James Francis Edward, King James III. and VIII. of the Jacobites,
the Old Pretender of his enemies, and the Chevalier de St. George of
historians, was born at St. James’s Palace on 10th June 1688. On the
landing of William of Orange and the outbreak of the Revolution, the
young Prince and his mother were sent to France, arriving at Calais
on 11th December (O.S.);[1] the King left England a fortnight later
and landed at Ambleteuse on Christmas Day (O.S.). The château of St.
Germain-en-Laye near Paris was assigned as a residence for the royal
exiles, and this château was the home of the Chevalier de St. George
for twenty-four years.
James II. and VII. died on 5th September 1701 (16th Sept. N.S.), and
immediately on his death Louis XIV. acknowledged his son as king, and
promised to further his interests to the best of his power.
[Sidenote: The Scots Plot, 1703.[2]]
The first opportunity of putting the altruistic intention of the King
of France into operation occurred within a year of King James’s death,
and the evil genius of the project was Simon Fraser, the notorious Lord
Lovat.
Lovat, whose scandalous conduct had shocked the people of Scotland,
was outlawed by the courts for a criminal outrage, and fled to France
in the summer of 1702. There, in spite of the character he bore, he so
ingratiated himself with the papal nuncio that he obtained a private
audience with Louis XIV., an honour unprecedented for a foreigner. To
him he unfolded a scheme for a Stuart Restoration. He had, he said,
before leaving Scotland visited the principal chiefs of the Highland
clans and a great number of the lords of the Lowlands along with the
Earl Marischal. They were ready to take up arms and hazard their lives
and fortunes for the Stuart cause, and had given him a commission to
represent them in France. The foundation of his scheme was to rely
on the Highlanders. They were the only inhabitants of Great Britain
who had retained the habit of the use of arms, and they were ready to
act at once. Lord Middleton and the Lowland Jacobites sneered at them
as mere banditti and cattle-stealers, but Lovat knew that they, with
an instinctive love of fighting, were capable of being formed into
efficient and very hardy soldiers. He proposed that the King of France
should furnish a force of 5000 French soldiers, 100,000 crowns in
money, and arms and equipment for 20,000 men. The main body of troops
would land at Dundee where it would be near the central Highlands,
and a detachment would be sent to western Invernessshire, with the
object of capturing Fort William, which overawed the western clans.
The design was an excellent one, and was approved by King Louis. But
before putting it into execution the ministry sent Lovat back to obtain
further information, and with him they sent John Murray, a naturalised
Frenchman, brother of the laird of Abercairney, who was to check
Lovat’s reports.
It is characteristic of the state of the exiled Court, that it was rent
with discord, and that Lord Middleton, Jacobite Secretary of State, who
hated Lovat, privately sent emissaries of his own to spy on him and to
blight his prospects.
Lovat duly arrived in Scotland, but the history of his mission is
pitiful and humiliating. He betrayed the project to the Duke of
Queensberry, Queen Anne’s High Commissioner to the Scots Estates, and,
by falsely suggesting the treason of Queensberry’s political enemies,
the Dukes of Hamilton and Atholl, befooled that functionary into
granting him a safe conduct to protect him from arrest for outlawry.
When Lovat returned to France he was arrested under a _lettre de
cachet_ and confined a close prisoner for many years, some records say
in the Bastille, but Lovat himself says at Angoulême.
The whole affair had little effect in Scotland beyond compassing the
disgrace of Queensberry and his temporary loss of office, but it had
lasting influence in France and reacted on all future projects of
Jacobite action. For, first, it instilled into the French king and his
ministers the suspicious feeling that Jacobite adventurers were not
entirely to be trusted. And second, Lovat’s account of the fighting
quality of the Highlanders and of their devotion to the Stuarts so
impressed itself on both the French Court and that of St. Germains that
they felt that in the Highlands of Scotland they would ever find a
_point d’appui_ for a rising. Lovat’s report, in fact, identified the
Highlanders with Jacobitism.
[Sidenote: The French Descent, 1708.[3]]
Scotland was the scene of the next design for a restoration, and the
principal agent of the French Court was a certain Colonel Nathaniel
Hooke. Hooke had been sent to Scotland in the year 1705, to see if
that country was in such a state as to afford a reasonable prospect of
an expedition in favour of the exiled Stuart. In the year 1707, while
the Union was being forced upon an unwilling population, and discontent
was rife throughout the country on account of that unpopular measure,
Hooke was again sent, and although not entirely satisfied with all
he saw and heard, he returned with favourable accounts on the whole.
Among other documents he brought with him was a Memorial of certain
Scottish lords to the Chevalier, in which, among other things, it
was stated that if James, under the protection of His Most Christian
Majesty (Louis XIV.), would come and put himself at the head of his
people in Scotland, ‘the whole nation will rise upon the arrival of its
King, who will become master of Scotland without any opposition, and
the present Government will be intirely abolished.’ It was some months
before the French king gave any answer. St. Simon in his _Memoires_
says that Louis XIV. was so disheartened by his previous failure that
he would not at first listen to the suggestion of a French expedition;
and it was only through the efforts of Madame de Maintenon that he
was persuaded to sanction an invading force. Even then much time was
wasted, and it was not until the spring of 1708 that a squadron was
equipped under the command of the Admiral de Forbin, and a small army
under the Comte de Gasse. Even when ready to sail, the constant and
proverbial ill-luck of the Stuarts overtook the poor Chevalier. He
caught measles, which still further delayed the expedition. By this
time, naturally, the British Government had learned all about the
scheme, and made their naval preparations accordingly. At last, on
the 17th March, James, hardly convalescent, wrapped in blankets, was
carried on board the flagship at Dunkirk. The squadron was to have
proceeded to the Firth of Forth and to have landed the Chevalier at
Leith, where his partisans were prepared to proclaim him king at
Edinburgh. Possibly because of bad seamanship, possibly because of
treachery,[4] the French admiral missed the Firth of Forth, and found
himself off Montrose. He turned, and could proceed no nearer Edinburgh
than the Isle of May, off which he anchored. There the British Fleet,
which had followed him in close pursuit, discovered him. The admiral
weighed anchor, and fought a naval action in which he lost one of his
ships. He then retreated towards the north of Scotland. James implored
to be set ashore even if it were only in a small boat by himself, but
his solicitations were in vain. The admiral positively refused, saying
that he had received instructions from the French king to be as careful
of the Chevalier as if he were Louis himself; so Forbin carried him
back to Dunkirk, where the heart-broken exile was landed on the 6th of
April, having been absent only twenty days, and having lost one of the
most likely opportunities that ever occurred for his restoration to his
ancient kingdom of Scotland, if not to England.
[Sidenote: Expulsion from France, 1713.]
After his return to France the Chevalier joined the French army. In
1708 he fought at Oudenarde and Lille, and the following year at
Malplaquet. His gallant conduct won golden opinions from Marlborough
and his troops. The British soldiers drank his health. James visited
their outposts and they cheered him. What Thackeray puts into the
mouth of a British officer well describes the situation: ‘If that
young gentleman would but ride over to our camp, instead of Villars’s,
toss up his hat and say, “Here am I, the King, who’ll follow me?” by
the Lord the whole army would rise and carry him home again, and beat
Villars, and take Paris by the way.’[5] But James stayed with the
French, and the war ended with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This
treaty gave the crown of Spain to the Bourbons, Gibraltar and the
slave-trade to the British, and pronounced the expulsion of the Stuarts
from France. A new asylum was found for the Chevalier in Lorraine,
which, though an independent duchy, was largely under the domination of
France. The Chevalier’s residence was fixed at Bar-le-Duc, and there he
went in February 1713.
In August 1714, on the death of Queen Anne, James made a trip to Paris
to be ready for action should his presence be required, but the French
Government sent him back to Bar-le-Duc. The death of Louis XIV. on 1st
September 1715 (N.S.) was the next blow the Jacobite cause sustained.
The government of France passed to the Duke of Orleans as Regent, and
his policy was friendship with the British Government.
[Sidenote: The Fifteen.[6]]
Then came the Rising of 1715, which began at Braemar on 6th September,
followed by the English rising in Northumberland under Forster. The
movement in England was crushed at Preston on 13th November, the same
day that the indecisive battle was fought at Sheriffmuir in Perthshire.
Lord Mar made Perth his headquarters, and invited James to join the
Scottish army. The Chevalier, who had moved to Paris in October, in
strict secrecy, and in disguise, being watched by both French and
English agents, managed, after many remarkable adventures, checks,
and disappointments, to get away from Dunkirk on 16th December (27th
N.S.), and to reach Peterhead on the 22nd. Thence he went to Perth,
where he established his Court at the ancient royal palace of Scone.
He was proclaimed king and exercised regal functions; some authorities
say that he was crowned.[7] But James had come too late; mutual
disappointment was the result. He had been assured that the whole
kingdom was on his side, but he found only dissension and discontent.
His constant melancholy depressed his followers. No decisive action
was taken; the project had failed even before he arrived, and Lord
Mar persuaded him that he would serve the cause best by retiring and
waiting for a happier occasion.
James was forced to leave Scotland on 5th February 1716 (O.S.). He
landed at Gravelines on 10th February (21st N.S.), went secretly to
Paris, and concealed himself for a week in the Bois de Boulogne. Thence
he went to Lorraine, where he was sorrowfully told by the Duke that
he could no longer give him shelter. The power of Britain was great;
no country that gave the exile a home could avoid a quarrel with that
nation. The Pope seemed to be the only possible host, and James made
his way to Avignon, then papal territory. But even Avignon was too near
home for the British Government, which, through the French regent,
brought pressure to bear on the Pope; the Chevalier was forced to
leave Avignon in February 1717, and to cross the Alps into Italy. Here
for some months he wandered without a home, but in July 1717 he settled
at Urbino in the Papal States.
[Sidenote: Marriage to Clementina, 1719.[8]]
For a time the cares of the Jacobite Court were centred on finding a
wife of royal rank for the throneless king. After various unsuccessful
proposals, the Chevalier became engaged to the Princess Clementina
Sobieska, whose grandfather had been the warrior King of Poland. The
Sobieski home was then at Ollau in Silesia; and in October 1718 James
sent Colonel Hay to fetch his bride. The British Government determined
to stop the marriage if possible. Pressure was put on the Emperor, who
had Clementina arrested at Innsbruck while on her journey to Italy.
Here the Princess remained a prisoner until the following April. The
story of her rescue by Colonel Wogan is one of the romances of history,
and has recently been the theme of an historical romance.[9] Wogan
brought the princess safely to Bologna, and there she was married by
proxy to James on 9th May 1719. While Wogan was executing his bridal
mission, the Chevalier, who had almost given up hope of the marriage,
had been called away to take his part in a project which seemed to
augur a chance of success.
[Sidenote: The Swedish Plot, 1716-17.]
On the collapse of the rising of 1715, the Jacobite Court, despairing
of assistance from France or Spain, had turned for aid to Charles
XII. of Sweden. Charles had conceived a violent hatred for George I.,
who had acquired by purchase from the King of Denmark two secular
bishoprics which had been taken from Sweden by the Danes, and which
had been incorporated in the electorate of Hanover. As early as 1715
Charles listened to a project of the Duke of Berwick, by which he
should send a force of Swedish troops to Scotland, but he was then too
busy fighting the Danes to engage in the scheme. In 1717 the Jacobites
renewed negotiations with Sweden, and a plan was formed for a general
rising in England simultaneously with an invasion of Scotland by
the Swedish king in person at the head of an army of 12,000 Swedes.
The plot came to the knowledge of the British Government in time;
the Swedish ambassador in London was arrested; the project came to
nothing; but in the following year a more promising scheme for a Stuart
restoration was formed.
[Sidenote: The Spanish Expedition of 1719.[10]]
Spain, smarting under the loss of her Italian possessions, ceded to
Austria by the Peace of Utrecht, had declared war on the Emperor and
had actually landed an army in Sicily. In compliance with treaty
obligations, Great Britain had to defend the Emperor, and in August
1718 a British squadron engaged and destroyed a Spanish fleet off Cape
Passaro. Alberoni, the Spanish minister, was furious and determined on
reprisals. He entered into an alliance with the Swedish king; a plan
for invading Great Britain was formed, and negotiations were opened
with the Jacobite Court. The death of Charles XII. in December detached
Sweden from the scheme, but Alberoni went on with his preparations.
A great armada under Ormonde was to carry a Spanish army to the west
of England, and a subsidiary expedition under the Earl Marischal was
to land in north-western Scotland. The Chevalier was summoned to
Spain to join the expedition, or failing that to follow it to England.
The fleet sailed from Cadiz in March 1719. James had left Rome in
February, travelling by sea to Catalonia and thence to Madrid and on to
Corunna. He reached the latter port on 17th April, only to learn of the
dispersal of the Spanish fleet by a storm and the complete collapse of
the adventure.
The auxiliary Scottish expedition, unconscious of the disaster, landed
in the north-western Highlands; but after some vicissitudes and much
dissension the attempt ended with the Battle of Glenshiel on the 10th
of June--the Chevalier’s thirty-first birthday--and the surrender next
day of the remainder of the Spanish troops, originally three hundred
and seven in number.
James returned from Corunna to Madrid, where he lingered for some time,
a not very welcome guest. There he learned of the rescue of Princess
Clementina and of his marriage by proxy. Returning to Italy in August,
he met Clementina at Montefiascone, where he was married in person on
September 1st, 1719.
From this time forward until the end of his life, forty-seven years
later, the Chevalier’s home was in Rome, where the Pope assigned him
the Muti Palace as a residence, along with a country house at Albano,
some thirteen miles from Rome.
[Sidenote: Birth of Charles Edward, 1720.]
In 1720, on December 20th by British reckoning (Dec. 31st by the
Gregorian calendar), Prince Charles Edward was born at Rome, and with
the birth of an heir to the royal line, Jacobite hopes and activities
revived.
[Sidenote: The Atterbury Plot, 1721-22.[11]]
At this time the Jacobite interests in England were in charge of a
Council of five members, frequently termed ‘the Junta.’ The members
of this Council were the Earl of Arran, brother of Ormonde, the Earl
of Orrery, Lord North, Lord Gower, and Francis Atterbury, Bishop of
Rochester. Of these Atterbury was by far the ablest, and in England
was the life and soul of Jacobite contriving. A great scheme was
devised, which is known in history as the Atterbury Plot. The details
are somewhat obscure, and the unravelling of them is complicated by
the existence of another scheme contemporaneous with Atterbury’s,
apparently at first independent, but which became merged in the larger
design. The author of this plot was Christopher Layer, a barrister of
the Middle Temple. Generally, his scheme was secretly to enlist broken
and discharged soldiers. They were to seize the Tower, the Bank, and
the Mint, and to secure the Hanoverian royal family, who were to be
deported. The larger scheme of the Junta was to obtain a foreign force
of 5000 troops to be landed in England under the Duke of Ormonde,
and risings were to be organised in different parts of the kingdom.
The signal for the outbreak was to be the departure of George I. for
Hanover, which was expected to take place in the summer.
Layer, who does not seem to have been acting with Atterbury and the
Junta until later, was in Rome in the early months of 1721, and there
he unfolded his plan to the Jacobite Court. After he left, a plan of
campaign was arranged which, however, seems to have been modified
afterwards. The original intention was to begin the movement in
Scotland, whither Lord Mar and General Dillon[12] were to proceed;
and to accentuate the latter’s position as commander in Scotland he
was created an earl in the Scottish peerage, although already an Irish
(Jacobite) viscount. Lord Lansdowne was to command in Cornwall, Lord
Strafford in the north, Lord North in London and Westminster, and
Lord Arran was to go to Ireland. The Chevalier was to leave Rome when
Mar and Dillon left Paris, and to make his way to Rotterdam _via_
Frankfort, and there await events before deciding where it would be
best to land. Things seemed to be prospering, but the English Jacobites
did not sufficiently respond to the call for financial support. James,
deeply disappointed, appealed to the Pope for help, only to be more
bitterly mortified by his refusal. The Pope, in so many words, said
that if the English Jacobites wanted a revolution they must pay for
it themselves. The original orders for invasion were cancelled in
April; but negotiations seem to have been continued with Spain through
Cardinal Acquiviva, Spanish envoy at Rome, ever James’s friend. A
revised plan of action was prepared. Wogan, who had been sent to Spain,
had succeeded in procuring assistance from that country; ships had been
prepared to carry a force of 5000 or 6000 men to Porto Longone, in the
Isle of Elba, where James was to embark. In July, James was on the
outlook for a Spanish fleet under Admiral Sorano.[13] But it was too
late. The plot had been discovered, the demand for troops reaching the
knowledge of the French ministers, who informed the British ambassador.
Spain was compelled to prevent the embarkation, and King George did not
go to Hanover that summer.
Mar had used the post office in spite of a warning by Atterbury not
to do so; his correspondence was intercepted, and a letter was found
which incriminated Atterbury and his associates. Government was not
hasty in acting, and the first conspirator to be arrested was George
Kelly, a Non-juring Irish clergyman who acted as Atterbury’s secretary.
He was seized at his lodgings on May 21st; and he very nearly saved
the situation. His papers and sword being placed in a window by his
captors, Kelly managed during a moment of negligence to recover them.
Holding his sword in his right hand he threatened to run through
the first man who approached him, while all the time he held the
incriminating papers to a candle with his left hand, and not till they
were burned did he surrender. It was not until the end of August that
Bishop Atterbury was taken into custody and committed to the Tower.
His trial did not begin until the spring of the following year. Layer,
who was betrayed by a mistress, was arrested in September and tried
in November. He was condemned to death, but was respited from time to
time in the hope that he would give evidence to incriminate Atterbury
and his associates. Layer refused to reveal anything and was executed
at Tyburn in May 1723, at the very time when the bishop’s trial was
taking place in the House of Lords. Atterbury was found guilty: he
was sentenced to be deprived of all his ecclesiastical benefices
and functions, to be incapacitated from holding any civil offices,
and to be banished from the kingdom for ever. His associates of the
Junta escaped with comparatively light penalties. Kelly, sentenced to
imprisonment during the King’s pleasure, was kept in the Tower until
1736, when he managed to escape, to reappear later in the drama.
Atterbury went abroad and entered the Chevalier’s service. He died in
exile at Paris in 1732, but he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
The failure of the schemes of Atterbury had a remarkable effect on
the unfortunate Chevalier. Apparently weary of failure and longing
for action, he wrote to the Pope on August 29th, 1722, offering to
serve in a crusade against the Turks; but he was told it would not
do, he must stick to his own task. To it he accordingly returned; and
implicitly believing that his people were longing for his restoration,
he issued a manifesto dated September 22nd, proposing ‘that if George
I. will quietly deliver to him the throne of his fathers he will in
return bestow upon George the title of king in his native dominions and
invite all other states to confirm it.’[14] The manifesto was printed
and circulated in England; it was ordered to be burned by the common
hangman.
It is somewhat remarkable that although the Atterbury Expedition was to
have been begun in Scotland, the records of the period make no mention
of the project, nor do there seem to have been any preparations for a
rising. The only suggestion of secret action being taken that I know
of--and it is no more than a suggestion--is that in 1721, on the same
day that General Dillon, who was to command in Scotland, was created a
Scottish earl, a peerage was given to Sir James Grant of Grant by the
Chevalier de St. George.[15] What the occasion of this honour may have
been has never, so far as I know, been revealed.[16]
[Sidenote: Affairs in Scotland.]
Jacobite affairs in Scotland at that time were administered by a
Lanarkshire laird, George Lockhart of Carnwath. Lockhart had been a
member of the old Scots Estates before the Union of the kingdoms in
1707, and after the Union he sat in the Imperial Parliament until 1715.
In that year he raised a troop of horse for the Jacobite cause, and
after the rising he suffered a long imprisonment, but was eventually
released without trial. From 1718 to 1727 he acted as the Chevalier’s
chief confidential agent in Scotland. His system of Jacobite management
was by a body of trustees, which was organised in 1722, and acted
as a committee of regency for the exiled king. In 1727 Lockhart’s
correspondence fell into the hands of Government and he had to fly the
country. He was permitted to return in the following year, but lived
for the rest of his life in retirement, and took no further part in
Jacobite affairs.[17]
For some years after Lockhart’s flight, Scotland seems to have been
without any official representative of the Jacobite Court. In May
1736, however, Colonel James Urquhart[18] was appointed, though under
circumstances which have not yet been made known.
The proposed expedition connected with the Atterbury Plot was the last
project for an active campaign of restoration in which the Chevalier
was personally to embark. Scheming, of course, went on, but only once
after this did James leave Italy. In 1727, on the death of George
I., he hurried to Nancy to be ready for any emergency, but the Duke
of Lorraine had reluctantly to refuse him hospitality. He retired to
Avignon, but, as before, the British Government brought pressure to
bear, and he had to go back to Rome. Six years later, on the death of
Augustus the Strong, he was offered the elective throne of Poland; but
this he declined, saying that his own country engaged his whole heart
and all his inclinations, though he regretted that his second son,
Henry, then eight years old, was too young to be a candidate for the
crown worn by his Sobieski ancestor.
[Sidenote: Charles Edward grows up.]
[Sidenote: The Cause languishes.]
Meanwhile his elder son, Charles Edward, was growing up, and the hopes
of the party were fixed on his future. His father wished him to learn
the art of war, so in August 1734 he was sent to join a Spanish army
under his cousin, the Duke of Berwick,[19] who was engaged in the
campaign against Austria, which brought the crown of Naples to the
Spanish Bourbons. Charles, then not quite fourteen, took part in the
siege and capture of Gaeta, a fortress in Campania, and accompanied
Don Carlos in his triumphant entry into Naples as king on August 9th.
The Prince won much credit for his conduct in the field, but this was
the end of his experience of war, and his campaign had lasted only six
days. His father was anxious to extend his military education, but
France and Spain in turn declined to allow him to serve with their
armies. Even the Emperor, about to make war on the Turks in 1737,
refused to allow the young prince to accompany his army. European
potentates were unwilling to receive Charles Edward even as a visitor.
The Venetian minister in London was ordered to quit England on
twenty-four hours’ notice, because his Government had shown civilities
to the Prince on a visit to Venice. The British Government was too
vigilant to hoodwink, too strong to offend. Peace reigned throughout
Europe: Jacobite activity was dormant both in England and in Scotland:
the royal exiles were isolated at Rome, and it seemed as if all hope of
a Stuart Restoration had been abandoned.
[Sidenote: The Mission of Glenbucket.]
The first to inspire the Jacobite Court with new life and hope, and
set in motion the events which led up to the great adventure of
’Forty-five was John Gordon of Glenbucket. This remarkable man was no
county magnate nor of any particular family. At this time he possessed
no landed property; he was merely the tenant of a farm in Glenlivet,
which he held from the Duke of Gordon. His designation ‘of Glenbucket’
was derived from a small property in the Don valley which had been
purchased by his grandfather, and which he inherited from his father.
He was not a Highlander, having been born in the Aberdeenshire lowland
district of Strathbogie, but he had so thoroughly conformed himself
to Highland spirit and manners that he had won the affection and
confidence of the Highlanders of Banffshire and Strathspey. Glenbucket
was at this time about sixty-four years old. In his younger days he
had been factor or chamberlain to the Duke of Gordon, a position
which conferred on him considerable influence and power, particularly
over the Duke’s Highland vassals. In the ’Fifteen he had commanded
a regiment of the Gordon retainers, and behaved with gallantry and
discretion throughout the campaign.[20] About the year 1724 he had
ceased to be the Duke’s representative, but his connection with the
Highlanders was continued by the marriages of his daughters. One of
them was the wife of Forbes of Skellater, a considerable laird in the
Highland district of Upper Strathdon; another was married to the great
chief of Glengarry; and a third to Macdonell of Lochgarry.[21]
In the year 1737 Gordon sold Glenbucket, for which he realised twelve
thousand marks (about £700); and he left Scotland to visit the
Chevalier at Rome. On his way he passed through Paris, where he had
an interview with Cardinal Fleury, the French prime minister. To the
Cardinal he suggested a scheme of invasion, by which officers and
men of the Irish regiments in the French service quartered near the
coast could be suddenly and secretly transported to Scotland.[22] The
Cardinal, whose general policy was peace at any price,[23] gave no
encouragement to the scheme.
[Sidenote: Message to the English Jacobites.]
Glenbucket went on to Rome in January 1738: he delivered his message,
was rewarded with a major-general’s commission,[24] and returned to
Scotland. Immediately the Jacobite Court was filled with sanguine
activity. What the terms of Glenbucket’s mission were, or whom he
represented, have never been categorically stated. Murray of Broughton
hints that he only represented his son-in-law Glengarry and General
Alexander Gordon.[25] Even if this limitation were true, it meant
much. Glengarry was one of the greatest of Highland chiefs, while
General Gordon was that Nestor of Scottish Jacobites who had been
commander-in-chief after the Chevalier left Scotland in 1716, and
whose opinions must have carried much weight. Although there is no
direct statement of the terms of Glenbucket’s mission, its significance
can readily be understood from the communication made to the English
Jacobites. The Chevalier at once wrote off to Cecil, his official agent
in London, informing him of the encouraging news he had received.
The zeal of his Scottish subjects, he said, was so strong that he
considered it possible to oppose the Scottish Highlanders to the
greater part of the troops of the British Government then available,
and there was good cause to hope for success even without foreign
assistance, provided the English Jacobites acted rightly.[26]
At the time that the Chevalier’s message reached his adherents there
happened to be in England a personage who bore the name and designation
of Lord Sempill.[27] Though of Scots descent he was French by birth
and residence. He was not familiar with English ways, and he did not
understand English political agitation. Mingling for the most part
with Jacobites avowed or secret, his ears were filled with execration
of the reigning dynasty. On every side he heard the Whig Government
denounced, and he saw it tottering and vacillating. He mistook
general political dissatisfaction for revolutionary discontent, and
he came to the conclusion that the country longed for a restoration
of the old royal line. Constituting himself an envoy from the English
Jacobites,[28] he hurried off to Rome and reported to the Chevalier
that the party was stronger than was generally believed, and that
affairs in England were most favourable for action.
It is necessary here to relate how Glenbucket’s mission to Rome
affected the Scottish Jacobites, and to introduce into the narrative
the name of one who for five years was a mainstay of the Cause, though
in the end he turned traitor.
[Sidenote: Murray of Broughton.]
John Murray of Broughton, a younger son of Sir David Murray of Stanhope
(a Peeblesshire baronet of ancient family who in his day had been an
ardent Jacobite), entered the University of Leyden in 1735, being then
twenty years of age. In 1737 he had completed his studies and went on
a visit to Rome, where he mixed in the Jacobite society of the place.
Although he never had an interview with James himself, he frequently
met the young princes, and he acquired the friendship of James Edgar,
the Chevalier’s faithful secretary. Murray’s father had once been
proposed as an official Jacobite agent in Scotland, and it seems highly
probable that Edgar persuaded the son to look forward to assuming such
a position. Murray left Rome to return to Scotland shortly before
Glenbucket’s arrival in January 1738.
[Sidenote: The Concert of Scots Jacobites.]
Glenbucket’s message had convinced James of the devotion of the
Highlanders and the Jacobites of north-eastern Scotland, but he wished
to know more of the spirit of the Scottish Lowlands. At the same
time that he wrote to the English Jacobites, he despatched William
Hay, a member of his household, to Scotland to make inquiries and to
report. Hay overtook Murray who was lingering in Holland, and induced
him to accompany him, as he was anxious to be introduced to Murray’s
cousin, Lord Kenmure, an ardent Kirkcudbrightshire Jacobite. The
acquaintance was duly made, and although no record is yet known of
Hay’s actual transactions in Scotland, they can be conjectured with a
fair amount of certainty from the results which followed them in spite
of Murray’s disparaging remarks on his mission.[29] Hay visited the
leading Jacobites, and it is difficult to doubt that he set in motion
a scheme for concerted action. What is known is that he returned to
Rome after three months’ absence greatly satisfied with what he had
found. In the same year, presumably as the outcome of Hay’s mission,
an Association of Jacobite leaders was formed, sometimes termed ‘the
Concert,’ designed with the object of bringing together Highland
chiefs and lowland nobles,[30] pledged to do everything in their
power for the restoration of the exiled Stuarts. These Associators,
as they were called, were: the Duke of Perth; his uncle, Lord John
Drummond; Lord Lovat; Lord Linton, who in 1741 succeeded as fifth
Earl of Traquair; his brother, the Hon. John Stuart; Donald Cameron,
younger of Lochiel; and his father-in-law, Sir John Campbell of
Auchenbreck, an Argyllshire laird. The position of manager was given
to William Macgregor (or Drummond), the son of the Perthshire laird of
Balhaldies.[31] In contemporary documents Macgregor[32] is generally
termed ‘Balhaldy,’[33] and that designation has been used in this
volume. Murray of Broughton did not belong to the Association, nor was
he taken into its confidence until 1741. He, however, attached himself
to Colonel Urquhart, the official Jacobite agent, and assisted him
with his work. In 1740, when Urquhart was dying of cancer, Murray was
appointed to succeed him.
In December 1739 Balhaldy was sent by the Associators to Paris, and
from thence he went on to Rome. The Chevalier, greatly cheered by what
he had to tell, instructed him to return to Paris and there to meet
Sempill, who had become one of James’s most trusted agents. Sempill
would introduce him to Cardinal Fleury, before whom they would lay the
views of both the English and Scottish Jacobites.
Balhaldy returned to Paris, made the acquaintance of Sempill, an
acquaintance which subsequently ripened into a strong political,
perhaps personal, friendship. The interview with Fleury was obtained,
and negotiations commenced in the beginning of 1740, about three months
after the war with Spain, forced upon Walpole, had broken out.[34]
It is no part of my task to follow the intricacies of the negotiations
between the French Ministry and the English Jacobites, except when they
affect the affairs of the Scots, but here it is necessary to turn back
for a moment to relate what took place after the English Jacobites
received the Chevalier’s communication of Glenbucket’s message from
Scotland.
[Sidenote: English reception of Scots Proposals.]
Sempill, who had gone from England to Rome in the spring of 1738, was
sent back in October with the Chevalier’s instructions to his English
adherents to arrange for concerted action with the Scots. The English
Jacobites formed a council of six members to serve as a directing
nucleus. This council communicated the English views on the Scottish
proposal to the Chevalier as follows. Although the Government, they
said, had only 29,000 regular troops in the British Isles, of which
13,000 were in England, 12,000 in Ireland, and 4000 in Scotland, yet
the rising of the Scots could not take place, as the King hoped,
without foreign assistance. It would be a difficult matter to provide
the Scots with sufficient arms and munitions, and even if this
difficulty could be surmounted, it would take two months after they
had been supplied before their army could assemble and establish the
royal authority in Scotland; that it would take another month before
the Scots could march into England. Meantime the English leaders would
be at the mercy of the professional army of the Government which their
volunteer followers, entirely ignorant of discipline, could never
oppose alone. The principal royalists would be arrested in detail, and
their overawed followers would hold back from joining the Scots. There
were 13,000 regular soldiers in England. Government would probably
transfer 6000 from Ireland, and the army would be further augmented
by the importation of Dutch and Hanoverian troops. Probably 8000 men
would be sent to the frontier of Scotland. From this they concluded
that a rising in Scotland without foreign assistance would involve
possible failure and in any case a disastrous civil war, while, on the
other hand, the landing of a body of regular troops would provide a
rallying point for the insurgents. This force should be equal to the
number of troops generally quartered about London and able to hold
them, while the volunteer royalists would march straight to the capital
which was ready to declare in their favour. They would then acquire the
magazines and arsenals at the seat of government, and almost all the
treasures of England (‘presque toutes les richesses d’Angleterre’). If
at that juncture the Scots would rise, the Hanoverians would be driven
to despair. No ally of the Elector, however powerful, would venture
to attack Great Britain reunited under her legitimate sovereign.
The requirement of the English would be 10,000 to 12,000 regular
troops sent from abroad; without such a disciplined force the English
Jacobites would not risk a rising.[35]
Sempill was sent by the Chevalier to Paris to lay these views before
Cardinal Fleury. The Cardinal, peace lover though he was, felt that
it would be absurd to neglect the assistance that the Jacobites might
afford him in the complications which were certain to arise when the
death of the Emperor Charles VI., then imminent, should occur.[36] When
the English views of requirement were presented to him he received them
sympathetically; said that the King of France would willingly grant
the help the English Jacobites desired, but two things were absolutely
necessary: he must have more exact information than had been given
him with regard to what royalist adherents would join his troops on
landing, and also as to those who would rise at the same time in the
provinces. If the English leaders could satisfy His Majesty on these
two points they might expect all they asked for.[37]
[Sidenote: Balhaldy’s interview with Fleury.]
Such was the state of Jacobite affairs at the French Court when Sempill
introduced Balhaldy to Fleury. I know of no categorical statement of
the requirements that Balhaldy was to lay before the Cardinal, but from
a memorandum he wrote[38] it may be inferred that the Associators had
asked for 1500 men with arms, ammunition, and money. Fleury replied
that his sovereign was greatly pleased with the proposals of the
Scots, and that he approved of their arrangements on behalf of their
legitimate king. France, however, was at peace with Great Britain,
while Spain was at open war. King Louis would ask the Spanish Court to
undertake an expedition in favour of King James to which he would give
efficient support.[39] Shortly afterwards, the Cardinal was obliged
to tell Balhaldy that Spain declined to entertain the proposal. The
Spanish Court disliked the war with England, and was quite aware that
it had been forced on Walpole by the Jacobites and the Opposition.[40]
Spain was not going to embarrass the British Government by embarking on
a Jacobite adventure.
Fleury then made a proposal that the Spanish Government should finance
a scheme by which an army of 10,000 Swedish mercenaries should be
engaged to invade Great Britain. While secret negotiation was going on
between the French and Spanish Governments, knowledge of the proposal
came to Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain. Elizabeth, fearing that
a successful movement for a Stuart restoration would put an end to
the war with Great Britain which she strongly favoured, inspired a
paragraph in the _Amsterdam Gazette_, which exploded the design before
it could be accomplished.[41]
Driven at last from his hope of using Spain as a catspaw, Fleury
informed Balhaldy that his master the King, touched with the zeal
of the Scots, would willingly send them all the Irish troops in his
service, with the arms, munitions, and the £20,000 asked for to assist
the Highlanders.[42]
Balhaldy hurried back to Scotland with this promise and met the
Associators in Edinburgh. Although the Jacobite leaders were
disappointed that French troops were not to be sent, they gratefully
accepted Fleury’s assurances, and in March 1741 they despatched the
following letter to the Cardinal, which was carried back to Paris by
Balhaldy.
[Sidenote: Lettre de quelques Seigneurs écossais au Cardinal de
Fleury.[43]]
MONSEIGNEUR,--Ayant appris de Monsieur le baron de Balhaldies
l’heureux succès des représentations que nous l’avions chargé de
faire à Votre Eminence sous le bon plaisir de notre souverain
légitime, nous nous hâtons de renvoyer ce baron avec les
témoignages de notre vive et respectueuse reconnaissance et avec
les assurances les plus solennelles, tant de notre part que de la
part de ceux qui se sont engagés avec nous à prendre les armes
pour secouer le joug de l’usurpation, que nous sommes prêts à
remplir fidèlement tout ce qui a été avancé dans le mémoire
que my lord Sempill et ledit sieur baron de Balhaldies eurent
l’honneur de remettre, signé de leurs mains, entre celles de
Votre Eminence au mois de mai dernier.
Les chefs de nos tribus des montagnes dont les noms lui ont été
remis en même temps avec le nombre d’hommes que chacun d’eux
s’est obligé de fournir,[44] persistent inviolablement dans leurs
engagements et nous osons répondre à Votre Eminence qu’il y aura
vingt mille hommes sur pied pour le service de notre véritable et
unique seigneur, le Roi Jacques Huitième d’Ecosse aussitôt qu’il
plaira à S.M.T.C. de nous envoyer des armes et des munitions avec
les troupes qui sont nécessaires pour conserver ces armes jusqu’à
ce que nous puissions nous assembler.
Ces vingt mille hommes pourront si facilement chasser ou détruire
les troupes que le gouvernement présent entretient actuellement
dans notre pays et même toutes celles qu’on y pourra faire
marcher sur les premières alarmes que nous sommes assurément bien
fondés d’espérer qu’avec l’assistance divine et sous les auspices
du Roi Très Chrétien les fidèles Ecossais seront en état, non
seulement de rétablir en très peu de temps l’autorité de leur Roi
Légitime dans tout son royaume d’Ecosse et de l’y affermir contre
les efforts des partisans d’Hannover, mais aussi de l’aider
puissamment au recouvrement de ces autres Etats, ce qui sera
d’autant plus facile que nos voisins de l’Angleterre ne sont pas
moins fatigués que nous de la tyrannie odieuse sous laquelle nous
gémissons tous également et que nous savons qu’ils sont très bien
disposés à s’unir avec nous ou avec quelque puissance que ce soit
qui voudra leur donner les recours dont ils out besoin pour se
remettre sous un gouvernement légitime et naturel. Nous prenons
actuellement des mesures pour agir de concert avec eux.
Quant au secours qui est nécessaire pour l’Ecosse en particulier,
nous aurions souhaité que S.M.T.C. eût bien voulu nous accorder
des troupes françaises qui eussent renouvelé parmi nous les
leçons d’une valeur héroïque et d’une fidélité incorruptible que
nos ancêtres ont tant de fois apprises dans la France même; mais
puisque V.E. juge à propos de nous envoyer de sujets de notre
Roi, nous les recevrons avec joie comme venant de sa part, et
nous tâcherons de leur faire sentir le cas que nous faisons et
de leur attachement à notre souverain légitime et de l’honneur
qu’ils out acquis en marchant si longtemps sur les traces des
meilleurs sujets et des plus braves troupes en l’Univers.
Monsieur le baron de Balhaldies connaît si parfaitement notre
situation, les opérations que nous avons concertées, et tout
ce qui nous regarde, qu’il serait inutile d’entrer ici dans
aucun détail. Nous supplions V.E. de vouloir bien l’écouter
favorablement et d’être persuadée qu’il aura l’honneur de lui
tout rapporter dans la plus exacte vérité.
Si les ministres du gouvernement étaient moins jaloux de nos
démarches ou moins vigilants, nous engagerions volontiers tous
nos biens pour fournir aux frais de cette expédition; mais nuls
contrats n’étant valables, suivant nos usages, sans être inscrits
sur les registres publics, il nous est impossible de lever une
somme tant soit peu considérable avec le secret qui convient dans
les circonstances présentes. C’est uniquement cette considération
qui nous empêche de faire un fond pour les dépenses nécessaires,
[ce qui serait une preuve ultérieure que nous donnerions avec
joie de notre zèle et de la confiance avec laquelle nous nous
rangeons sous l’étendard de notre Roi naturel; mais le bien du
service nous oblige de nous contenir et] d’avoir recours à la
générosité de S.M.T.C. jusqu’à ce que l’on puisse lever les
droits royaux dans notre pays d’une manière régulière.
Nous sommes persuadés que l’on pourra y parvenir dans l’espace
de trois mois après l’arrivée des troupes irlandaises et nous ne
doutons point que notre patrie, réunie alors sous le gouvernement
de son Roi tant désiré ne fasse des efforts qui donneront lieu
à V.E. de prouver à S.M.T.C. que les Ecossais modernes sont les
vrais descendants de ceux qui ont eu l’honneur d’être comptés
pendant tant de siècles les plus fidèles alliés des Rois, ses
prédécesseurs.
Nous sommes bien sensiblement touchés des mouvements que V.E.
s’est donnés et qu’elle veut bien continuer pour faire entendre
au Roi Catholique les avantages qu’il y aurait à agir en faveur
du Roi notre maître dans la conjoncture présente. Nous avions cru
que ces avantages ne pouvaient échapper aux ministres Espagnols;
mais quelque travers qu’ils prennent dans la conduite de cette
guerre, V.E. prend une part qui ne saura manquer de les en tirer
heureusement et de frustrer l’attente injuste des nations qui
sont prêtes à fondre sur les trésors du nouveau monde.
Nous en louons Dieu, Monseigneur, et nous le prions avec
ferveur de vouloir bien conserver V.E. non seulement pour
l’accomplissement du grand ouvrage que nous allons entreprendre
sous sa protection mais aussi pour en voir les grands et heureux
effets dans toute l’Europe aussi bien que dans les trois royaumes
britanniques, auxquels son nom ne sera pas moins précieux dans
tous les temps à venir qu’à la France même qui a pris de si beaux
accroissements sous son ministère et dont la gloire va être
élevée jusqu’au comble en faisant vigorer la justice chez ses
voisins. Nous avons l’honneur d’être avec une profonde vénération
et un parfait dévouement, Monseigneur, de votre Eminence, les
très humbles et très obéissants serviteurs,
LE DUC DE PERTH
LE LORD JEAN DRUMOND DE PERTH
MY LORD LOVAT
MILORD LINTON
CAMERON, BARON DE LOCHEIL
LE CHEVALIER CAMPBELL D’ACHINBRECK
M’GRIEGER BARON DE BALHALDIES.
_à Edimbourg, ce 13ème Mars 1741._
[_Translation._]
Having learned from the Baron of Balhaldies of the happy success
of the representations that we had instructed him to make to
Your Eminence, with the approval of our legitimate Sovereign, we
now hasten to send this Baron back with the proofs of our lively
and respectful gratitude, and with the most solemn undertaking,
both by ourselves and by those who are engaged along with us, to
take up arms to throw off the yoke of the usurpation, that we
are ready to fulfil faithfully all that was put forward in the
Memorial, which my lord Sempill and the said Baron of Balhaldies
signed with their own hands, and had the honour to place in the
hands of Your Eminence last May.
The chiefs of our Highland clans, whose names we have sent at
the same time with the number of men that each binds himself to
furnish, will without fail keep their engagements, and we venture
to be responsible to Your Eminence that there will be 20,000 men
on foot for the service of our true and only lord, King James
VIII. of Scotland, as soon as it will please His Most Christian
Majesty to send us arms and munitions, and the troops that are
necessary to guard those arms until we shall be able to assemble.
These 20,000 men will be able so easily to defeat or to destroy
the troops that the Government employs at present in our country,
and even all those that it may be able to despatch upon the first
alarm, so that we feel entirely justified in hoping that with
divine assistance and under the auspices of the most Christian
King, the loyal Scots will be in a condition, not only in a short
time to re-establish the authority of their legitimate King
throughout the whole Kingdom of Scotland, and to sustain him
there against the efforts of the partisans of Hanover, but also
to aid powerfully in the recovery of these other States, which
will be all the easier since our neighbours of England are not
less wearied than we are of the odious tyranny under which we all
equally groan; and we know that they are thoroughly determined to
unite with us, and with any power whatever that would give them
the opportunity they require to place themselves once more under
a legitimate and natural Government. We are at present taking
measures to act along with them.
As to the assistance that is necessary for Scotland in
particular, we should have preferred that His Most Christian
Majesty might have been willing to grant us French troops, who
would have renewed among us the lessons of heroic bravery and
incorruptible fidelity, that our ancestors have so often learned
in France itself, but since Your Eminence thinks fit to send
subjects of our King, we will receive them with joy as coming
from him, and we will endeavour to make them feel the value that
we attach to their devotion to our legitimate Sovereign, and
the honour that they have acquired in treading so long in the
footsteps of the best subjects and of the bravest troops in the
Universe.
The Baron of Balhaldies knows so perfectly our situation, the
plans that we have concerted, and everything that affects us,
that it will be unnecessary to enter into any detail. We implore
Your Eminence to listen to him favourably, and to be assured
that he will have the honour of reporting to you with the utmost
accuracy.
If the ministers of the Government were only less suspicious
of our actions or less watchful, we would willingly pledge all
our belongings to defray the cost of this expedition, but as no
contracts (of loan or sale) are binding by our customs unless
they have been inscribed in the public registers, it is not
possible for us to raise a sum that would be sufficient, with
the necessary secrecy that present circumstances require. It is
this consideration alone that prevents us from raising a fund for
the necessary expense, the raising of which would bear further
proof of our zeal, which we should give with pleasure, and of
the confidence with which we place ourselves under the standard
of our natural King; but the good of the service obliges us to
restrain our wishes and to have recourse to the generosity of
His Most Christian Majesty until it is possible to establish the
royal rights in our country in a regular manner.
We are persuaded that it would be possible to accomplish this
three months after the arrival of the Irish troops, and we do
not doubt that our country, reunited under the Government of its
king, so much desired, would make such efforts as would enable
Your Excellency to prove to His Most Christian Majesty that the
modern Scots are the true descendants of those who have had
the honour of being counted during so many centuries the most
faithful allies of the kings, his predecessors.
We are very sensibly touched by what Your Eminence has done, and
will continue to do, to make the Catholic king understand the
advantages that he would have in acting in favour of the King
our master in the present juncture. We had believed that these
advantages could not escape the notice of the Spanish Ministers,
but whatever strange things they may have done in the conduct of
this war, your Eminence is now acting in such a way as cannot
fail happily to extricate them from the consequences of their
mistakes, and to frustrate the unjust attitude of those nations
who are ready to fall upon the treasures of the new world.
We praise God, Monseigneur, and we pray with fervour that He
would preserve Your Eminence, not only for the accomplishment
of the great work which we are going to undertake under your
protection, but also that you may see the great and happy effects
throughout Europe as well as in the three kingdoms of Britain in
which your name will be not less precious in all time to come
than in France itself, which has been enlarged so remarkably
under your ministry; and that the glory of your name will be
raised to the highest pitch by making justice flourish among your
neighbours. We have the Honour to be, with profound veneration
and perfect devotion, Monseigneur, Your Eminence’s very humble
and obedient servants.
The promises of assistance from the French Court brought by Balhaldy,
and the letter of acceptance by the lords of the Concert constituted
the treaty between France and the Scottish Jacobites which formed the
foundation of all subsequent schemes undertaken in Scotland. Even
in the end it was detachments of the Irish regiments, whose use was
originally suggested by Glenbucket, together with a Scottish regiment
raised later than this by Lord John Drummond, that formed the meagre
support that was actually sent over from France in 1745.
Balhaldy returned to France almost immediately, and in the winter of
1740-41, he went to England where he met the Jacobite leaders, of whom
he particularly mentions the Earls of Orrery and Barrymore, Sir Watkin
Williams Wynne, and Sir John Hinde Cotton. With them he endeavoured
to form a scheme of concert between the English and the Scottish
Jacobites, but without much success.[45]
[Sidenote: Murray taken into the confidence of the Concert.]
It was not until after the signing of the letter to Fleury that Murray
was taken into the confidence of the Jacobite leaders, and it was at
this time that he first met Lord Lovat. This was also the occasion of
his first meeting with Balhaldy; their relations at this time were
quite friendly; Balhaldy handed over to Murray the negotiation of a
delicate ecclesiastical matter with which he had been entrusted by the
Chevalier.[46]
Another early duty was to raise money for the Cause, but to Murray’s
mortification, he had to give up the scheme of a loan, because all the
sympathisers to whom he applied declined to subscribe; not, they said,
because they objected to giving their money, but each and all refused
to be the first to compromise himself by heading the subscription
list. At this time Murray was not permitted to undertake any active
propaganda for a rising, as the associated leaders feared that by
increasing the numbers in the secret there would be too great danger
of leakage. The Associators preferred to keep such work in their own
hands, and each of them had a district assigned to him.
After Balhaldy’s departure the unfortunate Associators were kept in a
state of agonising suspense, for nothing was heard from France until
the end of 1742. In December of that year, Lord Traquair received a
letter from Balhaldy couched in vague terms, assuring him that troops
and all things necessary for a rising would be embarked early in the
spring. The scheme, he wrote, was to make a landing near Aberdeen and
another in Kintyre. The whole tone of the letter was so confident that
the Associators felt that a French expedition might be expected almost
immediately, and they were profoundly conscious that Scotland was not
ready. So alarmed were the leaders at the possibility of a premature
landing, and so uncertain were they about the promises vaguely conveyed
in Balhaldy’s letter, that they determined to send Murray over to Paris
to find out what the actual French promises were, and how they were to
be performed; and moreover to warn the Government of King Louis how
matters stood in Scotland.
Murray set off in January 1743. On his way he visited the Duke of
Perth, then residing at York, making what friends he could among the
English Jacobites. When Murray got to London, he was informed of
Cardinal Fleury’s death,[47] which somewhat staggered him, but he
determined to go on to France to find out how matters stood.
[Sidenote: Murray’s visit to Paris, 1743.]
On arriving in Paris, Murray met Balhaldy and Sempill. Balhaldy was
surprised and not particularly glad to see him, but he treated him
courteously, and discussing affairs with Murray, he patronisingly
informed him that he had not been told everything. Sempill was very
polite. He told Murray that a scheme had been prepared by Fleury, but
that the Cardinal’s illness and death had interrupted it.[48] Sempill
also told him that luckily he had persuaded the Cardinal to impart
his schemes to Monsieur Amelot, the Minister for Foreign Affairs. An
interview with the Minister was obtained at Versailles, and on Murray’s
explaining the reason of his visit, Amelot frankly told him that the
King of France had full confidence in the Scots, but that nothing could
be done without co-operation with the English. He further warned the
Scotsmen that an enterprise such as they proposed was dangerous and
precarious. The King, he said, was quite willing to send ten thousand
troops to help James his master, but the Jacobites must take care not
to bring ruin on the Cause by a rash attempt. Murray was startled
at Amelot’s answer after the assurances he had had from Sempill and
Balhaldy of the minister’s keenness to help; he was further distressed
that some arrangements, which Sempill had confidently mentioned to him
as being made, were unknown to Amelot, while the minister owned that he
had not read the Memorials, but promised to look into them.
It was on this occasion that Murray first became suspicious of the
behaviour of Balhaldy and Sempill, a state of mind which grew later to
absolute frenzy. When arranging for the interview with Amelot, they
hinted very plainly to Murray that he must exaggerate any accounts he
gave of preparations in Scotland. He came to the conclusion that they
were deceiving the French minister by overstating Jacobite prospects at
home, and after the interview he was further persuaded that Balhaldy
and Sempill were similarly deceiving the Jacobite leaders with
exaggerated accounts of French promises. He was further mortified to
find that the Earl Marischal, who was much respected in Scotland, and
to whom the Jacobite Scotsmen looked as their leader in any rising,
would have nothing to do with Sempill and Balhaldy; while, on their
part, they described the earl as a wrong-headed man, continually
setting himself in opposition to his master and those employed by him,
and applied to him the epithet of ‘honourable fool.’
Apparently about this time the preparations of the English Jacobites
were languishing, and Balhaldy, proud of the Scottish Association
which he looked upon as his own creation, volunteered to go over to
England and arrange a similar Concert among the English leaders.
He and Murray went to London together, and there Murray took the
opportunity of privately seeing Cecil, the Jacobite agent for England.
Cecil explained his difficulties, told him of the dissensions among
the English Jacobites, and of their complaints about Sempill, who,
he considered, was being imposed upon by the French Ministry. It is
characteristic of Jacobite plotting to find that Murray concealed,
on the one side, his interviews with Cecil from Balhaldy, and, on
the other, he kept it a secret from Cecil that he had ever been in
France.[49] Disappointed with his mission both in France and England,
Murray returned to Edinburgh in March or April.
[Sidenote: Butler’s mission to England.]
Meanwhile, Balhaldy was busy getting pledges in England and making
lists of Jacobite adherents avowed and secret. Though they said they
were willing to rise, he found they absolutely refused to give any
pledge in writing, and he suggested, through Sempill, that the French
minister should send over a man he could trust to see the state of
matters for himself. Amelot selected an equerry of King Louis’s of the
name of Butler, an Englishman by birth. Under pretence of purchasing
horses, Butler visited racecourses in England, where he had the
opportunity of meeting country gentlemen, and was astonished to find
that at Lichfield, where he met three hundred lords and gentlemen, of
whom, he said, the poorest possessed £3000 a year, he found only one
who was not opposed to the Government. On his return to France, Butler
sent in a long report on the possibilities of an English rising. He
told the French Government that after going through part of England, a
document had been placed in his hands giving an account of the whole
country, from which it appeared that three-quarters of the well-to-do
(‘qui avaient les biens-fonds’) were zealous adherents of their
legitimate king, and that he had been enabled to verify this statement
through men who could be trusted, some of whom indeed were partisans of
the Government. He was amazed that the Government was able to exist at
all where it was so generally hated. The secret, he said, was that all
positions of authority--the army, the navy, the revenue offices--were
in the hands of their mercenary partisans. The English noblesse were
untrained to war, and a very small body of regular soldiers could
easily crush large numbers of men unused to discipline. It would be
necessary then to have a force of regular troops from abroad to make
head against those of the Government.
[Sidenote: French determine on an Invasion.]
[Sidenote: Letter of Louis XV. to Philip V.]
Butler and Balhaldy returned to France in October. During their absence
things had changed; the battle of Dettingen had been fought (June 27th,
1743), although Great Britain and France were technically at peace.
King Louis was furious, and he took the matter up personally, and
gave instructions to prepare an expeditionary force for the invasion
of England. The main body was to consist of sixteen battalions of
infantry and one regiment of dismounted dragoons, under Marshal Saxe,
and was to land in the Thames. It was further suggested that two or
three battalions should be sent to Scotland. Prince Charles Edward
was invited to accompany the expedition, and was secretly brought
from Rome, arriving in Paris at the end of January 1744. There was no
affectation of altruism for the Stuart exile in King Louis’s mind, but
the zeal of the Jacobites was to be exploited. He wrote his private
views to his uncle, the King of Spain, communicating a project that he
had formed, he said, in great secrecy, which was to destroy at one blow
the foundations of the league of the enemies of the House of Bourbon.
It might, perhaps, be hazardous, but from all that he could learn it
was likely to be successful. He wished to act in concert with Spain.
He sent a plan of campaign. Everything was ready for execution, and he
proposed to begin the expedition on the 1st of January. It would be a
very good thing that the British minister should see that the barrier
of the sea did not entirely protect England from French enterprise.[50]
It might be that the revolution to be promoted by the expedition would
not be so quick as was expected, but in any case there would be a civil
war which would necessitate the recall of the English troops in the
Netherlands. The Courts of Vienna and Turin would no longer receive
English subsidies, and these Courts, left to their own resources, would
submit to terms provided they were not too rigorous.[51]
[Sidenote: Collapse of French Expedition.]
The story of the collapse of the proposed invasion is too well known
to need description. Ten thousand troops were on board ship. Marshal
Saxe and Prince Charles were ready to embark. On the night of the 6th
of March a terrible storm arose which lasted some days. The protecting
men-of-war were dispersed, many of the transports were sunk, a British
fleet appeared in the Channel, and Saxe was ordered to tell the
Prince first that the enterprise was postponed, and later that it was
abandoned. Charles, nearly broken-hearted, remained on in France,
living in great privacy, and hoping against hope that the French
would renew their preparations. For a time he remained at Gravelines,
where Lord Marischal was with him. He longed for action, and implored
the earl to urge the French to renew the expedition to England, but
Marischal only suggested difficulties. Charles proposed an expedition
to Scotland, but his lordship said it would mean destruction. Then he
desired to make a campaign with the French army, but Lord Marischal
said it would only disgust the English. Charles removed to Montmartre,
near Paris, but he was ordered to maintain the strictest incognito.
He asked to see King Louis, but he was refused any audience. His old
tutor, Sir Thomas Sheridan, was sent from Rome to be with him; also
George Kelly, Atterbury’s old secretary, who, since his escape from the
Tower, had been living at Avignon. He took as his confessor a Cordelier
friar of the name Kelly, a relative of the Protestant George Kelly,
and, sad to say, a sorry drunkard, whose example did Charles no good.
These Irish companions soon quarrelled with Balhaldy and Sempill, who
wrote to the Chevalier complaining of their evil influence, while the
Irishmen also wrote denouncing Balhaldy and Sempill.
Charles left Montmartre. His cousin, the Bishop of Soissons, son of
the Marshal Duke of Berwick, kindly lent him his Château Fitzjames, a
house seven posts from Paris on the Calais road, where he remained for
a time. Another cousin, the Duke of Bouillon, a nephew of his mother,
also was very kind, and entertained him at Navarre, a château near
Evreux in Normandy. But his life was full of weary days. He could get
nothing from the French, and ‘our friends in England,’ he wrote to his
father, are ‘afraid of their own shadow, and think of little else than
of diverting themselves.’ Things seemed very hopeless: the Scots alone
remained faithful.
[Sidenote: Suspense in Scotland.]
From the time that Murray left London in the spring of 1743, the
Jacobite Associators had received no letters from Balhaldy. The
suspense was very trying; indeed Lord Lovat felt for a time so hopeless
that he proposed to retire with his son to France and end his days
in a religious house.[52] Lovat’s spirits seem to have risen shortly
after this owing to some success he had in persuading his neighbours to
join the Cause, and he eventually resolved to remain in Scotland. It
was only from the newspapers the Jacobite leaders knew of the French
preparations, but towards the end of December a letter was received
from Balhaldy, which stated that the descent was to take place in the
month of January. Other letters, however, threw some doubt on Lord
Marischal’s part of the enterprise, which included an auxiliary landing
in Scotland, and once more the Jacobite leaders were thrown into a
state of suspense. They felt, however, that preparations must be made,
and an active propaganda began among the Stuart adherents.
[Sidenote: Murray’s interview with Prince Charles, August 1744.]
In due course news of the disaster to the French fleet reached
Scotland, but no word came from Balhaldy or Sempill, and it was then
determined to send John Murray to France to find out the state of
matters. Murray tells the story of his mission in his _Memorials_.
He met Prince Charles at Paris on several occasions, and told him
that so far from there being 20,000 Highlanders ready to rise, as
was the boast of Balhaldy, it would be unwise to depend on more than
4000, if so many. But in spite of this discouraging information, the
Prince categorically informed Murray that whatever happened he was
determined to go to Scotland the following summer, though with a single
footman.[53]
Murray hastened home, and at once began an active canvass among the
Jacobites; money and arms were collected, and arrangements were made
in various parts of the country. Among other expedients was the
establishment of Jacobite clubs, and the celebrated ‘Buck Club’ was
founded in Edinburgh. The members of these clubs were not at one
among themselves. Some of them said they were prepared to join Prince
Charles whatever happened, but others only undertook to join if he were
accompanied by a French expedition. At a meeting of the Club a document
was drawn up by Murray representing the views of the majority present,
which insisted that unless the Prince could bring them 6000 regular
troops, arms for 10,000 more, and 30,000 louis d’or, it would mean
ruin to himself, to the Cause, and to his supporters.[54] This letter
was handed to Lord Traquair, who undertook to take it to London and
have it sent to Prince Charles in France. By Traquair it was delayed,
possibly because he was busy paying court to the lady who about this
time became Countess of Traquair,[55] but to the expectant Jacobites
for no apparent reason save apathy. After keeping the letter for four
months he returned it in April 1745, with the statement that he had
been unable to find a proper messenger. Another letter was then sent
by young Glengarry, who was about to proceed to France to join the
Scottish regiment raised by Lord John Drummond for service in the
French army. It was, however, too late; the Prince had left Paris
before the letter could be delivered.
Distressed that the King of France would not admit him to his presence;
wearied with the shuffling of the English Jacobites and the French
ministers; depressed by Lord Marischal, who chilled his adventurous
aspirations; plagued, as he tells his father, with the _tracasseries_
of his own people, Charles determined to trust himself to the loyalty
of the Scottish Highlanders. He ran heavily into debt; he purchased
40,000 livres’ worth of weapons and munitions,--muskets, broadswords,
and twenty small field-pieces; he hired and fitted out two vessels.
With 4000 louis d’or in his _cassette_ he embarked with seven followers
at Nantes on June 22nd (O.S.).
On July 25th he landed in Arisaig,--the ’Forty-five had begun.