Chapter II: Macleod 294 (6)

He breakfasted at Dundonell with ‘the most amiable lady,’ took up the 500 guineas, and, after fatiguing marches, reached Loch Arkaig. On the shores of the remote and lonely loch our Colonel met, and recognised, his gigantic kinsman, the truculent Col of Barisdale. Col said that Lochiel and Murray of Broughton were at Achnacarry; he himself and Lochgarry were mustering men, ‘to try what terms could be got from the Duke of Cumberland.’ This must have been on May 14. At Achnacarry the wounded Lochiel received our hero kindly, and Mr. Murray of Broughton took charge of the remaining 500 guineas and the letter from the Duke of York to the Prince. Lest any one should think that the Colonel is romancing, there exists documentary evidence to corroborate his tale. The unhappy Murray of Broughton, in his accounts of the Prince’s money after Culloden, writes: ‘From a French officer who had landed upon the East Coast, £1,000. N.B.—This French officer was charged with 2,000 guineas, but said he had 1,000 taken from him as he passed through the Mackenzies’ country, and gave in an account of deductions from the other thousand.’ Murray adds that he has charged himself with 1.000_l._, ‘tho’ he still thinks he did not receive quite so much.’ He must have received the 500_l._ (perhaps in _louis d’or_, which he reckons as guineas), and some loose cash. Murray was writing from memory, so was Colonel Macdonell. Murray calls him a French officer, and really he was in French service. There cannot have been two such officers who, at the same time, were robbed of 1,000_l._ by the Mackenzies, and reported the loss just after Culloden.[110]

Macdonell slept at Achnacarry and was wakened by the pipes playing _Cogga na si_. News had just arrived of an attempted surprise by Cumberland, whose forces were actually in sight; Barisdale was accused of having concerted the surprise, but the story is improbable. Eight hundred Camerons and Macdonalds now retreated by the west end of Loch Arkaig, and our hero, with Captain Lynch, made for Knoydart. Lynch later returned to French service, carrying Macdonell’s report to the Duke of York, and soon fell at the battle of Lafeldt, where the Scots and Irish nearly captured Cumberland. As for Macdonell, ‘I had put on a resolution,’ he says, ‘never to leave Scotland while Prince Charles was in the country.’ The death of Macdonell’s father, and the infirmity of old Scottos, also made his presence at home necessary to his family. So, he says, ‘I waved the sure prospect I had of advancing myself both to riches and honour,’ in the service of Spain.

Knoydart, during the winter of 1746-47, must have been in a state of anarchy. Old Glengarry, accused by Barisdale, was a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle; Young Glengarry was in the Tower. Col Barisdale and his son were captives in France, on a charge of treason to King James. Lochgarry had fled to France with the Prince. Old Scottos was decrepit. No rents were paid; the lands had been wasted by the English; clansmen were seizing farms at will.[111] In these melancholy circumstances our Colonel marched alone into the Mackenzie country, to hunt for the money stolen by Colin Dearg. Then this odd adventure befell him:—

‘I went to take a solitary turn and met a well-dressed man in Highland clothes also taking the morning air. After civil salutations to each other, I entered into discourse with him about former transactions in that country. He of himself began to tell me about French officers that came to Lochbroom—how the 1,000 guineas had been cut out of one of their portmanteaus by Colin Dearg, Major Wm. McKenzie of Kilcoy,[112] and Lieutenant Murdoch McKenzie from Dingwall—all officers of Lord Cromartie’s regiment, being all equally concerned; and how not only those who acted the scene, but all the people in that part of the country, had been despised and ridiculed for their mean and dastardly behaviour; but that had his (McKenzie’s, who was speaking to me) advice been taken, there should never have been a word about the matter. The following dialogue then ensued:—_Question._ “And pray, Sir, what did you advise?” _Answer._ “To cut off both their heads, a very sure way indeed!” _Q._ “What were they, or of what country?” _A._ “The oldest, and a stout-like man, was Irish. The youngest was very strong-like, was a Macdonell of the family of Glengarry.” _Q._ “How was the money divided?” _A._ “Colin Dearg got 300 guineas, William Kilcoy got 300 guineas, and Lieutenant Murdoch McKenzie got 300 guineas.” _Q._ “What became of the other hundred?” _A._ “Two men who stood behind the Irish Captain with drawn dirks ready to kill him, had he observed Colin Dearg cutting open the portmanteau, got 25 guineas each; and I and another man, prepared in like manner for the young Captain Macdonell, got 25 guineas each.” _Q._ “You tell the truth, you are sure?” _A._ “As I shall answer, I do.” _Q._ “Do you know to whom you are speaking?” _A._ “To a friend and one of my own name.” “No, you d—d rascal,” seizing him suddenly by the breast with my left hand, at the same instant twitching out my dirk with the right, and throwing him upon his back, “_I am that very Macdonell_.” I own I was within an ace of running him through the heart, but some sudden reflection struck me—my being alone, and in a place where I was in a manner a stranger, among people which I had reason to distrust, I left the fellow upon his back, and re-entered the house (Torridon) in some hurry. My landlord, Mr. McKenzie of Torridon, met me in the entry, asked where I had been. I answered, “Taking a turn.” “Have you met anything to vex you?” “No,” I returned smiling. “Sir,” says he, “I ask pardon, you went out with an innocent and harmless countenance, and you came in with a fierceness in your aspect past all description.” “Mr. McKenzie,” said I, “none of your scrutinizing remarks; let us have our morning!” “With all my heart,” he replied. Soon after, being a little composed, I related to him my morning adventure. He remarked that the man was a stranger to him, and had been a soldier in Lord Cromartie’s regiment. That very day I quitted that part of the country and returned home, where I continued sometime.’

The _some time_ must cover the years from 1747 to the autumn of 1749. Old Glengarry was released at that date from Edinburgh Castle. To him, at Invergarry, Colonel John told the story of his wrongs, and from his chief he obtained an escort of five men. With these at his heels, he marched to Dundonell, and told Mr. Mackenzie that he desired a meeting with Colin Dearg. Colin came, but his escort consisted of some thirty-five men armed with dirks and clubs. The Colonel, however, was determined to beard his enemy, and devised the following tactics. He himself would sit between Colin Dearg and Dundonell: two of his five men would slip out and guard the door with drawn swords; meanwhile the Colonel would insult the Mackenzies. If they raised a hand he would pistol Colin and dirk his host, Dundonell; his three retainers would fire the house, and the Macdonells would escape in the confusion or perish with their foes. It was a very pretty sketch for a _camisado_.

‘After a short pause Dundonell mentioned the cause of our present meeting _in as becoming a manner as the subject would admit of_; to which an evasive answer was returned by his uncle, Colin Dearg, pretending to deny the fact. I then took him up, and proved that he himself was the very man who with his own hands had taken the gold out of my portmanteau, after cutting it open with some sharp instrument. This I said openly in the hearing of all present. To which I got no other reply than that “the money was gone and could not be accounted for.” I returned that “If the cash was squandered the reward due to such actions was yet extant”—and being asked what that was, I answered, “The gallows.” At this expression the whole got up standing, and seeing them all looking towards me, I drew my dirk and side pistol, and presenting one to my right and the other to my left, swore that if any motion was made against my life, I would despatch Dundonell and his uncle, who seeing me ready to put my threat in execution, begged of their people for the love of God to be quiet, which was directly obeyed. In the meantime my men had taken immediate possession of the outside of the door and were prepared to act according to my orders. I called to them to stay where they were, but none of the people in the house knew what they had gone out for.’

The money was gone, no man dared to touch our hero, and he and Dundonell went peacefully home together! Our hero had dominated and insulted the Mackenzies and was obliged to be satisfied with that result.

In the following years (1751-54) Knoydart and Lochaber were perfectly demoralised. The hidden treasure of Loch Arkaig had set Macdonalds against Camerons; cousins were betraying cousins, and brothers were blackmailing brothers. The details (much veiled in this work) are to be found in the Duke of Cumberland’s MSS. at Windsor Castle. The murder of Campbell of Glenure by Allan Breck, or by Sergeant Mohr Cameron, and the reports of Pickle, James Mohr, and a set of other spies, had alarmed the Government with fears of a rising aided by Prussia. Consequently arrests were frequent and no man knew whom he could trust. Col of Barisdale, a double-dyed traitor, was dead in gaol, but his eldest son was being hunted on island, loch, and mountain. Now in a letter from an English officer, Captain Izard, dated September 30, 1751, and preserved at Windsor, he says: ‘Dr. Macdonald, living at Kylles, and brother of Glengarry, told that young Barisdale lay at his house the Monday before and proposed going to the Isle of Skye.’

The giver of this information was not a man in whom to confide. Our hero, however, confided. Disguised as a rough serving-man he went fishing for lythe with ‘my relation, Dr. Macdonell of Kylles, an eminent physician.’ An English vessel, the _Porcupine_, under the notorious Captain Fergusson, came in sight. Dr. Macdonell insisted on taking our hero on board her, and there, as he sat over his punch, informed the English officers that the servant who accompanied him was a gentleman. Fergusson arrested Macdonell at once on suspicion of being young Barisdale, and he lay for some time a prisoner in Fort William. Now the Doctor may only have blabbed in his cups, but, taken with Captain Izard’s report, his behaviour looks very odd. Our hero, however, does not suspect his relation, the Doctor, but denounces his cousin, Captain Allan Macdonald of Knock, in Sleat, as his betrayer, and ‘the greatest spy and informer in all Scotland.’ However it be, the betrayal of Colonel John was apparently a family affair.

A long list of charges, doubtless of Jacobite dealings, was brought against him, and a midshipman on the _Porcupine_ assured him that Allan Macdonald of Knock was the informer. So the Colonel was locked up in Fort William, then, or just before, crowded with prisoners, such as Lochiel’s uncle Fassifern, his agent, Charles Stuart, Barisdale’s second son, and Cameron of Glenevis, with his brother Angus. The date must have been June or July, 1753, for young Barisdale was taken in July, and the Colonel was then a prisoner. Young Barisdale just escaped hanging; Fassifern was exiled; Stuart was accused of the Appin murder; Sergeant Mohr Cameron was betrayed and executed; the traitors were clansmen of the victims, and, though our Colonel says nothing of all this, the facts gave him good cause for anxiety. It is fair to add that no mention of his enemy, Macdonald of Knock, seems to occur in the Cumberland Papers, where so many spies hide their infamy.

Our hero escaped by aid of Mr. Macleod of Ulnish, sheriff-depute of Skye, ‘being both my friend and relation as well as the friend of justice.’ This gentleman suppressed the only good evidence against the Colonel, which indeed merely proved his wearing the proscribed kilt. After nine months of gaol the Colonel was released and seized the first opportunity to challenge Knock, who would not face him.

So ends the Colonel’s adventure. ‘I was then in love with your mother,’ he says simply, and on this head he says no more. He had ‘kept the bird in his bosom,’ a treasure lost by many of his kin, and among them, one fears, by Allan of Knock. A certain Ranald Macdonell of [_in_] Scammadale and Crowlin, who, born about 1724, married in May 1815, and died in November of the same year, aged ninety, is said to have ‘severely punished that obnoxious person known as Allan of Knock, over whose remains there was placed an inscription not less fulsome than false.’[113] Allan, whether he betrayed the Colonel or not, has obviously a bad name in Knoydart.

The Colonel lived happily on his property till 1773, when he settled in Schoharie County, New York. When the American rebellion broke out he served in the King’s Royal Regiment of New York, and, after the final collapse of the British, he retired to Cornwall in Ontario. As General Macdonnell wrote of him in 1746, ‘He has always behaved as an honourable gentleman and a brave officer, irreproachable in every respect.’

X

THE LAST YEARS OF GLENGARRY

Readers who have followed the adventures of Pickle the Spy may care to know what were the later fortunes of his inseparable companion, Young Glengarry. These fortunes were not answerable to the expectations of the Chief. The death of Henry Pelham, in March 1754, blighted, as we shall learn, the hopes which Glengarry, like Pickle, had founded on the promises of the Prime Minister, and left him a debtor to Government for claims on his lands. That Young Glengarry, on reaching his estates in November 1754, behaved with oppressive dishonesty to his smaller wadsetters, men holding portions of his land in pawn, we learn from the report of Colonel Trapaud, who, for some sixty years, was Governor of Fort Augustus. Early in 1755, we find Glengarry at Inverness, where he signs a tack, or lease, on January 24. A copy of an undated letter from Pickle represents Glengarry as ‘making a grand tour round several parts of the Highlands, and having concourse of people from several clans to wait of him.’ Glengarry himself speaks, in a letter to be quoted, about such a gathering. In 1755, we find General Bland objecting to Glengarry’s journeyings (when Pickle went to London), and on May 18, 1757, Captain John Macdonnell, of General Frazer’s regiment, departing for America, makes Glengarry his ‘factor and attorney,’ also his executor and general legatee.[114] This Captain Macdonnell was the younger Lochgarry, who accompanied Pickle in Edinburgh, in September 1754. ‘I hope, in case of accident, you’ll take care of Young Lochgary,’ writes Pickle.[115] Captain Macdonnell was later Colonel of the 76th, says General Stewart, and a previous owner of my copy of the General’s book notes in the margin that ‘he was wounded on the Heights of Abraham.’ Critics who think that Glengarry was personated by Pickle will observe that Young Lochgarry knew both gentlemen and could not be deceived. He was Pickle’s companion in Edinburgh when Pickle had just lost his father, a Highland chief. In 1757 he makes Glengarry (who had suffered a similar bereavement at the same time as Pickle), his factor and legatee. There is, of course, no reason to suppose that Young Lochgarry had ever heard of such a mysterious personage as Pickle.

We know nothing else of Glengarry’s life from 1755 to 1757, when his manuscript letter book throws a melancholy light on his closing years. There is a draft of a letter of 1757 and several drafts of 1758-1759, in a stitched folio wherein he entered the _brouillons_ of his correspondence, not always in his own hand. On April 28, 1757, he wrote from London, probably from his rooms in Beaufort Buildings, Strand. He writes to his Edinburgh agent, Mr. Orme, W.S., on a variety of business. His action in settling his estates was much impeded by the retention of his charters and family papers by Sir Everard Falkner (or Faulkner), an English officer. ‘I have prevailed,’ he says, ‘upon Mr. Brado, how (who) is a principal man amongst the Jewes, to endeavour to recover my charters from Sir Everard.’ He expects to redeem all the wadsets on his lands, and to compound for a few of the most pressing of his father’s debts. But he must have been disappointed, for on his death, in 1761, more of his estate was in the hands of wadsetters than in his own. He must, however, have secured proof of ‘my propinquity to those of my predecessors left infeft,’ for he was formally inducted into his property before an Inverness jury in 1758. He mentions that, when he left Scotland, ‘the appearance of a famine threatened then the whole north,’ and ‘his friends were buying meal in Buchan.’ A wet summer and autumn always meant dearth in the Highlands. He alludes to some military oppression of one of his retainers: ‘the attempt is so flagrant that it would not pass unpunished amongst the hotentots.’ An unfinished draft appears to be addressed to General Frazer, son of Old Lovat. With him (if it is Frazer) he wants ‘to settle family differences _à l’aimable_.’ His correspondent is leaving Scotland after recruiting.

In June 1758, Glengarry was in correspondence with persons concerned in the affairs of his sister-in-law, widow of his brother Æneas, accidentally shot at Falkirk, in 1746. Æneas must have married very young: he was not twenty when he died, but he left a son and a daughter. For some unknown reason Glengarry was on ill terms with his brother’s widow, as will appear, and she would not permit her children to visit their uncle. To this business the following letter refers:

‘_To Rory McLeod._

‘(Dated Greenfield, 22nd June, 1758.)

‘Dear Sir,—I am favour’d with yours by the last post, and am
not a little surprized to understand by it that Mr Robison
should have wrott either to Mr Drummond or you that I intended
to dispose of my nephew contrar to the present system of moral
education, all I said to Mr Robison that if I sent him abroad
I could have him educated for nothing, but that I did not
myself aprove of this frugall method, but that I would advise
with Mr Drummond how to Dispose of him when I would be at
Edinburgh, that if he inclin’d a military life, I might have
interest to get him a pair of Colours, but then I would insist
the best _moitié_ of his patrimony should be assigned to his
sister, but that what I inclined he should follow was the
law, if he had genius for that profession, and that in that
case if Mr Drummond aprovd of it, I would send him for the
sake of the language to some country schooll in England. This
was all that passed upon honour, and Desired to send over the
boy that I might make him acquaint in the country, and should
only Detain him two months, I had a Double view in this as I
had the countrey about that time all convened, it would have
been fifty pounds in his way, and this I told Mr Robison; and
at the same time, as the lassie had no English, I would Keep
her all winter with my sister so that in spring she might be
presentable, when I would send her for a little time to my
sister’s Dr Chisolme at Inverness. Mr. Robison approved of all
this, particularly of the lassy’s coming, and, that he might
not be blamed for retaining them, sent them to their Mother’s,
where the Girle has ever been, and laid the whole blame to
her charge. I have still Mr Robison’s letter, but he has his
views which I am resolved to frustrate.... I will shew you my
brother’s discharge to my father, and I have living witnesses
that delivered him Cattle in payment of interest, and part
principall, and as one of them is his father’s brother, how
would go all lengths for him, that there can be no objection to
his evidence as Discharges have been burned or Destroyed after
the Castle was blown up....

‘Your affect. Cousine and humble servant,

‘MACKDONELL.’

Burt says that ‘to have the English’ was the mark, among the Highlanders, of a gentleman’s children. Glengarry’s niece had as yet no English; her education had doubtless been neglected in the distresses consequent on the Rising. Probably, too, her mother was poor, her husband’s portion having been partly paid in cattle. These very cattle may have been among the 20,000 plundered by Cumberland’s men after Culloden, as a volunteer writes in his little book of ‘A Journey with the Army into Scotland’ (1747).

In a letter to Mr. Orme, of unknown date, Glengarry says that his sister-in-law ‘is infamous.’ On the same affair of the nephew he writes again:—

[No date.]

‘Sir,—I have been frequently since my father’s death abused
in the good opinion conceived in former days of those that
ought and were generally believed steadfast friends to this
familly, but I must confess I least of all expected it from any
of yours, and least of all from yourself personally. I had a
letter lately from Robison of Ballnicaird acquainting me that
Provost Drummond and you, despairing of the amicable agreement
twixt my nephew and me, intended to push matters to the utmost,
this was strange proceedings, without ever acquainting me, and
in any event a strange procedure between me and my nephew when
the opinion of any one or two eminent in the law might in a few
moments decide the whole without further expences, and when
they come to the age to judge for themselves I believe they
will be little oblidged to their present directors, Mr Drummond
only excepted. I sent for my nephew and niece, their not
arriving is laid to your advice, tho up to that time I little
believed it, and from that Instant foresaw Mr Robison and their
infamous mother’s drift. As Mr Drummond is so very good as take
the trouble to look after any so very near connections, least
by others’ drift he should be Deceived, I must act the needful
to have a near relation of the father’s side subjoined with
him to take care of the whole, and their Education, and bring
their Mother and Mr Robison to account for their intermissions
with his effects and moveables, most of which he received as
payment, and at his Death were very considerable, there are
still living witnesses that can prove this, and I have which
I believe may be in my Agent’s custody, his discharge or Bond
for 6000 merks, pay’d by his father of his bond of patrimony.
Should this stand in law, as it ought in equity, and Justice,
I will refer any differences of this kind to any named by Mr
Drummond, and another by me.

‘... Acquaintance, friendship, and blood connection might
expect a friendly demand, not by a Sheriff Officier.

‘But as the world has taken a turn, and that men of business
are not to mind such punctilios, I have nothing to say but
that I hope it may not be long when a blood relation and
connection with this family may be claimed both as an honour
and protection, it was so formerly, and may be still the same.’

(He adds that he wishes proceedings stayed still he comes to
Edinburgh, and refers to his ‘late violent indisposition.’)

‘Your sincere friend and affect. Cousine.’

This undated letter is probably of 1758, though early in 1759 Glengarry had another very severe illness, from which it may be doubted if he ever entirely recovered. He writes to Mr. Orme, ‘I am drinking goat-whey and milk, that is my diet.... I shall be soon upon my leggs, and see you soon.’

The following is an important letter, undated in the draft, to the Chief of the Macleods:—

[Undated. Really of June 21, 1758.

‘Dear Macleod,—I thought to have had the pleasure some months
ago of drinking a glass with you at White House. But a Severe
fitt of sickness of which I am now getting the better prevented
me. I have settled my affairs in the country as well as my
present situation and the circumstances of my tenants could
admitt, but as their whole [property] was once destroyed, and
that they have not recovered yet quite in their stock I was
oblidged to give them a longer delay than I expected.’

He therefore asks Macleod to ‘go conjunct with me in security for borrowing 400_l._’—an invitation which Macleod declined. If Macleod will not help him, ‘I cannot be active in making aplication to be discharged of the claims the Government has against my estate, _which I was once made sure of, but that vanished with those then at the helme_.’

Such a promise, broken on the change of the hand at the helm, is several times referred to—by Pickle. He writes to the Duke of Newcastle, ‘he bitterly complains that nothing has been done for him, of what was promis’d him in the strongest terms, and which he believes had been strickly performed had your most worthy Brother (Henry Pelham) his great friend and Patron, survived till now.’[116]

Among the many odd coincidences between Pickle and Glengarry, this is not the least curious. Both the spy and the chief entertained great expectations from Government, and both confess that these hopes ‘vanished with those then at the helme,’ obviously, that is, with Henry Pelham’s death.

Glengarry goes on, in his letter to Macleod, ‘_but to be explicit on this_’ (namely, on his ‘being made sure’ of the abandonment of Government’s claims on his estate) ‘and the confusion my father and the late unluckie troubles left this estate would draw to tow great lenth, I will therefore reffer it till meeting.’ He ends with compliments ‘to Lady Macleod, and the two lovely little Misses.’

It would have been pleasant to hear Glengarry when, over a bottle, he was ‘explicit’ on the reasons for which Henry Pelham promised to abate the demands on his estate. Government knew that Glengarry was in the affair of Loch Arkaig. They arrested his accomplices in 1751, but left him free. Government knew, by their spies, that Glengarry frequented the Earl Marischal in Paris in 1752, and that, in 1753, he was perpetually running over, as a Jacobite agent, to Paris. But they then arrested Glenevis and Fassifern, while they promised to abate their claims on Glengarry’s estate! To explain all this to Macleod ‘over a magnum,’ as Glengarry elsewhere convivially remarks, could not be an easy task. His letter, in the draft, is undated, but on the same page is a letter to his solicitor, Mr. Orme, W.S., dated ‘Greenfield, 21 June, 1758.’ In this letter he speaks of that just cited as having been sent ‘by this very post.’ Macleod was in Edinburgh, but left before Glengarry’s appeal could reach him. Now, without the 400_l._ the Chief could not go to town. He therefore wrote again to Macleod, repeating his supplication, and being ‘explicit’ indeed as to his former patron in the Government, though not as to the reasons for his patronage.

‘An absolute discharge of the heavie claim the Government has against me I was once promised, but those that was then at the helme _are no more_.’

The only person of those ‘then at the helme’ who was now, in 1758, ‘no more’ was precisely Henry Pelham. He died in March 1754. Pickle was his ‘man.’ Pickle had received promises from him which were never fulfilled. So, oddly enough, had Glengarry! We know what Pickle’s services to Henry Pelham had been; we can guess at those of Glengarry. But after Henry Pelham’s death—in fact, at the very time of his death—Prince Charles’s party broke up for ever in England, and the Earl Marischal quarrelled irreconcilably with the Prince. The services of Pickle were therefore no longer needed. Pelham’s engagements with him were not kept, and the promise to Glengarry, by a coincidence, was also broken by the faithless English Government.

People who maintain that Glengarry was not Pickle may be asked to produce a theory which will account for the singular series of coincidences in the fortunes of the Chief and the spy. Even in this new coincidence alone, it will be interesting to see how they explain the circumstance that Glengarry, like Pickle, found his expectations blasted, and the promises made to him unfulfilled, in consequence of the death of Pickle’s employer, the brother of the Duke of Newcastle. What possible claim could a professed Jacobite agent, known for such to Government, as young Glengarry was, have on the good offices of the First Lord of the Treasury? It has been fondly suggested that Pickle was an unknown miscreant, personating Glengarry. That will be shown to be physically impossible; but, granting the hypothesis, why was Glengarry, no less than Pickle, favoured by Henry Pelham? No other person can be meant by the phrase ‘those at the helme,’ now ‘no more.’ Newcastle, indeed, was out of office in 1756, if ‘no more’ is explained as ‘out of office.’ But when Glengarry wrote to Macleod in 1758 Newcastle was again at the Treasury.

Macleod would not back Glengarry’s bill for 400_l._ His agents advised him against this measure. In February 1760 Pickle, who was anxious to go to London, asked the Duke of Newcastle to send him a bill, payable at sight, ‘for whatever little sum is judged proper for the present.’ The Duke’s answer, with the bill payable at sight for the little sum to defray Pickle’s travelling expenses, is to be directed by his Grace

‘To Alexander Mackdonell of Glengary by Foraugustus.’

Apparently, then, Pickle had some means of getting at Glengarry’s correspondence. The two gentlemen spell ‘Fort Augustus’ in the same singular way. On September 11, 1758, Glengarry wrote to Mr. Orme’s subordinate:—

‘Will you dow me the favour to order me the “Calledonian Mercury” regullarly every post to the care of Mr. William Fraser, merchant at forAugustus?’

The almost unvarying uniformity in bad spelling which marks Pickle and Glengarry will be commented on later.

The last years of Glengarry were disturbed by the legal results of an early piece of domestic slyness. His father, old Glengarry, commonly described as a weak, indolent man, married, first, a lady named Mackenzie, of the Hilton family. As his eldest son was not of age in January 1745 the marriage may have been in 1723 or 1724. After bearing a second son, Æneas, and apparently a daughter, Isobel, Lady Glengarry died (1727). In a deed of 1728 we find Old Glengarry already remarried to a daughter of Gordon of Glenbucket, who in 1724 was nearly murdered by evicted Macphersons. The stepmother of Young Glengarry was a managing woman, and ‘factrix’ of her husband’s estates. Now, in 1738 Old Glengarry pawned or ‘wadsetted’ his lands of Cullachy to his kinsman Lochgarry. The wadsetter paid 2,000 merks in money and gave bills for the rest. But in January 1745, when Alastair was in Scotland on furlough from his French regiment, Old Glengarry formally ‘disponed’ his estates to his eldest son. Doubtless this was done with an eye to the chances of a rising; in any case, the transaction was kept a secret from Glengarry’s wife and factrix.

Hence arose trouble, for the pawned estate of Cullachy had been redeemed. Lochgarry had been paid his 2,000 merks, or they were set off against another debt, but his bills were not returned to him. They lay in Lady Glengarry’s custody, and she could not be asked for them without revealing the secret transference of the whole property to Young Glengarry in 1745. He therefore gave Lochgarry a written promise that the bills should never be used against him. But Lochgarry being attainted, after 1745, and exiled, his possessions were forfeited to the Crown. Government therefore demanded, in 1758, that Glengarry should redeem from them Lochgarry’s wadset of Cullachy. He pleaded that it was already redeemed before 1745, but of this he could bring no evidence. He writes to his Agent on August 2, 1758, that he is not certain of the year of the wadset (really 1738), as he was not then in the kingdom; he was in France. ‘Lochgarry being more in debt to the familly than the [amount of the] mortgage, he delivered up his contract of wadsett, which I thought was all the seremony necessary; and the signature being tore from it was laid, according to custom, among the family papers, which were carried off, and are now in Sir Everard Falconer’s custody.’ He knows little of estate affairs, ‘as I was always abroad.’ His rental of 1744 was burned with the house of his factor, Donald McDonell, Younger of Scotus.

After the Rebellion, he did not meddle in matters of the property, till his father’s death (1754). ‘The tenants could hardly pay what would subsist him.’

‘Every tenant took possession of what farme he pleased.’ In 1746 ‘Mrs. Mc.Donell of Lochgary being destitute of all suport, having a numerous family of young children, came from Badenoch, took possession of Cullachy, and there lived untill she followed her Husband abroad.’

‘The lands of Cullachie was only set till lately from year to year, the tenants were frequently removed, I know of no written rentall, it is not customary ... Discharges were not formerly required, nor were they necssary.’

Glengarry explains all this to his Agent on January 6, 1759:—

‘When I got disposition to my Father’s estate I was then under age, at this time Lady Glengarry, _how_ [who] then had so much to Say with her husband, the Disposition Grant was concealed from her, and as the Bill granted by Lochgarry was in her Custody, had they demanded it would have Discovered the Scheme in my favours, I granted my Obligatory to Lochgery that these Bills should never make against him.’

The sense can be puzzled out of the anacoloutha.

On February 3, 1759, he repeats his story:—

‘I will only observe that the reason of the bills not being cancelled or retired by Lockgerry, was that they were then in Lady Glengarry’s custody, and that the disposition of my Father’s estate in my favour was keept secret from her, which would have been discovered had Lochgerry demanded his bills, and this occasioned my giving him my obligation they should never make against him.’

The whole affair is a specimen of the informal manner in which Highland business was done. The frequency of ‘removals’ of tenants also throws doubt on the theory that Evictions were a novelty introduced by the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates. The anarchy after Culloden is shown by the squatting of tenants on whatever farms they chose to select. The Judges could not be induced to accept Glengarry’s account of the redemption of Cullachy, as he had no documentary evidence, and Cullachy appears, after the Chiefs death, among his mortgaged lands.[117]

The latest of the drafts in Glengarry’s Letter Book are of December 1758, January 1759. He appears much aggrieved by Colonel Trapaud, Governor of Fort Augustus, for the following cause: his ground-steward had been claimed, unjustly it seems, as a deserter from the army. A party of soldiers then acted in the manner described in the following draft, which has no date or address:—

‘The party in the dead of night was posted round my hutt, of which I was ignorant untill my servants were stopped from going from door to door. Alarmed at this, I suspected some straglers were come to break open some valts in the old Castle, which was formerly Done.’

The indignant chief drafts the following remonstrance to Colonel Trapaud:—

‘I never thought to have reason to write you in so cooll a
strain. My own Behaviour, not to mention the pollitess showen
to you by my friends in Generall since you lived in this
countrey claimd a more Gentle return, and as our Actions are
always above Board It depends upon yourself that the same
Harmony Should allways subsist, and I will be very happie still
to remain,

Sir,

Your sincere friend and Humble servant.’

Trapaud’s behaviour, Glengarry writes, is ‘picking,’ and Pickle also spells _pique_ ‘pick.’ The worst of it is that Glengarry ‘is lick to lose the use of his eyes,’ for at the time of this assault in his ‘hutt’ he was exceedingly ill. ‘I am now writting,’ he says to Colonel Lambert (January 6, 1759) ‘in this confus’d stile with only the fowrth part of one eye open, beeing near losing my life with a plague of a distemper, which, when recovered, seised my eyes.’ On January 15, 1759, he tells Captain Forbes that he can hardly see. On February 24, 1759, he expresses a civil surprise at Macleod’s refusal to back his bill for 400_l._ On February 3, he was still ‘hardly able to crall,’ but intended to go south; his sister Bell was going to Edinburgh. Macleod’s persistent refusal probably made the journey to London impossible, where Glengarry expected ‘to be off or on with the Government claim against my estate.’

There are no later drafts in the Letter Book, but Pickle, at all events, had the use of _his_ eyes when he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle on February 19, 1760,[118] offering to raise a regiment. Glengarry, six weeks later, urged the same proposal through the Duke of Atholl.

On April 21, 1761, Glengarry made his will. He recommends his sister and sole executrix to seal up his cabinet, which is not to be opened ‘till the friends of the family meet.’ The Macdonnells of Greenfield, Leek, and Cullachy are then ‘to see all the political and useless letters among my papers burnt and destroyed, as the preservation of them can answer no purpose.’

Mr. Fraser Mackintosh, who publishes these extracts, adds, ‘why Glengarry who lived several months after the execution of his will, did not himself destroy the papers above alluded to, can be conjectured by people for themselves—all that need be said here is that their destruction was a pity, and the reason given unsatisfactory.’[119] His affairs ‘were found to be in a deplorable state.’ It may be conjectured that Glengarry clung to his papers, which must have been compromising enough. If his malady again affected his eyes, he might be unable to select the documents which it was wiser to destroy. Nor could he well endure to entrust ‘my sister Bell’ with the task of selection. She must not know her brother’s guilt. That secret must have oozed out, for it has left traces in tradition.[120]

Thus closed miserably a singular career. Impoverished, dying in a ‘hutt,’ beside the ruins of his feudal castle, distrusted, not even permitted to see his young nephew and heir, Glengarry reaped the harvest sown by his mysterious attendant, Pickle.

XI

THE CASE AGAINST GLENGARRY

Of all the companions of Pickle, the most inseparable was Glengarry. Now, since the appearance of ‘Pickle the Spy,’ the author has been denounced before the Gaelic Society! Amidst ‘applause’ a Celtic gentleman, the news-sheets say, accused me of bringing a charge of an odious nature, _without any proofs_. Of course, if I have no proofs, nobody who thinks so need argue against what I, myself, regard as a chain of irrefragable circumstantial evidence. Nor am I aware that any arguments, beyond clamour, have been advanced, in favour of Glengarry’s innocence, except those which I shall presently examine. But first I must meet the charge of wresting facts to suit my ‘prepossessions.’

I had no prepossessions: how should I? If I knew so much as that there was any young Glengarry, before I read the Pickle letters, it was the limit of my information. These documents were pointed out to me, several years ago, by Sir E. Maunde Thompson, when I was in search of a manuscript to print for the Roxburghe Club. I began to read them, where they are to be found, scattered through five or six volumes of the Pelham Papers, in the British Museum. They are not all in sequence in one volume, nor in chronological order. On a first hasty examination, nothing appeared to indicate their author. I therefore had transcripts made of the Pickle Letters, and, after reading them, arranged them chronologically, being helped, where dates failed, by their allusions to public events: such as the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the death of Henry Pelham, and so forth.

On a first glance at the originals, I had no hope of detecting the spy called Pickle. He might be a servant, secretary, or retainer of any Jacobite family. But indications as to his identity kept occurring, when once the papers were sorted, and the hunting instinct awoke in the reader, the fever of the chase. Pickle was apparently no ‘paltry vidette,’ for he was in close relations with the Prime Minister, Henry Pelham, and, later, with the Duke of Newcastle. Now a lacquey may, as Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s dispatches show, report to an Ambassador, but a Prime Minister is less easy of access. Next, Pickle was, or had succeeded in persuading Pelham that he was, a person of the first importance in the Highlands. A critic has replied that, of course, a spy would pretend to be important, and, naturally, would be accepted as such. Ministers are scarcely so gullible. They do not accept a casual stranger’s identity without inquiry.

Presently it appeared, from a letter of the Court Trusty, or Secret Service man, Bruce,[121] who attended Pickle in Edinburgh, that he now, by his father’s death, was head of a great clan. Pickle’s father’s death occurred in September 1754. Now, on examination, it appeared that Old Glengarry, and no other Chief, died on September 1, 1754, in Edinburgh, where we find Pickle, with Young Lochgarry, in mid September. Pickle, writes Bruce, the Court Trusty (signing ‘Cromwell’) is adulated by military society in Edinburgh, where he stays for at least a month. He is to be observed, when he goes North, by the Governor of Fort Augustus, near which lie Glengarry’s lands. The Governor (Trapaud) writes unfavourably of the new Glengarry (December 13, 1754), and Pickle writes that he will, if not permitted the use of arms, prevent officers from shooting over his lands.

Pickle then is, or affects to be, a young Chief, just come, by his father’s death at Edinburgh, in September, into estates near Fort Augustus. He is also, or pretends to be, the chief of the Macdonnells, for he says (April 1754), ‘there could be no rising in Scotland without the Macdonnells: he is sure that he shall have the _first_ notice of anything of the kind; and he is sure that the Young Pretender would do nothing without him.’ Finally (as stated on p. 209), writing to the Duke of Newcastle (Feb. 19, 1760), he speaks of Pickle in the third person, says that he is ready to raise a Highland regiment (which only a Chief could do), and ends, ‘Direction’ (of reply) ‘To Alexander Mackdonnell, of Glengary, by Foraugustus.’ Before I read that line, I had said to a Highland friend, ‘The traitor is a Macdonald.’ ‘Not Clanranald, I hope,’ he answered, and then Pickle’s last letter gave me the clue to Glengarry.

Thus there was, and could be, no ‘prepossession’ on my part. The circumstances all pointed direct to Glengarry, or to a personator of his, and to no one else. Thus it became a ‘working hypothesis’ that Pickle either was, or was personating, Glengarry: a Chief on terms of perfect intimacy with Prince Charles. He was, or affected to be, a Macdonnell, a Chief, with lands near Fort Augustus, to which he succeeded by his father’s death in September 1754, the date of the death of Old Glengarry.

Taking Pickle’s identity, natural or feigned, with Young Glengarry, as a working hypothesis, it became necessary to trace the career of that chief. At every stage, in every detail and date, after 1750, whatever was true of Young Glengarry was found to be true of Pickle. Every gleam of light that revealed the long forgotten incidents of Young Glengarry’s career, after 1750, fell also on the sinister features of Pickle. My hypothesis thus ‘colligated’ all the facts. New facts from MSS. came into view after my book was published; my hypothesis colligated these also. Everything fell into its place: everything coincided in the identification of Pickle with Young Glengarry.

To upset the evidence of a long series of coincidences, all pointing in the same direction, some hypothesis other than the hypothesis that Pickle is Glengarry must be advanced. Only one alternative suggestion has been ventured, as far as I am aware—namely, that Glengarry was _personated_ throughout, for ten years, by some unknown ‘inward’ or close intimate, calling himself ‘Pickle.’ That hypothesis I shall prove to be not only morally but physically impossible, to demand a physical and moral miracle. We are left, then, with the equation, Pickle = Glengarry.[122]

To the _a priori_ objection, that it is morally inconceivable that a Highland Chief, of character hitherto unsuspected, should sink so low, I need hardly reply. Too many Chiefs, from the death of Malcolm MacHeth, had been in the same _galère_. Young Glengarry, moreover, _was_ suspected by several independent witnesses. We have also read the story of Barisdale, Glengarry’s cousin. _A priori_ improbability there is none. We therefore proceed to examine the career of Young Glengarry, and to show how his comings and goings, his entrances and exits, the changes in his fortunes, his unconsidered private letters, his spelling, and his handwriting, all combine to identify him with the author of the Pickle Correspondence.

About the early years of Alastair Ruadh Macdonnell of Glengarry it is unnecessary to write at great length. Born apparently about 1725, for he was not of age in the beginning of 1745, Young Glengarry had one brother of the full blood, Æneas, accidentally shot at Falkirk in 1746. He had also a sister, Isobel. Before 1728 his mother died. Wodrow says that she was imprisoned by her husband on an islet, and died of hunger (1727). Young Glengarry now received a stepmother, a daughter of Gordon of Glenbucket. He does not seem to have been attached to this lady, who bore two sons to Old Glengarry. According to Murray of Broughton, Young Glengarry ‘was most barbarously used by his father and mother-in-law’ (p. 441). Alastair, at all events, was sent to France as early as 1738, where he was not likely to learn English orthography. His own, though pretty consistent in its blunders, is of the kind which Captain Burt found prevailing in the Highlands.

Alastair’s boyhood was probably unluxurious. Burt tells the following curious anecdote on this head. After 1715, the Castle of Invergarry, which had been adorned by the father of the Glengarry of Shirramuir, was gutted by the English soldiery. It was refurnished and made inhabitable by the agent of a Liverpool Company, who smelted iron in the district. Glengarry, meanwhile, ‘inhabited a miserable hut of turf, as he does to this day’ (1735?). To this manager, a Quaker, a number of gentlemen of the clan paid a visit. After receiving them hospitably, the Quaker observed that they would always be welcome in ‘my house.’

‘God d—n you, Sir, your house! I thought it had been Glengarry’s house.’ They then assaulted the Quaker, who was rescued by his workmen.[123] Alastair was better lodged in France, where, in 1743, he got a Company in the Royal Scots. In 1744 he was with Pickle’s friend, the exiled Earl Marischal, at Dunkirk, meaning to start with the futile French expedition from Gravelines.

How that expedition was ‘muddled away’ we have told in the essay on the Earl Marischal. At this time the Earl in France, and Murray of Broughton in Scotland, gravely distrusted James’s agents in France, Sempil and Balhaldie. Now Balhaldie was a connection of Lochiel, and was aware that Murray held him in suspicion. He, therefore, after the collapse of the expedition of 1744, sent over to Lochiel Young Glengarry, ‘freighted with heavy complaints’ against Murray. Lochiel next, in the spring of 1745, brought Murray and Young Glengarry together. The young Chief told Murray that Balhaldie accused him of bidding the Prince come to Scotland, with or without French assistance, and ‘seat himself on the throne, and leave the King at Rome’ (which was precisely what James desired and Charles repudiated).[124] Glengarry was therefore to warn the party against Murray. Murray told Glengarry the real facts—namely, that Balhaldie was too imaginative, and Glengarry seemed quite satisfied. Indeed, he produced a letter to the same effect as regards Balhaldie from Æneas Macdonald, the banker, and, later, the informer.

Glengarry and Murray presently met at that strange tavern gathering in Edinburgh, where, out of the company, Traquair, Lovat, Glengarry, Murray, Macleod, and Lochiel, Lochiel alone preserved his honour. Glengarry then went to the Highlands with letters for Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat and other gentlemen. In January 1745 Glengarry had induced his father secretly to dispone to him his lands, an action which became a serious trouble to him later. In May 1745 Murray sent him with despatches to the Prince in France, and with reasons why Charles should not come unless accompanied by a French force. Late in 1745 Young Glengarry was taken at sea, and lodged in the Tower.

Charles, meanwhile, was loyal enough to his imprisoned adherent. On November 4, 1746, Charles wrote to d’Argenson, ‘there are three prisoners in London, sir, in whom I take a warm interest. These are Sir Hector Maclean, Glengarry, and my secretary, Mr. Murray of Broughton. All three hold French commissions, the first was born at Calais.... I implore you, sir, to take every means to secure their exchange, and will regard it as a personal obligation.’

These gentlemen, however, were not naturalised French subjects, like Nicholas Wogan, who, after fighting when a boy at Preston in 1715, and after losing an arm at Fontenoy, took part in the campaign of 1745, and later saw Cumberland’s back at Laffeldt fight. Nicholas may have been exchanged, in 1746, as a French prisoner; for Murray and Glengarry this plea was unavailing. The Prince, however, did his best for both men, and ill they rewarded him.[125]

Glengarry told Bishop Forbes the same story in 1752. He was the bearer of a letter from the Chiefs, imploring the Prince not to come over without arms, money, and auxiliary forces.[126] But he could not find Charles, who was incognito, ‘lurking for a spring.’ Towards the end of 1745 Alastair was captured, as we saw, while conveying a piquet of the Royal Scots to join the Prince. He pined in the Tower, he says, for twenty-two months, and was then released. His fortunes were frowning. His father lay in Edinburgh Castle, a written information having been laid against him by a number of the gentlemen of his clan who had been out in the Rising. His lands and cattle had been destroyed and driven away by the English soldiery. Men squatted on what farm they chose, and could only pay rent enough to ‘subsist’ his father. The French Government made demands on him for money advanced to him while in the Tower, and stopped his pay. His grant from the Scots Fund (1,800 livres) was inadequate. The Prince could not procure for him a regiment. In these gloomy circumstances Alastair took a step which nobody can blame in itself. He attempted to reconcile himself to the English Government. The following letter is from a friend sincerely anxious for his success:—[127]

(State Papers, Domestic, Scotland, Bundle 38 (1747), No. 6.)

‘Roterdam, Oct. 17, 1747.

‘Sir,—I take this opportunity of my worthy friend an officer of
the Royals of informing you how I have had severall letters on
the following Subject from Mr. Macdonell Junior of Glengary who
desires me to charge you with this letter. He has frequently
and seriously reflected on the many good Advices given him
by you and Maj. White when he was Prisoner at the Tower, to
abandon that party and the service of France. I am thorrowly
convinced that he is determined so to do if it is agreeable
to the Ministry, and that he will give the Duke of Argyle and
them all the assurances that a man of honour can give of his
behaving as a peaceable Subject, if they will allow him to
wait upon them in London. Let me beg of you for God’s sake to
persuade these great men to accept of this young Gentleman’s
offer, by which at once you’ll detach him from that party that
has given birth to all the Calamitys that both his Clan and
Country has suffered this age past: as I shall be some months
here before my affair is Negociated you’ll have time to send me
answer, which I pray God may be favourable. Please write me as
soon as you can. I am with my Compliments to your family,

‘Sir, your most obedt. oblidged humble Sert.

‘WILL: BAILLIE.