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INTRODUCTION ix

Papers of John Murray of Broughton xlix

Memorial concerning the Highlands liii

The late Rebellion in Ross and Sutherland lv

The Rebellion in Aberdeen and Banff lvii

Captain Daniel's Progress lxiv

Prince Charles's Wanderings in the Hebrides lxx

Narrative of Ludovick Grant of Grant lxxiii

Rev. John Grant and the Grants of Sheugly lxxvi

Grossett's Memorial and Accounts lxxviii

The Battles of Preston, Falkirk, and Culloden lxxxiv

PAPERS OF JOHN MURRAY OF BROUGHTON FOUND AFTER CULLODEN 3

MEMORIAL CONCERNING THE HIGHLANDS, WRITTEN BY ALEXANDER MACBEAN, A.M., MINISTER OF INVERNESS 71

AN ACCOUNT OF THE LATE REBELLION FROM ROSS AND SUTHERLAND, WRITTEN BY DANIEL MUNRO, MINISTER OF TAIN 95

MEMOIRS OF THE REBELLION IN 1745 AND 1746, SO FAR AS IT CONCERNED THE COUNTIES OF ABERDEEN AND BANFF 113

A TRUE ACCOUNT OF MR. JOHN DANIEL'S PROGRESS WITH PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD IN THE YEARS 1745 AND 1746, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF 167

NEIL MACEACHAIN'S NARRATIVE OF THE WANDERINGS OF PRINCE CHARLES IN THE HEBRIDES 227

A SHORT NARRATIVE OF THE CONDUCT OF LUDOVICK GRANT OF GRANT DURING THE REBELLION 269

A NARRATIVE OF SUNDRY SERVICES PERFORMED, TOGETHER WITH AN ACCOUNT OF MONEY DISPOSED IN THE SERVICE OF GOVERNMENT DURING THE LATE REBELLION, BY WALTER GROSSETT 335

LETTERS AND ORDERS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF WALTER GROSSETT 379

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLES OF PRESTON, FALKIRK, AND CULLODEN, BY ANDREW LUMISDEN, THEN PRIVATE SECRETARY TO PRINCE CHARLES 405

APPENDICES--

INDEX 459

INTRODUCTION

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.

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.

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.' 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.

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 , 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. 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 . He landed at Gravelines on 10th February , 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.

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. 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 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.

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

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.

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. What the occasion of this honour may have been has never, so far as I know, been revealed.

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.

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 was appointed, though under circumstances which have not yet been made known.

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, 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 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. 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.

In the year 1737 Gordon sold Glenbucket, for which he realised twelve thousand marks ; 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. The Cardinal, whose general policy was peace at any price, gave no encouragement to the scheme.

Glenbucket went on to Rome in January 1738: he delivered his message, was rewarded with a major-general's commission, 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. 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.

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. 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, 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.

John Murray of Broughton, a younger son of Sir David Murray of Stanhope , 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.

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. 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, 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 , the son of the Perthshire laird of Balhaldies. In contemporary documents Macgregor is generally termed 'Balhaldy,' 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.

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