In 1745 Sir James Grant was the head of the family. His father at the
Revolution had taken the side of King William, and had been a member of
the Convention of Estates which declared King James’s forfeiture. He
had raised a regiment and had incurred heavy expenses in the service of
the new Government, but in spite of frequent applications no repayment
had ever been made to him. Sir James’s elder brother, Alexander,
succeeded his father. He was a distinguished soldier, who served the
Government faithfully, and rose to the rank of Brigadier-General. In
the ’Fifteen he was Lord-Lieutenant of Banff and Inverness, and was
appointed Captain of Edinburgh Castle. In 1717 he was informed that
the Government had no further occasion for his services. He died in
1719, and was succeeded by his brother James, who by a special grant
inherited the baronetcy of his father-in-law, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun
of Luss. Sir James Grant was member of parliament for the county of
Inverness from 1722 to 1741, when a quarrel with Duncan Forbes of
Culloden forced him to relinquish the constituency. He then became
member for the Elgin burghs, for which he sat until his death in 1747.
Although Sir James was a Whig in politics, it may be that at one time
he had dealings with the Jacobite Court. It is remarkable that in 1721,
while the Atterbury Plot was being hatched, and at the very time that
Christopher Layer was in Rome on that business, Sir James Grant was
created a peer by the Chevalier.[82]
On his arrival in Scotland, Prince Charles wrote to Grant requesting
his co-operation in much the same terms as he wrote to known Jacobite
adherents.[83] Sir James, who was now sixty-six years old, determined
to keep out of trouble. He handed over the management of his clan and
property to his eldest son, Ludovick, and on the pretext of attending
to his parliamentary duties, he went to London, where he remained
throughout the Rising.
Before leaving Scotland, Sir James pointed out to his son that the
family had received scant reward for eminent services in the past,
and he advised him that whatever happened the clan should not be
subdivided. He strongly opposed Duncan Forbes’s scheme of independent
companies. The clan should remain passive, prepared to defend its own
territory, and only act in the event of its being attacked. This policy
Ludovick carried out, and in doing so incurred the grave suspicion of
the Government. It is indeed difficult to believe that, until the final
retreat of the Jacobites and the approach of Cumberland, the acting
Chief of the Grants was not sitting on the fence.
The Grant estates were in two distinct portions, those around Castle
Grant in Strathspey and those in Urquhart and Glenmoriston on the
western side of Loch Ness. Although the Strathspey Grants were
accounted a Whig clan, the Grants of Urquhart and Glenmoriston were
notoriously Jacobite. When the Rising took place, Ludovick Grant wrote
to his outlying retainers, not forbidding them to join the Prince, but
peremptorily forbidding them to move without his sanction. Eventually
they went ‘out’ in spite of his orders, but the Strathspey men stood
loyally by their chief.
The whole story of the rising in Urquhart and Glenmoriston and the
action of Ludovick Grant towards the Government and his clansmen has
been told within recent years in a most interesting volume by Mr.
William Mackay,[84] to which the reader is referred. The narrative
printed here is Grant’s own _apologia_ to the Government, prepared
with legal assistance after the Rising. The text tells its own story,
but four points may be referred to here, points which it gave Ludovick
Grant much trouble to explain. First, when Sir John Cope marched north
in August 1745 he passed within ten miles of Castle Grant, yet the
young chief neither visited him nor sent him assistance.[85] Second,
when President Duncan Forbes asked him to furnish two independent
companies for the service of Government, he declined, on the ostensible
ground that two companies were too insignificant a contingent for so
important a clan as the Grants. He eventually was persuaded to send
one company,[86] whose only service was to garrison Inverness Castle
under Major George Grant, Ludovick’s uncle. The castle surrendered to
Prince Charles in February after two days’ siege, and the commandant
was dismissed the service. Third, Grant marched his men to Strathbogie
to attack Lord Lewis Gordon’s men in December without orders from Lord
Loudoun, then commanding in the north,[87] for which he incurred Lord
Loudoun’s censure. Fourth, when Grant had gone to Aberdeen in March,
five of his principal gentlemen made a treaty of neutrality[88] with
the Jacobites under Lord George Murray and Lord Nairn, by which the
Prince’s people were to get supplies from the Grant country in return
for protection from raiding.
This narrative is occasionally referred to in Sir William Fraser’s
_Chiefs of Grant_, but is not included in that work. The text is
printed from the original manuscripts in the Public Record Office.