persons; some of whom boasted of having taken part in the conspiracies
against William the Third, and were proud of having compassed the death
of that Sovereign. From time to time, Englishmen of distinction
travelled from Paris to Barleduc, under pretext of seeing the country,
but in fact to proffer a secret allegiance to the Prince. The individual
to whom these attentions were addressed, is described by an anonymous
emissary of the English Court, as leading a regular life,--hunting when
the weather permitted, and hearing mass every day with great precision
and devotion. "Il est fort maigre," adds the same writer, "assez grand;
son teint est brun, son humeur et sa personne ne sont pas désagréables."
In another place, it is added, "Il paroit manquer de jugement et de
résolution:" an opinion, unhappily, too correct.[58] On the question
being put by Bolingbroke to the Duke of Berwick, whether the Prince was
a bigot, the answer was in the negative. "Then," said Bolingbroke, "we
shall have no objection to place him on the throne." This anecdote,
which was told by the Chevalier himself to Brigadier Nugent, probably
gave countenance to the rumour spread in England, that James was likely
to renounce the Catholic faith, and conform to the English Church.[59]
The Earl of Mar and his brother, Lord Grange, were now the two most
considerable men in Scotland. Lord Grange had been made Lord of Session
in 1707, and afterwards Lord Justice Clerk, during the three last years
of Queen Anne's reign. His character presents traits even more repulsive
and more dangerous than the time-serving and duplicity of the Earl of
Mar. Lord Grange was one of those men whom the honest adherents to
either party would, doubtless, gladly have turned over to the other
side. His abilities, if we judge of the high appointments which he held,
must have been eminent; but he was devoid of all principle, and was
capable, if the melancholy and extraordinary history of his unhappy
wife be true, of the darkest schemes.
It would be difficult to reconcile, in any other man, the discrepancy of
Lord Grange's real opinions and of his subsequent efforts to restore the
House of Stuart; but, in a brother of the Earl of Mar, the difficulty
ceases, and all hopes of consistency, or rather of its origin,
sincerity, vanish. Lord Grange is declared to have been a "true blue
republican, and, if he had any religion, at bottom a Presbyterian;" yet
he was deeply involved in transactions with the Chevalier and his
friends.[60]
Lord Grange was united to a lady violent in temper, of a dauntless
spirit, and a determined Hanoverian. Their marriage had been enforced by
the laws of honour, and was ill-omened from the first; therefore, where
respect has ceased, affection soon languishes and expires. The daughter
of Cheisly of Dalry, a man of uncontrolled passions, who shot Sir George
Lockhart, one of the Lords of Session, for having decided a law-suit
against him, Mrs. Erskine of Grange, commonly called Lady Grange,
inherited the determined will of her father. It was said that she had
compelled Lord Grange to do her justice by marrying her, and "had
desired him to remember, by way of threat, that she was Cheisly's
daughter." For this menace she suffered in a way which could only be
effected in a country like Scotland at that period, and among a people
held in the thraldom of the clans. Her singular history belongs to a
later period in the annals of those events in which so much domestic
happiness was blasted, never to be recovered.[61]
With his brother, Lord Mar was in constant correspondence, during his
own residence in London; and although Lord Grange was skilful enough to
conceal his machinations, and to retain his seat on the bench as a
Scottish judge, there is very little reason to doubt his secret
co-operation in the subsequent movements of the Earl.
Acting as if "he thought that all things were governed by fate or
fortune,"[62] George the First remained a long time to settle his own
affairs in Hanover, before coming to England. This delay was employed by
the Earl of Mar, in an endeavour to extenuate the tenor of his political
conduct of late years in the eyes of the Sovereign, and in placing
before the King the merit of his services and his claims to favour. The
letter which he addressed to George the First, when in Holland, was
printed by Tonson, during the year 1715, with prefatory remarks by Sir
Richard Steele, whose comments upon this production of a man who,
scarcely a year after it was written, set up the standard of the
Pretender at Braemar, are expressed in these terms:
"It gives me a lively sense of the hardships of civil war, wherein all
the sacred and most intimate obligations between man and man are to be
torn asunder, when I cannot, without pain, represent to myself the
behaviour of Lord Mar, with whom I had not even the honour of any
further commerce than the pleasure of passing some agreeable hours in
his company: I say, when even such little incidents make it irksome to
be in a state of war with those with whom we have lived in any degree of
familiarity, how terrible must the image be of rending the ties of
blood, the sanctity of affinity and intermarriage, and the bringing men
who, perhaps in a few months before, were to each other the dearest of
all mankind, to meet on terms of giving death to each other at the same
time that they had rather embrace!" Thus premising, and declaring that
he could with difficulty efface from his mind all remains of good will
and pity to Lord Mar, Sir Richard Steele subjoins a document, fatal to
the reputation of Lord Mar--the following letter, which Lord Mar
addressed to the King, in explanation of his conduct.
LORD MAR TO THE KING.
"Sir,
"Having the happiness to be your Majesty's subject, and also the
honour of being of your servants, as one of your Secretaries of
State, I beg leave by this to kiss your Majesty's hand, and
congratulate your happy accession to the Throne; which I should have
done myself the honour of doing sooner, had I not hoped to have had
the honour of doing it personally ere now. I am afraid I may have
had the misfortune to be misrepresented to your Majesty, and my
reason for thinking so is, because I was the only one of the late
Queen's servants whom your Ministers here did not visit, which I
mentioned to Mr. Harley and the Earl of Clarendon, when they went
from hence to wait on your Majesty; and your Ministers carrying so
to me was the occasion of my receiving such orders as deprived me of
the honour and satisfaction of waiting on them and being known to
them. I suppose I had been misrepresented to them by some here upon
account of party, or to ingratiate themselves by aspersing others,
as one party here too often occasion; but I hope your Majesty will
be so just as not to give credit to such misrepresentations.
"The part I acted in bringing about and making of the Union when the
succession to the Crown was settled for Scotland on your Majesty's
family, when I had the honour to serve as Secretary of State for
that kingdom, doth, I hope, put my sincerity and faithfulness to
your Majesty out of dispute. My family had had the honour for a
great tract of years to be faithful servants to the Crown, and have
had the care of the King's children (when King of Scotland)
entrusted to them. A predecessor of mine was honoured with the care
of your Majesty's grandmother, when young; and she was pleased
afterwards to express some concern for our family, in letters I now
have under her own hand.
"I have had the honour to serve her late Majesty in one capacity or
other ever since her accession to the Crown. I was happy in a good
mistress, and she was pleased to have some confidence in me and
regard for my services. And since your Majesty's happy accession to
the Crown, I hope you will find that I have not been wanting in my
duty in being instrumental in keeping things quiet and peaceable in
the country to which I belong and have some interest in.
"Your Majesty shall ever find me as faithful and dutiful a subject
and servant as ever any of my family have been to the Crown, or as I
have been to my late mistress the Queen. And I beg your Majesty may
be so good not to believe any misrepresentations of me, which
nothing but party hatred and my zeal for the interest of the Crown
doth occasion; and I hope I may presume to lay claim to your royal
favour or protection. As your accession to the Crown hath been quiet
and peaceable, may your Majesty's reign be long and prosperous; and
that your people may soon have the happiness and satisfaction of
your presence amongst them, is the earnest and fervent wish of him
who is, with the humblest duty and respect, Sir, your Majesty's most
faithful, most dutiful and most obedient subject and servant,
MAR."
"Whitehall, August thirtieth, 1714, o. s."
This disgraceful letter was ineffectual. The Monarch, "whose views and
affections were, according to Lord Chesterfield, singly confined to the
narrow compass of his Electorate," and for "whom England was too big,"
acted with a promptness and decision which gave no time for the workings
of faction. An immediate change of ministry was announced by Kryenberg,
the Hanoverian resident, at the first Privy Council; and among other
changes, Lord Townshend was appointed in the place of Lord Bolingbroke.
Well might Bolingbroke exclaim, "The grief of my soul is this; I see
plainly that the Tory party is gone."[63]
For many months Lord Mar continued to maintain such a demeanour as might
blind those of the opposite party to his real intentions. It seems,
indeed, certain that at first he hoped to ensure a continuance in office
by exerting his influence in Scotland to procure the good conduct of the
clans: he was successful in obtaining even from some of those Highland
chieftains who were afterwards the most deeply implicated in the
Rebellion, an address declaring that they were "ready to concur with his
Lordship in faithfully serving King George." "Your Lordship," states
that memorial, "has an estate and interest in the Highlands, and is so
well known to bear good will to your neighbours, that in order to
prevent any ill impression which malicious and designing people may at
this juncture labour to give of us, we must beg leave to address your
Lordship, and entreat you to assure the Government, in our names, and in
that of the rest of our clans, who, by distance of the place, could not
be present at the signing of our letter, of our loyalty to his sacred
Majesty, King George."[64] This address was signed by Maclean of that
Ilk, Macdonald of Glengary, Mackenzie of Fraserdale, Cameron of Lochiel,
and by several other chiefs of clans, who afterwards fought under the
banners of the Earl of Mar. It furnishes a proof of the great influence
which the Earl possessed in his own country, but he had not the courage
to present it to the King. His Majesty, on the contrary, on hearing of
this address was highly offended, believing that it had been drawn up at
St. Germains in order to insult him, and his refusal to receive it was
accompanied by an order to Lord Mar to give up the seals.
The Earl lingered, nevertheless, for some time in London, where he had
now some attractions which to a less ambitious mind might have operated
in favour of prudence. In the preceding year, July, 1714, he had
married, at Acton in Middlesex, the Lady Frances Pierrepoint, the second
daughter of Evelyn, first Duke of Kingston, and the sister of Lady Mary
Wortley. The Countess of Mar was, at the time of her marriage,
thirty-three years of age, being born in 1681. She does not appear to
have been endowed with the rare qualities of her sister's mind; but that
she was attached to her husband, her long exile from England on his
account, sufficiently proves. Her married life was embittered by his
career, and her latter days darkened by the direst of all maladies,
mental aberration.
It is singular that so recently before his final effort, Lord Mar should
have connected himself with a Whig family. The Marquis of Dorchester,
who was created, by George the First, Duke of Kingston, was a member of
the Kit Cat Club, and received early proofs of the good will of the
Hanoverian Sovereign. It is true that Lady Mary Wortley augured ill of
the match between her sister and Lord Mar, detesting as she did the
Jacobite party, and believing that her sister was "drawn in by the
persuasion of an officious female friend," Lord Mar's relation. But
there is no reason to conclude that the Duke of Kingston in any way
objected to a match apparently so dissonant with his political bias.[65]
Whilst Lord Mar remained near the court, the discoveries made by the
Earl of Stair in France, communicated the first surmise of an intended
invasion of England. Several seizures of suspected people warned one who
was deep in the intrigues of St. Germain, not long to delay the open
prosecution of his schemes. The melancholy instance of Mr. Harvey, who
was apprehended while he was hawking at Combe, in Surrey, alarmed the
Jacobite party. Mr. Harvey being shown a paper written in his own hand,
convicting him of guilt, stabbed himself, but not fatally, with a
pruning-knife which he had used in his garden. Upon some hope of his
confessing being hinted, it was answered that his Majesty and the
Council knew more of it than he did. The celebrated John Anstis, the
heraldic writer, was also apprehended, and warrants were issued for the
seizure of other suspected persons.
Notwithstanding his strong family interest, the Earl of Mar could
scarcely consider himself secure under the present state both of the
country and the metropolis. The events of the last year had succeeded
each other with an appalling rapidity. The flight of Bolingbroke had
scarcely ceased to be the theme of comment, before the general elections
excited all the ill blood and fanaticism which such struggles at any
critical era of our history have always produced. Riots, which have been
hastily touched upon in the histories of the period, but which the
minute descriptions of memoirs of that period show to have been attended
with an unusual display of violence and brutality on both sides, broke
out upon every anniversary which could recall the Stuarts to
recollection. On St. George's day, in compliment to the Chevalier, who,
according to an observer of those eventful days, "had assumed the name
of that far-famed Cappadocian Knight, though every one knew he has
nothing of the valour, courage, and other bright qualities of the
saint," a tumult was raised in London, and among other outrages,
passengers through the streets of the City were beaten if they would not
cry "God bless the late Queen and the High Church!" Sacheverel and
Bolingbroke were pledged in bumpers by a mob, who burnt, at the same
time, King William in effigy.[66] A similar contagion spread throughout
the country; Oxford took the lead in acts of destruction; her streets
were filled with parties of Whigs and Tories, both of them infuriated,
until their mad rage vented itself in acts of murder, under the
pretence, on the one hand, of a dread of popery, on the other, on a
similar plea of religious zeal. A Presbyterian meetinghouse was pulled
down, and cries of "An Ormond!" "A Bolingbroke!" "Down with the
Roundheads!" "No Hanover!" "A new Restoration!" accompanied the
conflagration. On the same day similar exclamations were again heard in
the streets of London; and all windows not illuminated were broken to
pieces. The tenth of June, the anniversary of the Chevalier's birthday,
was the signal for a still more decisive manifestation. On that day
three Scottish magistrates went boldly to the Cross at Dundee, and there
drank the Pretender's health, by the name of King James the Eighth, for
which they were immediately apprehended and tried.
The impeachment of Lord Oxford still further exasperated the country,
which rang with the cry, "No George, but a Stuart." The peaceable
accession of the first monarch of the Brunswick line has been greatly
insisted upon by historians; but that stillness was ominous; it was the
stillness of the air before a storm; and was only indicative of
irresolution, not of a diminished dislike to the sway of a foreigner.
It is supposed that an intercepted letter which the Duke de Berwick, the
half-brother of the Chevalier, addressed to a person of distinction in
England, first gave the intelligence of an intended invasion.[67] The
burden of that letter was to encourage the riots and tumults, and to
keep up the spirits of the people with a promise of prompt assistance.
The impeachment of Viscount Bolingbroke and of the Duke of Ormond
followed shortly afterwards; and although these noblemen provided for
their own safety by flight, they were degraded as outlaws, and in the
order in Council were styled, according to the usual form of law, "James
Butler, yeoman," and "Henry Bolingbroke, labourer," and the arms of
Ormond were taken from Windsor Chapel, and torn in pieces by the Earl
Marshal.
The English fleet, under the command of Sir George Byng, was stationed
in the Downs, in case of a surprise. Portsmouth was put in a state of
defence; and, during the month of July, the inhabitants of London beheld
once more a sight such as had never been witnessed by its citizens since
the days of the Great Rebellion. In Hyde Park the troops of the
household were encamped, according to the arrangements of General
Cadogan, who had marked out a camp. The forces were commanded by the
Duke of Argyle. In Westminster the Earl of Clare reviewed the militia,
and the trained bands were directed to be in readiness for orders. At
the same time fourteen colonels of the Guards, and other inferior
officers were cashiered by the King's orders, on suspicion of being in
James Stuart's interest; so deep a root had this cause, which many have
pretended to treat as a visionary scheme of self-interest, taken in the
affections even of the British army.
A proclamation ordering all Papists and reputed Papists to depart from
the cities of London and Westminster, was the next act of the
Government. All persons of the Roman Catholic persuasion were to be
disarmed and their horses sold; a declaration against transubstantiation
was to be administered to them, and the oath of abjuration to
non-jurors.[68] After such mandates, it seems idle to talk of the
tyranny of Henry the Eighth.
There is no doubt but that the greatest alarm and consternation reigned
at St. James's. The stocks fell, but owing to the vigilance of the
Ministry, information was obtained of the whole scheme of the invasion,
in a manner which to this day has never been satisfactorily explained.
The Earl of Mar must have trembled, as he still lingered in the
metropolis. It is probable that he waited there in order to receive
those contributions from abroad which were necessary to carry on his
plans. He was provided at last with no less a sum than a hundred
thousand pounds; and also furnished with a commission dated the seventh
of September, 1715 appointing him Lieutenant General and Commander in
Chief of the forces raised for the Chevalier in Scotland.[69] Large sums
were already collected from Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and France, to
the amount, it has been stated, of twelve millions. It has been well
remarked by Sir Walter Scott, in his notes on the Master of Sinclair's
MS., that "when the Stuarts had the means, they wanted a leader (as in
1715); when (as in 1745) they had a leader, they wanted the means."
With the eye of suspicion fixed upon him, his plans matured, his friends
in the north prepared, the Earl of Mar had the hardihood, under such
circumstances, to appear at the court of King George. A few weeks before
the Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended; but the Earl trusted either to
good fortune, or to his own well-known arts of insinuation. He braved
all possibility of detection, and determined to carry on the game of
deep dissimulation to the last moment.
On the first of August, 1715, the Earl of Mar attended the levee of King
George. One can easily suppose how cold, if not disdainful, must have
been his reception; but it is not easy to divine with what secret
emotions, the subject on the eve of an insurrection could have offered
his obeisance to the Monarch. Grave in expression, with a heavy German
countenance, hating all show, and husbanding his time, so as to avoid
all needless conversation; without an idea of cultivating the fine arts,
of encouraging literature, or of even learning to speak English, George
the First must have presented to his English subjects the reverse of all
that is attractive. A decided respectability of character might have
redeemed the ungainly picture; but, although esteemed a man of honour,
and evincing liberal and even benevolent tendencies, the Monarch
displayed not only an unblushing and scandalous profligacy, but a love
for coarse and unworthy society. His court is said to have been modelled
upon that of Louis the Fifteenth; but it was modelled upon the grossest
and lowest principles only, and had none of the elegance even of that
wretched King's depraved circles; and public decency was as much
outraged by the three yachts which were prepared to carry over King
George's mistresses and their suite,[70] when he visited Hanover, as by
the empire of Madame de Pompadour. It must, independent of every other
consideration, have been galling to Englishmen to behold, seated on
their throne, a German, fifty-four years of age, who from that very
circumstance, was little likely ever to boast, like Queen Anne, "of an
English heart." "A hard fate," observes a writer of great impartiality,
"that the enthronement of a stranger should have been the only means to
secure our liberties and laws!"[71]
A week after he had been received at the levee of King George, the Earl
embarked at Gravesend in a collier, attended by two servants, and
accompanied by General Hamilton and Captain Hay. They were all
disguised, and escaping detection, arrived on the third day afterwards
at Newcastle. It has been even said, that in order the better to conceal
his rank, the Earl of Mar wrought for his passage.[72] From Newcastle
Lord Mar proceeded northward in another vessel; and landing at Elie, in
Fifeshire, went first to Crief, where he remained a few days. He then
proceeded to Dupplin, in the county of Perth, the seat of his
brother-in-law, the Earl of Kinnoul, and thence, on the eighteenth of
August, crossing the river Perth, he proceeded to his own Castle of
Kildrummie, in the Braes of Mar. He was accompanied by forty horse.
On the day after the arrival of the Earl at Kildrummie, he despatched
letters to the principal Jacobites, inviting them to attend a grand
hunting-match in Braemar on the twenty-seventh of August. This summons
was couched in this form, for fear of a more explicit declaration being
intercepted, revealing the design; but the great chiefs who were thus
collected together were aware that "hunting" was but the watchword.
A gallant band of high-spirited chieftains answered the call. It is
consolatory to turn to those who, unaffected by the intrigues of a
Court, came heartily, and with a disinterested love, to the cause of
which the Earl of Mar was the unworthy leader.
First in rank, was the Marquis of Huntly, eldest son of George, the
first Duke of Gordon, and of that daring Duchess of Gordon, a daughter
of the house of Howard, who, in 1711, had presented to the Dean and
Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh a silver medal, with the head of the
Chevalier on one side, and on the other the British Islands, with the
word "Reddite." The learned body to whom the Duchess had proposed this
dangerous gift, at first hesitated to receive it: after a debate,
however, among their members, it was agreed that the donation should be
accepted, and a vote was passed to return thanks to the Duchess. The
Advocates then waited in a body upon the Duchess, and expressed their
hopes that her Grace would soon have occasion to present the Faculty
with a second medal on the _Restoration_.[73] The Duke of Gordon,
notwithstanding his having been brought up a Roman Catholic, was neutral
in the troubles of the Rebellion of 1715, but his son took a force of
three thousand men into the field,--the clan siding with the young
Marquis rather than with their chief. The Marquis of Huntly was,
probably for that reason, spared in the subsequent proceedings against
the Jacobites, his participation in their schemes being punished only by
a brief imprisonment.