Thus time passed drearily on until the month of August, during all
which time the prisoner had no communication with the external world.
At length, by an arrangement made between Lord Lovat and Mr Forster,
at the house of the latter, near Stirling, Lady Grange was one night
forcibly brought out, and mounted again as formerly, and carried off
amidst a guard of horsemen. She recognised several of Lovat’s people
in this troop, and found Forster once more in command. They passed
by Stirling Bridge, and thence onward to the Highlands; but she no
longer knew the way they were going. Before daylight they stopped at
a house, where she was lodged during the day, and at night the march
was resumed. Thus they journeyed for several days into the Highlands,
never allowing the unfortunate lady to speak, and taking the most rigid
care to prevent any one from becoming aware of her situation. During
this time she never had off her clothes: one day she slept in a barn,
another in an open enclosure. Regard to delicacy in such a case was
impossible. After a fortnight spent at a house on Lord Lovat’s ground
(probably in Stratherrick, Inverness-shire), the journey was renewed in
the same style as before; only Mr Forster had retired from the party,
and the lady found herself entirely in the hands of Frasers.
They now crossed a loch into Glengarry’s land, where they lodged
several nights in cow-houses or in the open air, making progress all
the time to the westward, where the country becomes extremely wild. At
Lochourn, an arm of the sea on the west coast, the unfortunate lady was
transferred to a small vessel which was in waiting for her. Bitterly
did she weep, and pitifully implore compassion; but the Highlanders
understood not her language; and though they had done so, a departure
from the orders which had been given them was not to be expected from
men of their character. In the vessel, she found that she was in the
custody of one Alexander Macdonald, a tenant of one of the Western
Islands named Heskir, belonging to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat;
and here we have a curious indication of the spirit in which the
Highlanders conducted such transactions. ‘I told him,’ says the lady,
‘that I was stolen at Edinburgh, and brought there by force, and that
it was contrary to the laws what they were doing. He answered that
he would not keep me, or any other, against their will, _except Sir
Alexander Macdonald were in the affair_.’ While they lay in Lochourn,
waiting for a wind, the brother and son of Macdonald of Scothouse came
to see but not to relieve her. Other persons visited the sloop, and
among these one William Tolmy, a tenant of the chief of Macleod, and
who had once been a merchant at Inverness. This was the first person
she had seen who expressed any sympathy with her. He undertook to bear
information of her retreat to her friend and ‘man of business,’ Mr Hope
of Rankeillor, in Edinburgh; but it does not appear that he fulfilled
his promise.
Lady Grange remained in Macdonald’s charge at Heskir nearly two
years—during the first year without once seeing bread, and with no
supply of clothing; obliged, in fact, to live in the same miserable
way as the rest of the family; afterwards some little indulgence was
shown to her. This island was of desolate aspect, and had no inhabitant
besides Macdonald and his wife. The wretchedness of such a situation
for a lady who had been all her life accustomed to the refined society
of a capital may of course be imagined. Macdonald would never allow
her to write to any one; but he went to his landlord, Sir Alexander,
to plead for the indulgences she required. On one of these occasions,
Sir Alexander expressed his regret at having been concerned in such
an affair, and wished he were quit of it. The wonder is how Erskine
should have induced all these men to interest themselves in the
‘sequestration’ of his wife. One thing is here remarkable: they were
all of them friends of the Stuart family, as was Macleod of Macleod,
into whose hands the lady subsequently fell. It therefore becomes
probable that Erskine had at least convinced them that her seclusion
from the world was necessary in some way for the preservation of
political secrets important to them.
In June 1734 a sloop came to Heskir to take away the lady; it was
commanded by a Macleod, and in it she was conveyed to the remotest spot
of ground connected with the British Islands—namely, the isle of St
Kilda, the property of the chief of Macleod, and remarkable for the
simple character of the poor peasantry who occupy it. There cannot, of
course, be a doubt that those who had an interest in the seclusion of
Lady Grange regarded this as a more eligible place than Heskir, in as
far as it was more out of the way, and promised better for her complete
and permanent confinement. In some respects it was an advantageous
change for the lady: the place was not uninhabited, as Heskir very
nearly was; and her domestic accommodation was better. In St Kilda, she
was placed in a house or cottage of two small apartments, tolerably
well furnished, with a girl to wait upon her, and provided with a
sufficiency of good food and clothing. Of educated persons the island
contained not one, except for a short time a Highland Presbyterian
clergyman, named Roderick Maclennan. There was hardly even a person
capable of speaking or understanding the English language within reach.
No books, no intelligence from the world in which she had once lived.
Only once a year did a steward come to collect the rent paid in kind
by the poor people; and by him was the lady regularly furnished with a
store of such articles, foreign to the place, as she needed—usually
a stone of sugar, a pound of tea, six pecks of wheat, and an anker of
spirits.[184] Thus she had no lack of the common necessaries of life;
she only wanted society and freedom. In this way she spent seven dreary
years in St Kilda. How she contrived to pass her time is not known.
We learn, however, some particulars of her history during this period
from the testimony of those who had a charge over her. If this is to be
believed, she made incessant efforts, though without effect, to bribe
the islanders to assist in liberating her. Once a stray vessel sent a
boat ashore for water; she no sooner heard of it than she despatched
the minister’s wife to apprise the sailors of her situation, and
entreat them to rescue her; but Mrs Maclennan did not reach the spot
till after they had departed. She was kind to the peasantry, giving
them from her own stores, and sometimes had the women to come and
dance before her; but her temper and habits were not such as to gain
their esteem. Often she drank too much; and whenever any one near her
committed the slightest mistake, she would fly into a furious passion,
and even resort to violence. Once she was detected in an attempt,
during the night, to obtain a pistol from above the steward’s bed,
in the room next to her own. On his awaking and seeing her, she ran
off to her own bed. One is disposed, of course, to make all possible
allowances for a person in her wretched circumstances; yet there can be
little doubt, from the evidence before us, that it was a natural and
habitual violence of temper which displayed itself during her residence
in St Kilda.
Meanwhile it was known in Edinburgh that Lady Grange had been forcibly
carried away and placed in seclusion by orders of her husband; but
her whereabouts was a mystery to all besides a few who were concerned
to keep it secret. During the years which had elapsed since her
abduction, Mr Erskine had given up his seat on the bench, and entered
into political life as a friend of the Prince of Wales and opponent
of Sir Robert Walpole. The world had wondered at the events of his
domestic life, and several persons denounced the singular means he
had adopted for obtaining domestic peace. But, in the main, he stood
as well with society as he had ever done. At length, in the winter of
1740-41, a communication from Lady Grange for the first time reached
her friends. It was brought by the minister Maclennan and his wife, who
had left the island in discontent, after quarrelling with Macleod’s
steward. The idea of a lady by birth and education being immured for a
series of years in an outlandish place where only the most illiterate
peasantry resided, and this by the command of a husband who could only
complain of her irritable temper, struck forcibly upon public feeling,
and particularly upon the mind of Lady Grange’s legal agent, Mr Hope
of Rankeillor, who had all along felt a keen interest in her fate. Of
Mr Hope it may be remarked that he was also a zealous Jacobite; yet,
though all the persons engaged in the lady’s abduction were of that
party, he hesitated not to take active measures on the contrary side.
He immediately applied to the Lord Justice-clerk (supreme criminal
judge) for a warrant to search for and liberate Lady Grange. This
application was opposed by the friends of Mr Erskine, and eventually
it was defeated; yet he was not on that account deterred from hiring
a vessel, and sending it with armed men to secure the freedom of the
lady—a step which, as it was illegal and dangerous, obviously implied
no small risk on his own part. This ship proceeded no farther than the
harbour called the Horse-shoe, in Lorn (opposite to the modern town of
Oban), where the master quarrelled with and set on shore Mrs Maclennan,
his guide. Apparently the voyage was not prosecuted in consequence of
intelligence being received that the lady had been removed to another
place, where she was kept in more humane circumstances. If so, its
object might be considered as in part at least, though indirectly,
accomplished.
I have seen a warrant, signed in the holograph of Normand Macleod—the
same insular chief who, a few years after, lost public respect in
consequence of his desertion of the Jacobite cause, and showing an
active hostility to Prince Charles when in hiding. The document is
dated at Dunvegan, February 17, 1741, and proceeds upon a rumour which
has reached the writer that a certain gentlewoman, called Lady Grange,
was carried to his isle of St Kilda in 1734, and has ever since been
confined there under cruel circumstances. Regarding this as a scandal
which he is bound to inquire into (as if it could have hitherto been a
secret to him), he orders his baron-bailie of Harris, Donald Macleod of
Bernera (this was a gallant fellow who went out in the ’Forty-five), to
proceed to that island and make the necessary investigations. I have
also seen the original precognition taken by honest Donald six days
thereafter, when the various persons who had been about Lady Grange
gave evidence respecting her. The general bearing of this testimony,
besides establishing the fact of her confinement as a prisoner, is to
the effect that she was treated well in all other respects, having
a house forty feet long, with an inner room and a chimney to it, a
curtained bed, arm-chair, table, and other articles; ample store of
good provisions, including spirits; and plenty of good clothes; but
that she was addicted to liquor, and liable to dreadful outbreaks of
anger. Evidence was at the same time taken regarding the character of
the Maclennans, upon whose reports Mr Hope had proceeded. It was Mr
Erskine’s interest to establish that they were worthless persons, and
to this effect strong testimony was given by several of the islanders,
though it would be difficult to say with what degree of verity. The
whole purpose of these precognitions was to meet the clamours raised by
Mr Hope as to the barbarities to which Lady Grange had been subjected.
They had the effect of stopping for a time the legal proceedings
threatened by that gentleman; but he afterwards raised an action in the
Court of Session for payment of the arrears of aliment or allowance due
to the lady, amounting to £1150, and obtained decreet or judgment in
the year 1743 against the defender in absence, though he did not choose
to put it in force.
The unfortunate cause of all these proceedings ceased to be a trouble
to any one in May 1745. Erskine, writing from Westminster, June 1, in
answer to an intimation of her death, says: ‘I most heartily thank
you, my dear friend, for the timely notice you gave me of the death
of _that person_. It would be a ridiculous untruth to pretend grief
for it; but as it brings to my mind a train of various things for many
years back, it gives me concern. Her retaining wit and facetiousness to
the last surprises me. These qualities none found in her, no more than
common-sense or good-nature, before she went to these parts; and of the
reverse of all which, if she had not been irrecoverably possest, in
an extraordinary and insufferable degree, after many years’ fruitless
endeavours to reclaim her, she had never seen these parts. I long for
the particulars of her death, which, you are pleased to tell me, I am
to have by next post.’
Mr Hope’s wife and daughters being left as heirs of Lady Grange, an
action was raised in their name for the £1150 formerly awarded, and
for three years additional of her annuity; and for this compound sum
decreet was obtained, which was followed by steps for forcing payment.
The Hopes were aware, however, of the dubious character of this claim,
seeing that Mr Erskine, from whatever causes, had substituted an actual
subsistence since 1732. They accordingly intimated that they aimed
at no personal benefit from Lady Grange’s bequest; and the affair
terminated in Mr Erskine reimbursing Mr Hope for all the expenses he
had incurred on behalf of the lady, including that for the sloop which
he had hired to proceed to St Kilda for her rescue.
It is humbly thought that this story casts a curious and faithful
light upon the age of our grandfathers, showing things in a kind of
transition from the sanguinary violence of an earlier age to the
humanity of the present times. Erskine, not to speak of his office of a
judge in Scotland, moved in English society of the highest character.
He must have been the friend of Lyttelton, Pope, Thomson, and other
ornaments of Frederick’s court; and as the brother-in-law of the
Countess of Mar, who was sister of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he would
figure in the brilliant circle which surrounded that star of the age of
the second George. Yet he does not appear to have ever felt a moment’s
compunction at leaving the mother of his children to pine and fret
herself to death in a half-savage wilderness—
‘Placed far amidst the melancholy main;’
for in a paper which expresses his feelings on the subject pretty
freely, he justifies the ‘sequestration’ as a step required by prudence
and decency; and in showing that the gross necessaries of life were
afforded to his wife, seems to have considered that his whole duty
towards her was discharged. Such an insensibility could not be peculiar
to one man: it indicates the temper of a class and of an age. While
congratulating ourselves on the improved humanity of our own times,
we may glance with satisfaction to the means which it places in our
power for the proper treatment of patients like Mrs Erskine. Such a
woman would now be regarded as the unfortunate victim of disease, and
instead of being forcibly carried off under cloud of night by a band
of Highlanders, and committed to confinement on the outskirts of the
world, she would, with proper precautions, be remitted to an asylum,
where, by gentle and rational management, it might be hoped that she
would be restored to mental health, or, at the worst, enabled to
spend the remainder of her days in the utmost comfort which her state
admitted of.
* * * * *
[1868.—About the middle of Cant’s Close,[185] on the west side,
there exists a remarkable edifice, different from all others in the
neighbourhood. It is two stories in height, the second story being
reached by an outside stone stair within a small courtyard, which had
originally been shut in by a gate. The stone pillars of the gateway are
decorated with balls at the top, as was the fashion of entrances to the
grounds of a country mansion. The building is picturesque in character,
in the style of the sixteenth century in Scotland. As it resembles a
neat, old-fashioned country-house, one wonders to find it jammed up
amidst tall edifices in this confined alley. Ascending the stair, we
find that the interior consists of three or four apartments, with
handsome panelled walls and elaborately carved stucco ceilings. The
principal room has a double window on the west to Dickson’s Close.[186]
[Illustration: Old Mansion, Cant’s Close.]
Daniel Wilson, in his _Memorials of Edinburgh_, speaks of this building
in reference to Dickson’s Close. He says: ‘A little lower down the
close on the same side, an old and curious stone tenement bears on
its lower crow-step the Haliburton arms, impaled with another coat,
on one shield. It is a singularly antique and time-worn edifice,
evidently of considerable antiquity. A curious double window projects
on a corbelled base into the close, while the whole stone-work is so
much decayed as greatly to add to its picturesque character. In the
earliest deed which exists, bearing date 1582, its first proprietor,
Master James Halyburton—a title then of some meaning—is spoken of in
indefinite terms as _umq^{le}_, or deceased; so that it is a building
probably of the early part of the sixteenth century.’ It is known that
the adjoining properties on the north once pertained to the collegiate
church of Crichton; while those on the east, in Strichen’s Close,
comprehended the town residence of the Abbot of Melrose, 1526.
The adjoining woodcut [p. 221] will give some idea of this strange
old mansion in Cant’s Close, with its gateway and flight of steps. In
looking over the titles, we find that the tenement was conveyed in
1735 from Robert Geddes of Scotstoun, Peeblesshire, to George Wight, a
burgess of Edinburgh, since which period it has gradually deteriorated;
every apartment, from the ground to the garret, is now a dwelling for
a separate family; and the whole surroundings are most wretched. The
edifice formed one of the properties removed under the Improvement Act
of 1867.]