(Vol. v., p. 257.)
I have in my possession a manuscript consisting of copies of various
letters, and other memorials of Sir Alexander Cumming. It is of his own
period, but whether of his own handwriting I cannot say.
They are clearly the compositions of a person of an unsettled intellect;
but we may collect from them the following facts:--His captain's
commission was dated May 29, 1703; he was called by his mother, a few
days before her death, both Jacob and Israel. This is further explained
when he relates that Lady Cumming, his mother, set out from Edinburgh
the first of the "Borrowing Days," towards the end of March, 1709.
"The three last days of March are called 'the Borrowing Days' in
Scotland, on account of their being generally attended with very
blustering weather, which inclines people to say that they would
wish to _borrow_ three days from the month of April, in exchange
for those three last days of the month of March. This lady was
seventeen days in her journeys upon the road, and lived ten days
after her arrival in London. She died on the Monday se'nnight in
the morning after she came to London. On the Thursday before her
death she called her son, Captain Cumming, to her bed-side, and
gave him her blessing in the terms of the prophet Isaiah, to which
she referred him, and gave him her own new Bible to read over on
the occasion, and to keep for her sake. But this Bible was lost,
with other baggage, taken by the French towards the end of the
campaign, 1709. Colonel Swinton, this lady's eldest brother, was
shot at the battle of Malplaquet, and died upon the field of
battle."
The lady travelled attended by her daughter Helen Cumming, and her
servant Margaret Rae.
But I see we have been wrong in writing the name Cumming with two _m_'s.
He writes it invariably _Cuming_. This would appear of little moment,
but the change a little diminishes the probability of the writer's
favourite notion, that the Hebrew word _Cumi_ is in some way obumbrated
in his patronymic _Cuming_.
The passage of the prophet Isaiah which formed the substance of his
mother's last benediction is chap. xli. verses 8 and 9, and chap. xliii.
verses 2 and 3: "Thou _Israel_ art my servant, _Jacob_ whom I have
chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend," &c. He inclines to think that
"the writer of the book called Isaiah was a friend to the British
nation, and that the islands of Great Britain and Ireland are those
addressed to, in order to renew their strength."
It was on April 23, 1730, O.S., that "by the unanimous consent of the
people he was made law-giver, commander, leader, and chief of the
Cherokee nation, and witness of the power of God, at a general meeting
at Nequisee, in the Cherokee Mountains." He brought with him to England
six Cherokee chiefs, and on June 18, in that year, he was allowed to
present them to the King in the Royal Chapel at Windsor. This was at the
time of the installation of the Duke of Cumberland and the Earls of
Chesterfield and Burlington. On June 22nd was the ceremony of laying his
crown at the feet of the King, when the Indian chiefs laid also their
four scalps and five eagles' tails.
In a few years the scene was changed, and in 1737 we find him confined
within the limits of the Fleet Prison; but having a rule of court, on
the 8th of November he was at Knightsbridge, where about ten in the
morning he opened the Bible for an answer to his prayers, and chanced
upon the fifty-first and fifty-second chapters of Isaiah. He feels a
call to a mission to the Jews, and contemplates visiting Poland. With
that disposition of a mind disordered as his was, to turn everything
towards a particular object, he thinks there was some mysterious
connexion between the fact that Queen Caroline was seized with the
illness which proved fatal, in her library, at ten o'clock on the
morning of the 9th of November, the day after his call.
In 1750 he was still in the Fleet Prison, from whence, on May 15, he
addressed a letter to Lord Halifax, asserting his right to the Cherokee
Mountains, and proposing a scheme for the discharge of eighty millions
of the National Debt; the scheme being, that 300,000 families of Jews
should be settled in that country for the improvement of the lands, as
industrious honest subjects. This letter notices also two facts in the
Cuming history: 1. That Sir Alexander's father had been the means of
saving the life of King George the Second; and 2. That he, Sir
Alexander, had been taken into the secret service of the crown, at
Christmas, 1718, at a salary of 300_l._ a-year, which was discontinued
at Christmas, 1721.