Drummond’s letter to the Earl of T[ra]q[uai]r dated the 1742.

The rest awanting.

Copy of another torn Leaf in Manuscripts

As there was nothing in this letter but a general assurance of the French Design without either specyfying the number of the Troops, Arms, Money, Ammunition or even the fixed time, My Lord T[ra]q[uai]r and the Laird of Lochiel[114] considering how unprepared the Country was to join in any such attack attempt, and that from the contents of the letter it was impossible to give any positive directions to the Gentlemen of the Highlands, together with the near prospect they had of a landing, which must of necessity have proved abortive had it really happened. They thought it absolutely necessary they should be presently informed of everything, but the difficulty was how to accomplish it. There was no opportunity to write, the time of an answer uncertain, and from the indistinct letter already received they had no great reason to expect anything in writing very satisfactory ... upon which I offered to go ... and then learn distinctly ... the Resolutions of the ... fully informed ... but as this was not to ... having the opinion of ... who were the most ... in his Majesties Interest ... a letter wrote by ... which went to him by ... likewise one to S[ir] J[ames] C[ampbell][115] their advice and opinion, and during the intervall we had severall conversations all tending to acquaint us particularly of what had been carried on for sometime before by Lord Semple, Mr. Drummond and then received by me as one of these who had been the first in the Country to form a Concert, binding themselves by oath not to discover their schemes to any but one of themselves, or the persons agreed upon to be received amongst them by the Consent of the whole.

I had for a long time before been pretty well acquainted with who were the principle people concerned in all the present transactions, without knowing there had ever been any such formal Combination. I gave my word of honour faithfully to keep these secrets, and then they told me the rise of the Story what assurances they had given the French by the hands of Drummond and Lord Semple after making terms with the King himself, that nobody should be acquented with their procedure without their consent. I was like wise informed

The rest of this Page not legible.

The weather at this time happening to be very stormy, the express did not return for two weeks longer than we expected; but upon receiving his Lordships answer which he approved of the proposal, I sett about making ready to sett off, and accordingly took journey about the 10 or 12 of Jany. 1743, upon the pretence of talking with the Duke of Queensberry[116] then at London concerning a process I had with the Earl of March,[117] to whom his Grace had been Tutor-in-law.

On the Friday I left Edinburgh and went to Traquair and so through Tweeddale to York, where I stop’d to talk to the D[uke] of P[erth] one of the Concert, and acquaint him with my journey and received his commands. The principal part of my transactions was to make myself fully acquainted with the French Resolutions, to give them all encouragement possible, and to write to his Majesty acquainting him that the Gentleman in the Highlands being informed that my L[ord] M[arischal],[118] whom his Majesty had honoured with the Command, was a man of a very high and forbidding manner, and exceedingly positive in his way, they were afraid least such procedure might create differences and heart burnings amongst them; wherefore he prayed his Majesty would send over General Keith,[119] who they understood was of a very mild and humane temper and in whose abilitys they had great confidence. When I came to York his Grace the D[uke] of P[erth] approved highly of my going over and gave me a great many injunctions[120] how to write to the King, which is needless here to put down as they all tended to prevent differences in case matters came to be put in execution. I then went to London, where I only stayed some few days, and sett out of on Munday about 12 o’clock to Dover where I arrived the same night about 9 o’clock, and found a Packet ready to sail. As the wind was then pretty fair, I was in hopes of getting next morning pretty early to Calais, but it changed a little after we was at sea, so were oblidged to make for Boulogne, this made me exceedingly uneasy as I was instructed to go privately to Paris without the knowledge of any of the people who were at Boulogne, and now in all probability we were to land in broad daylight where I must infallibly have been known; but luckily we were becalmed all that day, and did not arrive till about three in the morning. I stayed there till about five, when I got a chaise and set out for Paris, where I came on Friday morning and went to McDonald’s the Banquier,[121] and enquired for Mr. Maxwell, which was the name Drummond then went by. I immediately went to him this same day before dinner, and found him greatly surprised at my Coming, but said it was very lucky as it might be a mean to quicken the French in proceeding; when they saw how forward and anxious the Country was to come to action. Upon my arrival at London I heard of Cardinal Fleury’s death, which was a very unlucky incident; for these two Gentlemen had it left in their power to assert, that had not that happened, every thing would certainly have been performed, and not then in my power to advance anything positively to the contrary. I went with Mr. Drummond in the evening to Lord Semple who I had never seen before: he received me very civily and enquired about the situation of the Country which I told him was very favourable; but as the letter Mr. Drummond had wrote, gave us to understand that the Cardinal had determined to put things in execution sooner than we had any cause to expect, never having had anything encouraging before, and that by that letter, we was told of no particulars, it was judged necessary I should come over to know how things were to be executed: and particularly, what assurances of every kind we might depend upon; so as the Gentlemen of the concert might be able upon my return to sett immediately about preparing the Country for their reception. He then agreed with Mr. Drummond that my coming over was well timed, but that he was afraid it might require some time before the French could be brought into it, as in all probability their schemes would be entirely altered by the Cardinal’s death; that all his views consisted in keeping peace, but that there was a party of younger people about court, who had gained a good deal upon the King, which together with his own natural disposition and heat of youth inclined him to war. At the same time he said it was lucky that he had observed the Cardinal’s Decline, and had persuaded him to impart all the affairs that concerned this Country to Mr. Amalot,[122] by which means they would be but little stop as to the King or Ministery being acquainted with whatever related to us, as Mr. Amalot was continued as Minister of Forreign Affairs. A great deal more of this kind passed, and upon my not being able to tell them minutly what every individual of the Concert had done in the particular District alotted them, Mr. Drummond complained that I had not been fully informed of all their Scheme. I in the meanwhile did not reflect upon the Cause of his making such reflections against Lord T[ra]q[uai]r, who was the person that informed me of their Concert; but it has often occurred to me since, that they laid great stress on all the little pieces of information they gott of the Gentlemen’s procedure in Scotland, and everything they gott took care to make a mighty matter of it to the King: and Mr. Drummond did not fail as he has often told me himself, to write in the strongest terms to his Majesty, of their great success, which he knew must always redound so far to his advantage, as he had taken care to make the King believe he was the person who had sett all in motion, and that it was upon his plan that they acted, and their success mostly owing to following the Scheme he had laid down to them. I then told them it would be necessary as the Cardinal was now dead that I saw Mr. Amalot, and heard what Resolutions they had taken, to be able to inform the King’s friends of what was to be expected. Lord Semple told me that Mr. Amalot was then at Versailes, but would be in town on Sunday when he would talk to him, and inform him of my being sent over, and gett him to fix a time when I might have an audience, he accordingly was with him on the Sunday and, as he told me the same evening, could not see him for ... and when he did tell him, he took it very ill that he had been made wait so long in his Out-chamber; that although his Master was not upon the Throne and so did not keep his Ministers publickly at Court, yet he thought using these he employed in his service in that shape was treating him ill and not like a Prince as he really was. That Mr. Amalot made excuses from his being so little in Paris all week, and consequently hurryed all the while he was there; but fixed no time when to see me, so his Lordship went by himself to Versailes that week, where he stayed a night or two and returned to town. I went out some days after along with him and Mr. Drumond to see Mr. Amalot who was first to talk to with the King and then return me his Majesty’s answer, but was told from day to day, that he could not have an opportunity of talking with the King. So was oblidged to return to Paris without seeing him.

I wrote a pretty long letter to the King acquainting him with the reasons of my coming over and hoping his Majesty would pardon my leaving the Country without his Permission, but not to be too tedious by mentioning all the different conversations I had with his Lordship and Mr. Drummond during my stay which were all to the same purpose, together with the most severe Reflections and Invectives against the Dutches of Buckingham[123] and Lord Marshal with Coll Cecel,[124] Coll Brette[125] and Ch. Smith[126] and all those who were of a contrary party from them, alledging it was entirely owing to their having given in Ridiculous Schemes to the Cardinal demanding vast numbers of men, money, cannon, etc., sufficient to conquer the Country, which made the Old man have a mean opinion of the power of the King’s party and put a stop to his realy putting in execution ... required of him; and at the same time assuring me that these people were most unjust to the Cardinal in alledging that he was not hearty and sincere in the King’s interest, for that he had often professed that he would willingly lose his own life in the cause, that there was nothing he had so much at heart next to the Interest of his own Master, and that he had even cryed[127] with concern in speaking of the misfortunes of the King’s family, and notwithstanding he had a very mean opinion of the other party, yet the Memorials they had given instruct him so much that it cost Lord Semple the utmost[128] pains and trouble to perswade him of the contrary, but they had after some time succeeded so effectually that he was determined to send over a body of troops to England and designed Mr. Mailebois[129] should return to Flanders for that purpose; but that the party at Court which opposed him had influenced the King to make him march his Army into Westphalia which occasioned the Neutrality for Hannover; that this was so opposite to his Schemes, and he was sensible that a general war must ensue, and France thereby brought into great difficulties, that together with the King’s loose way of living, having at that time taken the third sister for his mistress, had certainly broke his heart, for he had been observed from that moment to decline, and dyed soon after.[130]

Having spent some days at Paris in hearing such like storys, I went again to Versailes where we were still put off till the night I left it. When we had an audience of Mr. Amalot I told him that the Gentlemen in the Concert in Scotland,[131] having from time to time received assurances from the late Cardinal of Troops, Arms and Money, had been continualy expecting to hear that a final Resolution was taken but upon being informed of the bad state of health the Cardinal was in,[132] they had done me the honour to send me over instructed to represent the situation of their affairs to the Ministry and to acquaint them they had wrought so effectualy with the Country in general and their Vassals in particular that they could raise near thirty thousand men and were able to make themselves masters of the Country in six weeks or two months. Upon which he interrupted me and said that they were satisfied the Scots were able to do a great deal but that they must have assurances from England, but at the same time he said he did not well understand the possibility of engaging so many people without letting them into the secret. Upon which Lord Semple explained the matter to him, I then mentioned to him the number of men, arms, etc., we expected in Scotland together with the place of their landing and method proposed for their acting he said if things were gone into there would be no difficulty of arms, money, etc., but seemed to be ignorant as to the place of landing or indeed the particulars of the scheme and which confirmed me in this; some things that L[ord] Semple mentioned to him he knew nothing about and he owned he had not read the memorials but promised to do it and gave us to understand that nothing could be undertaken without encouragement from the English and assurances of the troops upon their landing having provisions of victuals and carriages which we took pains to show him that from the frequency of the touns upon the coast and the trade there continually carried on they could not fail of, and then told me he had not gott time to talk seriously and fully with the King, but that his Majesty desired him to assure me he had the King my master’s interest very much at heart and so soon as he could do it safely and with his Honour, he would; and told us to believe it that he could easily loss 10,000 men, but that he would not undertake it rashly as his being foiled in a thing of this kind would not be consistant with the Honour of his Crown and desired we might think very seriously of what we was about and take care not to bring ruin upon ourselves and the Country by a rash attempt,[133] and so we parted and so we came that same night to Paris.

Next day I again wrote to the King a few lines wherein I told him I thought Mr. Amalot had done as much as he could at the present juncture and that I thought the information I had gott was well worth my while of coming over and sure enough it merited the journey, for by this I had it in my power to assure our friends in Scotland there was no determinate Resolution taken; and at the same time the manner in which Mr. Drummond told me he had taken to engage the Highland Gentlemen seemed to me very good and practicable. As I was then but little acquainted with business imagined it might have the same effect upon these in the Low Country and indeed was so much prevented with the good character of L[ord] Semple and Mr. Drummond had amongst those concerned in his Majesty’s affairs in Scotland that it never came into my head to doubt of anything they advanced; in which opinion I partly remained till my L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r’s return to Scotland in Octr. 1743 that same year.[134]

From what Mr. Amelot had told us the next thing to be done was endeavouring to form a Concert in England, by which they might be able to give such encouragement to the French and such assurance of joining upon their landing together with victuals and carriages as might then oblidge the King to declare one way or other. To execute this Mr. Drummond and I sett out from Paris the end of Febuary and gott to London by the way of Dover in four days and a half. The method he proposed was to bring my L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r to London and to work the point by him as he was acquainted with all the principal Torries and desired I would go to York and gett the D[uke] of P[erth] to send express for him and that I would return with a Resolution to stay there for some time to be an assistant to his L[ordship] and him; but this I refused to go into as the reason I had given out for my journey would not suffice to detain me any time, so rather chuse to go to Scotland myself and shew my L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r the necessity there was for his coming up. In the meanwhile I was employed in endeavouring to learn from Coll. Cicel and Mr. Smith the objections the Dutches of Buckingham and her party had to L[ord] Semple, and as I was pretty well acquainted with them both I easily made myself master of all they had to say against him, which I then thought quite frivolous from the favourable notion I had of L[ord] Semple. As to the particular accusations laid against him I shall say nothing of them here as I shall put down the Copy of a letter I had the Honour to write to the King some litle time after my arrival in Scotland wherein I mentioned them all.

I sett out from London[135] the 18th of March, came in by York, where I saw the D[uke] of P[erth] who was much disappointed upon what I told him, stayed 24 hours there and came to Edinburgh the 21st. I immediately inquired for L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r and finding he was in Perthshire with his brother-in-law L[ord] J[ohn] D[rummon]d I sent an Express to him, in the meantime I mett with L[ochie]l and acquainted him of all that had passed and particularly of the Scheme he proposed to raise money whereby to pay his father-in-law’s pension; he was far from being pleased with the French delays and not satisfied with the Cardinal’s sincerity and likewise heartyly vexed there was no money for Sir J[ames] who then stood in great need of it. However the only thing to be done was for L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r to go to London and endeavour to bring in the English which would in a little time satisfie us whether the French really intended us their assistance or not. On the 16th of the month L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r came to toun, to whom I told all that had passed and his Lordship agreed to go to London. Upon conversing with his Lordship[136] I told him that he ought to push Mr. Drummond’s getting that money, for if he did not make his word good in that trifle it would be a means to make folk doubt all the other things he had advanced. His Lordship sett out from his own house on the Sixth of Aprile and I sent the bond Mr. Drummond desired signed by L[ochie]l and I to the D[uke] of Perth who signed it likewise and sent it to L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r[137] at London, which is still in Mr. D[rummon]d’s Custody, but no money raised during my being at London after my return from Paris, Mr. C. Smith delivered me a packet from Rome, but as its contents could not be obeyed till I came home, thought it more proper to insert it here tho’ posterior to the Receit of it.

Copy of a letter from Mr. Edgar of ... mber the 22nd, 1742.

Edgar to Murray

Sir,—Upon what Mr. Charles Smith has told me from you on the subject of the Bishops[138] upon what he says himself and as the opinion also of other friends the King has thought seriously on the matter and is pleased to settle it as you proposed, as you will see by the enclosed paper signed by him under another name and a letter from me to Bishop Ratrae;[139] yours covering it both are write in closs Cypher, but as I am unwilling that the Cyphers we use together should be put into any third hand whatsoever, I have wrote the enclosed packet by the Cypher Coll. Urquhart[140] informed me he had recovered from amongst the late Earl of Dundonald[141] papers before his death. I really look upon this Cypher to be a safe one and that there is no Copy of it but what you and I have, it was originally sent to Mr. Robert Freebairn[142] and he gave to the Earl of Dundonald and I am perswaded neither the one nor t’other made a Copy of it which would not be an easie task nor allowed any to be made by any other body, I remmember Coll. Urquhart after he had recovered that Cypher asked me if he should send it to me, or what he should do with it, and in return I desired him to keep it by him and give to the King’s friends who had a mind to write to his Majesty and wanted a Cypher to do it by, by which means the new one I sent him (now used by you and me) would be a Virgin One unseen and untouched by anybody, I thought it was necessary to say thus much to you on the Cypher in Question. The Packet I now send you is open, therefore may if you please look into it yourself, but as I reckon you wont care to be at the trouble to decypher it I wish you would seal the packet and deliver it with ... of the Cypher into Mr. Rattrae’s own hands. I shall only add on this subject that I know I need not recommend to you to take care of your own safety in this matter and that as few as possible and these only of whom you are sure know anything that we have the least dealing in it, for tho’ our Clergy be well meaning honest men, yett many of them have not the gift of Secrecy and holding their tongue, which is a mischief I am sure you will guard against. I don’t know indeed what to say to you on certain affairs, I live in good hopes they will still go well, when anything favourable is certain you will hear of it much sooner from Bahady and L[ord] Semple than you could from me; which is the reason I write so seldome to you, I am unwilling to venture a letter in this critical juncture unless when necessary as it happens in the present case. I should be glad you informed me of what you heard or know of Drumelzier’s[143] brother he has not write to me since he mett with his brother and I have heard nothing about him since he went home. Drumelzier, I fancy, may have told him the substance of what you communicated to him of my letter to you concerning him, which he may have taken very ill of me and which has made him write no more to anybody in this place. The family is well and the King charges me with many kind compliments to you. Longing to have you in my Arms. I am well all with my heart.—Sir, etc.

It was not long after his Lordship’s departure that I had an occasion to send a letter to Rome when I wrote as below.[144]

Mr. Narsom’s letter to Mr. Edgar dated the Day of 1743.[145]

Murray to Edgar

This is the first opportunity I had to write since I left Paris otherwise you may beleive I would not have failed to lett you hear from me long e’er now. I received yours of the 22nd of Novr. from Mr. Smith at London but as Mr. Rattrae has not been in town not finding any sure hand the two enclosed papers are still in my Custody, but I am informed he intends soon in this place, when I shall take care to deliver them with the Cypher; I am very hopefull his Majesty’s making choise of him will prove a means of uniting them together as they have for some time ago addressed him as the eldest of the Colledge to take inspection of the Diocess during the Vacancy; I return you my most sincere acknowledgements for your good advice as to my Behaviour with them which you may depend upon I’ll strickly follow and by what I wrote you of Mr. Keith’s[146] procedure you will be still more convinced of the Necessity I am under to act cautiously with them. I understand my Lady Clanronald lately received a letter from L[ord] J[ohn] D[rummon]d with the contents of your last to me which was immediately told Keith so that Mr. Rattrae’s Election was known before my Arrival here. I am sorry L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r should keep such correspondence but there are some people continue long young and consequently ought to be looked upon as Children.

Upon my return to London having the fortune to be entirely trusted by Coll. Cicel and Mr. Smith, I made it my business to inform myself as particularly as possible of their grounds of Quarrel with L[ord] Semple, when I found they both agreed in the following Accusations, 1mo. That he had been employed by means of the Dutchess of Buccingham and Coll. Cicel to transack some little affairs and from that time had assumed to himself the Character of Minister for the King’s friends in England. 2d. That by his Behaviour to Or[mon]d and L[ord] Marshall he had entirely disobliged them whose friendship he ought by any means to have Cultivate. 3tio. He had been grossly deceived by the Cardinal who had made him believe twenty things he had no intention of Performing. 4to. He was so credulous in beleiving the Cardinal’s assertions as to write from time to time in terms only fitt some weeks before an invasion. 5to. He seemed to ack the part rather of a French than Brittish minister. 6to. He seemed to turn his politicks into a kind of Mechanicks and made a trade of them. 7to. He contradicted himself not only in a different but even in the same letter, by saying that the Cardinal was so well satisfied with the offers made him and the information he had gott that he desired no further and in the same letter advises Coll. Cicel still to inform him further so that he might determine the Cardinal more and more to act in his Majesty’s favours. 8to. He acted imprudently by transmitting to Coll. Cicel the Commissions sent him by the King to dispose of in so large a Packet that Mr. Smith could not conceal them in the Ship and at the same time wrote a long letter with a great many trifles of what had passed betwixt him and the Cardinal in Closs Cypher who, he insinuate, he entirely managed and all relating to the Commissions in plain English. 9to. His coming over was not only without the knowledge of but disagreeable to the King’s friends in England, that my L[ord] Barramore[147] and he were vastly uneasy about it and gave him all the Civil usage and fair Words they could in Prudence so as to make him leave the place least he should be taken up. 10to. He is not trusted by the King’s friends in England. 11to. He was not even trusted by the Cardinal notwithstanding he pretended he had so much to say with him and given this instance that he, the Cardinal, sent a proposal to the King’s friends by Mr. Bussie[148] at London of landing a body of Swedes[149] in the Country which he seemed greatly surprised at when told by L[ord] Barrimore and that he should afterwards have greatly repented telling him, imagining when he went over he would make a handle of this information to show how he was trusted by the English. 12to. That Coll. Cicel told him at parting that provided the Cardinal was explicite he would inform him of everything that was necessary but as he saw that was not like to be the case he never had wrote him anything which was sufficient to show him he was not trusted and that he and L[ord] Barrimore particularly complained of L[ord] Semple’s intruding himself into the management of their affairs, and Lastly that he was quite drunk with his ministerial office and acted so high and mightily a part as even to intermiddle betwixt the King and Dutchess of Buckingham. These so far as I can remember are the sum of their Accusations, which I could have reduced into the compass of a few lines were it not I thought it my duty to write in as plain and minute a manner as possible whatever I have learnt having an Eye to nothing but truth and to give the King all the information in my power so that if I have acted out of my sphere I hope you will interceed for my forgiveness. I only beg leave to say that from the little knowledge I have of L[ord] Semple I take him to be a man of great honour and possessed of much greater abilities than any of his Accusors.[150]

I parted with L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r about a fortnight ago when he sett out for London with a view to bring the English to Concert matters so as to be able to act this summer. The Gentlemen of the Concert are highly dissatisfied with their behaviour they say they have been ready to act for some years past, putt to a great expense in Cultivating a friendship and intimacy with their Vassals, keeping a great many otherwise useless fellows in their Grounds and often obliged to give very advantagious [terms] to their tennants for fear of disobliging them, whereas on the other hand they, the English, do nothing but make a noise and complain of their Oppression.

The situation of things are such at present that had they any Resolution att all they would almost without stroke of sword putt an end to the cause but in place of that they draw a cross one another and run into little political partys so that if they are not brought to engage heartyly so as to be able to act this summer we give up all hopes of ever bringing them to act in Concert with us. Had the King’s friends in a body used means to favour the Restoration they could not have done it to better purpose than the present Government. There are now 16,000 men out of the Country, 6 Regiments more partly gone, the rest going, only about twenty thousand in England[151] nine parts of ten of which are as raw and undisciplined as those to come against them, The Duke of Hannover[152] going over and in short every soul—Whigg and Torry, Republican, etc.,—disobliged and irritated to the last degree, so that we to be sure are able to do more of ourselves at this juncture then we could do with the assistance of 10000 men were these Troops returned.

L[ochie]l with whom I have Occasion often to talk on this subject gives it as his Opinion that the Highlanders have now for so long time been in hopes of something being done and now seeing so fair an Opportunity, will probably unless brought into Action once this Summer or harvest give up all thought of ever seeing a Restoration and he is afraid every one will do the best they can by endeavouring to catch at part of his Country before she sink entirely and I am really affraid it will be the case with some of the least steady amongst them. He is thoroughly convinced that with 20,000 Stand of arms his Majesty or the Prince with a good General and some Officers att our head, Scotland is well able to do the whole affair, and indeed it is not only his, but the opinion of several others I talk to in this place upon that subject, as in this case none would be exempt from carrying arms and things are now quite changed from what they were formerly when a simelar proposal[153] was made. This I could not fail acquainting you with least L[ord] T[ra]q[uai]r’s journey don’t take effect and this irrecoverable opportunity lost by the further delay of the English, and indeed any delay may prove of the worst consequence as the death of either L[ord] L[ova]t or Sir J[ames] C[ampbell] who are both old men will greatly weaken if not entirely ruin the Concert as there are few to be found who can fill their places. L[ochie]l desires me to mention the great use General Keith would be off. The Highlanders having got the same notion of him they formerly had of Lord Dundee. Drumelzier and his Brother have been all this winter at Tangiers and propose to pass all the Watters where General Keith and Lord Crawford[154] were tho’ some people imagine D[rumelzier] will come home upon account of his Lady’s death,[155] they give it out here that Mr. Hay is very well. I wrote a letter two weeks ago to L[ord] Marshall a Copy of which with the Motives that induced me to write you shall have first occasion but the bearer being ready to sett out putts a stop to my doing of it at present.—I am, Yours, etc.

The ship not sailing as soon as I was made believe I took the opportunity of writing Mr. Edgar the reason of my writting to L[ord] Marshall I shall here subjoin with a Copy of the Letter I wrote his Lordship.

Murray to Edgar