of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. ‘I am going down hill very fast, but
easily, as one that descends the Mont Cenis _ramassé_, without pain
or trouble.’ He mentions the frost and snow at Berlin as severe to _un
pobre viejo Cristiano Español_. He sends turnip seed, a bucolic gift, to
Helvetius, and to Madame de Vassé, the lady who concealed Prince Charles
in the Convent of St. Joseph.[32]
He mentions that he sups every night with the King, and wishes Hume to
share these festivals.
The Earl was infinitely happier with Frederick and the gay freethinkers
at Potsdam than in Scotland, where so many friendly heads had fallen,
where every sight recalled unhappy things; where the lairds drank too
much, and the ministers preached too long, and wits were scarce, and
people wanted him to marry and beget heirs (here he had Frederick’s
sympathy), and still the cracked old bell kept up its peevish lament,
_Disloyal, Loyal, Loyal, Disloyal!_
Such was the Earl’s correspondence with Hume; they are the letters of a
kind, good, humorous old pagan. To d’Alembert also he wrote freely. ‘I
have read with much pleasure four volumes of your works, and was really
pleased with myself when I found that I could understand them. I want
to use my rights as an old fellow, and tell anecdotes.’ Then he gives a
Scotch story, which would be more amusing in Scots than in his French. Of
Frederick, he says that (unlike Carlyle) he is ‘gey easy to live wi’,’
_l’homme du monde le plus aisé à vivre_. He announces ‘David Hume is
elevated to the sublime dignity of a Saint, by public acclamation: the
street where he dwells is entitled La rue de _St. David_. Vox populi,
vox Dei. Amen.’ Again,—the old sinner!—
‘I have received an inestimable treasure, plenary indulgences _in
articulo mortis_, with power to bestow some of them on twelve elect
souls. One I send to good David Hume; as I wish you all good things in
both worlds, I offer you a place among my chosen.’
The philosopher took a simple pleasure in drolleries which no longer
tempt us—we have now been so long emancipated.
The Earl said that in Spain he would have felt obliged to denounce
Frederick to the Inquisition. Frederick has given the old exile medicines
to make him love him, as Prince Hal did to Falstaff. ‘If he had not
bewitched me, would I stay here, where I only see a spectre of the sun,
when I might live and die in the happy climate of Valencia?’
So he slipped down the hill in a happy, kind old age. In summer he rose
at five, read for an hour, wrote his letters, and burned most of those
which he received. Then he had his head shaved, and washed in cold water,
dressed, took a drive, or pottered in his garden. Heaven made gardens,
surely, for the pottering peace of virtuous eld. At twelve he dined,
chiefly on vegetables, taking but one glass of sherry. He had always four
or five guests, and, after dinner, left them ‘to make the coffee’—that
is, to enjoy a _siesta_. He never remembered to have remained awake a
moment when once his head touched the pillow. Then he took coffee, played
piquet, pottered again in the garden, supped on chocolate, and so to bed
early. He read much, and thanked a slight loss of memory for the pleasure
of being able to read all his favourite authors over again. Rabelais,
Montaigne, and Molière were his favourites in French, in English,
Shakspeare and the old dramatists. Terence and Plautus he studied in
Latin, the Greek writers ‘in cribs.’ Tragedy he could not abide; mirth
he loved, and d’Alembert’s informant had come on him laughing aloud when
alone. He was full of anecdote, and, having known everybody of note for
some seventy years, his talk was delightful. For music, he preferred the
pibroch in a strange land, as did Charles, alone and old in Italy. One
touch of nature!
He was kindness itself, and loved giving; from Rousseau he met, we are
told, the usual amount of gratitude after the quarrel with Hume. But,
judging from what Rousseau himself says, on this occasion he was not
ungrateful. If he heard, in conversation, a tale of misery, he made no
remark, but sought out and succoured the person in distress. To every one
who visited him he insisted on making some little present. He maintained
a poor woman in comfort; nay, ‘down to spiders and frogs, he was the
friend of all created things.’ Being a piquet player of the first force,
he would only stake halfpence, and, when his winnings accumulated, laid
them out in a feast of fat things for Snell, his big dog. Like Lionardo
da Vinci, he could not bear to see a caged bird.
In his last years he was drawn about in a garden chair, his legs failing
him. His mortal agony was long and patiently borne: never before had he
been ill. ‘Can your physic take fifty years off my life?’ he asked the
doctor. He died merely of long life, on May 25, 1778. In 1770 he had
described himself to his kinsman, Sir Robert Murray Keith, as ‘nearly
eighty.’ In 1778, then, he cannot have been ninety-two, as Mr. Carlyle
supposed—probably he was about eighty-five. Years of trouble and sorrow
these years would have been to another, but ‘a merry heart goes all the
way.’ Physically, and mentally, and morally, the Earl had ever been an
example of soundness. In his latest illness he was never peevish. Once
‘he wished he were among the Eskimo, for they knock old men on the head.’
The Earl was not a great man. In conspiracy, in war, in government, in
diplomacy, he was a rather oddly ineffectual man. He had, in short,
a genius for goodness, and an independence of spirit, a perfect
disinterestedness, an inability to blind himself to disagreeable facts,
and to the merits of the opposite side—a balance, in fact, of temperament
and of humour—which are inconsistent with political success. We may wish
that his taste in jokes had been less that of the _philosophes_. We may
wish that, if the Cause was indeed hopeless, he had deserted it without
reproaching his old master. He might have abstained from disseminating
the tattle of Helvetius. There is very little else which mortal judgment
can find to reprehend in brave, honest, generous, humorous, kind George
Keith, who was, without Christian faith, the pattern of all the Christian
virtues. He was of two worlds—the old Royalist world, and the Age of
Revolution—yet undisturbed in heart he lived and died,
Vetustæ vitæ imago,
Et specimen venientis ævi.[33]
III
MURRAY OF BROUGHTON
In black contrast to the name, the character, the happy life and
peaceful, kindly end of the good Earl Marischal stand the infamy, the
ruined soul, the wretched existence and miserable death of John Murray
of Broughton. ‘No lip of me or mine comes after Broughton’s!’ said the
Whig father of Sir Walter Scott, as he threw out of window the teacup
from which the traitor had drunk. Murray was poisonous; was shunned like
a sick, venomed beast. His name was blotted out of the books of the
Masons’ lodge to which he belonged; even the records of baptisms in his
Episcopal chapel attest the horror in which he was held for thirty years,
for half his life. Yet this informer remained, through that moiety of his
degraded existence, true in heart to the Cause which the Earl Marischal
forsook and disdained, true to his affection for his Prince; and it is
even extremely probable that, after he became titular King, Charles, on a
secret expedition to England, visited Murray in his London house.
The vacant, contemned years, when his beautiful wife had ceased to share
his infamy, were partly beguiled in the composition of the ‘Memorials,’
which Mr. Fitzroy Bell has edited, with reinforcements from the Stuart
MSS., the papers in the Record Office, and the archives of the Quai
d’Orsay. In these we find a spectacle which is rare: a traitor convicted,
exposed, detested, yet still clinging to the Cause which he wrought for
and sold, still striving to batter himself into his own self-respect, and
to extenuate or bluster out his own dishonour. The Earl Marischal has
left us no memoirs; a manuscript which he gave to Sir Robert Murray Keith
has been lost. But Murray’s papers are still in the possession of his
great-grandson by a second marriage, Mr. George Siddons Murray, who has
generously sanctioned their publication.
John Murray, of Broughton, in Peeblesshire, was born in 1715, being
descended from a cadet of the house of Murray of Philiphaugh. His
father, Sir David Murray, was out in the Fifteen, but afterwards lived
peacefully, developed the lead mines of Strontian, and died before the
Forty-five. His son, educated at Edinburgh and Leyden Universities,
visited Rome in 1737-8, carried thither his ancestral politics, and
inflamed them at the light of Prince Charles’s eyes, ‘the finest I
ever saw.’[34] He found Charles ‘the most surprizingly handsome person
of the age,’ a description not borne out by the miniature in enamel
which he gave to his admirer in a diamond snuff-box.[35] Here we see
‘the complection that has in it somewhat of an uncommon delicacy;’ we
see large brown eyes, an oval face, and the bright hair hanging down
below the perruque, that hair which is treasured in a hundred rings,
sleeve-links, and lockets. But genuine portraits of the Prince do not
account for his epithet of ‘bonnie,’ and for his almost involuntary
successes with women. He had ‘an air,’ and was, indeed, a good-looking
boy enough; but he was no Adonis, the lower part of his face tending
early to overfulness. However, he won Murray’s heart, and he never lost
it.
Returning, in 1738, to Broughton, on the Tweed, Murray found himself a
near neighbour of Lord Traquair, then residing in his ancient château,
which lent its bears to Tully Veolan. The house has a legend of an avenue
gate never to be opened till the King comes again; but Lord Traquair, a
Jacobite from vanity, did nothing to promote a Restoration. He feebly
caballed, and at Traquair Murray may have drunk loyal healths enough
to float a ship. Inclined for more active measures, he succeeded old
Colonel Urquhart as Scottish correspondent of Edgar, the King’s secretary
in Rome. The appointment was approved of by the Duke of Hamilton, who,
dying in 1743, left the Garter, the gift of King George, and the Thistle,
the gift of King James! The new Duke was Jacobite enough to subscribe
1,500_l._ to the Cause and to accept James’s commission just before the
Prince landed, but he held aloof from the Rising.
Murray went into his business as Jacobite organiser with a cool and
clear head. He knew the value of documentary evidence, and when he
could he secured the signatures of adherents. In 1741 the ‘Association’
was formed, by Traquair, Lovat, Macgregor or Drummond of Balhaldie
(described in the essay on the Earl Marischal), the bankrupt Campbell
of Auchenbreck, father-in-law of Lochiel, and Lochiel himself, the
only honest man of the cabal. In March 1741, Murray was introduced to
Balhaldie. That chief promised mountains and marvels, including 20,000
stand of arms already stocked. Visionary weapons were these, as the
swords which fell from heaven into Clydesdale in 1684. Murray was invited
to trust Lovat, which he was disinclined to do, having heard from Lochiel
and from general rumour of that rogue’s unfathomable and capricious
treachery. Murray yielded, however, and the Association was launched.
First came the question of supplies. The Scots were loyal, but, as a
rule, would not part with a bawbee. Hay of Drumelzier kept a good grip of
the gear; Lockhart of Carnwath had no money by him; the Duke of Hamilton
evaded the question; and Lovat and Balhaldie opposed the recruiting of
new associates, who, if brought in, would have rebelled against such
incompetent or treacherous managers.
Nothing occurred till, in December 1742, Balhaldie sent some of his
Ossianic prophecies of a French invasion to Traquair. Murray did not
believe in the predictions, and only the feeblest attempts at organising
the country into districts were made. Auchenbreck was to manage
Argyllshire, Traquair was responsible for Scotland south of Forth.
Neither brought in an adherent. Weapons were lacking, and Balhaldie gave
no information about a plan of campaign. It was absolutely necessary to
know what France really intended, and, at the end of 1712, Murray himself
set out for Paris. In London he heard of the death of Cardinal Fleury—a
great blow to the cause. He found in Paris that Balhaldie was beguiling
France with exaggerated accounts of what the stingy and disorganised
Scots were prepared to do. Murray was merely mocked by Cardinal Tencin,
and from Amelot got only vague expressions of goodwill, and the warning
that ‘such enterprizes were dangerous and precarious.’ Yet Balhaldie
seemed much elated, and returned to England with Murray to put heart into
the English adherents. In England Murray found Colonel Cecil as little
satisfied with Balhaldie as himself, but the Celt hurried about with a
great air of business, and sent for Traquair to come to town.
Traquair did go to town, carrying a letter of Murray’s, to be forwarded
to the Earl Marischal. By the advice of Balhaldie (who was the last man
that ought to have seen the letter) Traquair burned it. This was a new
offence, and, in brief, the feud between Murray and Balhaldie became
inveterate.
In London Traquair did nothing. He never wrote to the party in Scotland,
and he brought back nothing but the names of the English leaders, the
Duke of Beaufort, Lord Orrery, Lord Barrymore, Sir John Hinde Cotton, and
Sir Watkin Williams Wynne. When Murray, in turning informer, divulged
these names, except that of Beaufort, he told Government nothing which
every man who cared did not know. But the English were thrown ‘into a
mortal fright,’ as Balhaldie found so late as 1749. They were always in a
mortal fright, always insisted that their Scottish allies should not even
know who they were. Thus concerted movements were made impossible. Murray
was dashed by the discovery that the English party was a mere set of five
or six _nominum umbræ_. Doubtless there were plenty of Squire Westerns,
who were ready to drink healths.
Were our glasses turned into swords,
Or our actions half as great as our words,
Were our enemies turned to quarts,
How nobly we should play our parts.
The least that we would do, each man should kill his two,
Without the help of France or Spain,
The Whigs should run a tilt, and their dearest blood be spilt,
And the King should enjoy his own again![36]
There may have been more serious intentions. In a Devonshire house
I saw, once, a fine portrait of James III., and learned that the
great-grandfather of the owner had burned compromising papers. Such
papers of English Jacobites, if any existed, seem always to have been
destroyed.
Traquair had done nothing; from Barrymore he got a promise of 10,000_l._,
from the rich Welsh baronet he got only excuses. Lovat, according to
Murray, said, in the Tower, that Beaufort had promised to raise 12,000
men, ‘whereby he exposed before the warders a nobleman to the resentment
of Government whom I had been at great pains to represent ... as no ways
privy to or concerned in our scheme.’
The year 1743 ended, and at its close (December 23) James announced to
Ormonde and to the Earl Marischal the French King’s resolution to help
him. Balhaldie brought the Prince to France, early in 1744. Nothing
was done, nothing was concerted. An attempt to engage the Cameronians,
through Kenmure and Sir Thomas Gordon of Earlstoun, was a predestined
failure. After Midsummer, 1744, Murray determined to visit France,
watch Balhaldie, and see the Prince. He casually discovered that a Mr.
Cockburn left the Jacobite cypher lying loose on his window seat, or
under a dictionary! These were pretty characters to manage a conspiracy;
but we have seen equal stupidity in ‘Jameson’s Raid.’ In London Murray
saw Dr. Barry, whom he later betrayed, as far as in him lay. He crossed
to Flanders, and met Balhaldie gambling in the Sun tavern at Rotterdam.
Balhaldie vapoured about buying arms, though ‘he had not credit for a
_louis d’or_,’ and bragged about the travelling chaise (the Prince’s
famous _chese_) which he had designed for his Royal Highness. Not to
pursue these chicaneries, Murray exposed Balhaldie and Sempil to Charles,
whom he met secretly behind the stables of the Tuileries. The Prince took
it very coolly, without loss of temper or excitement, but announced his
intention to visit Scotland next summer (1745) if he came with a single
servant. Murray replied that his arrival would ever be welcome, ‘but I
hoped it would not be without a body of troops.’ Murray then pointed out
that, in such an adventure, ‘he could not positively depend on more than
4,000 Highlanders, _if so many_,’ and that even these would infinitely
regret the measure.
Murray has been accused, by Maxwell of Kirkconnell, of putting Charles
upon this enterprise. In fact, his error lay in not formally and
explicitly warning the Prince from the first. Later he did send warning
letters, but Traquair did not try to deliver them, and Young Glengarry
failed in the attempt.
The result of Murray’s disclosures, and of a written Memorial which
he sent in, was to undeceive Charles as to Sempil and Balhaldie. His
letters to James are proofs of this, and now the split in the party was
incurable. Murray went to and fro, undermining Balhaldie. Balhaldie, at
the end of 1744, sent Young Glengarry from France, to work against Murray
on the mind of Lochiel. That chief brought the two future traitors,
Glengarry and Murray, together, and the Celt came into the Lowlander’s
bad opinion of Balhaldie. This was early in 1745. Murray now made the
mistake of trying to pin men to a declaration, in writing, that they
would join Charles, even if he came alone. His duty was to discourage any
such enterprise, which, unaided by France, could only mean ruin. On the
other hand, he actually engaged Macleod, the chief of the Skye men. With
Stewart of Appin, Macleod chanced to be in Edinburgh. Murray gave him a
letter from Charles, and described the character of that Prince. ‘Macleod
declared, in a kind of rapture, that he would make it his business to
advance his interest as much as was in his power, and would join him, let
him come when he would.’ This occurred at a meeting in a tavern attended
by the persons already mentioned, with Traquair, Glengarry, and Lochiel.
Of these men, Appin did not come out, Traquair skulked, Macleod turned
his coat, Glengarry became a spy, Murray was Murray, and only Lochiel
saved his honour. Next day, by Murray’s desire, Lochiel extracted from
Macleod a written promise to raise his clan, even if Charles came unaided
and alone.
How Macleod kept his promise we know. He sent his forces to join Loudon’s
detachment in Hanoverian service; the whole array was frightened back
in an attempt to surprise and capture Charles. They all ran like hares
from the blacksmith of Moy, with one or two gardeners and other retainers
of Lady Mackintosh, and the only man slain was Macrimmon, Macleod’s
piper, the composer of the prophetic lament, ‘Macleod shall return, but
Macrimmon shall never!’ Murray comments with great severity on Macleod’s
treason, and, in his promise, and that of others, finds justification
for Charles’s adventure, and an answer to the question, ‘Why he made
an attempt of such consequence with so small a force?’ All this leaves
Murray in a quandary.... To send such promises (as he did) was to
encourage Charles in a desperate project. To be sure Murray, later, did
attempt to stop Charles; but he should never have sent him these signed
encouragements, both from Macleod and Stewart of Appin. But Murray, he
says, now changed his mind; he made out a journal of all his proceedings,
showing Charles (most inconsistently) that all the party, except the
Duke of Perth, ‘were unanimous against his coming without a force.’
These papers Murray entrusted, for Charles, to Traquair, who was going
to England, and meant to proceed to France, using this very singular
expression, ‘that he would see the Prince, _though in a bawdy house_. The
present Earl of Weymss and Laird of Glengarry [Pickle] can vouch this.
The latter has since repeated it to me in my house in London.’
Traquair now went to London, but he never went to France, nor did he
transmit the warning to Charles. Meanwhile Murray extracted 1,500_l._
from the new Duke of Hamilton (a new fact), and the Duke of Perth paid an
equal sum, and even offered to mortgage his estate. Hamilton also gave
a verbal promise to join Charles ‘with all the forces he could raise.’
Murray again wrote to Charles, saying that he must bring at least 6,000
men. Perth, Elcho, and Lochiel signed this letter. This letter was sent
by one John Macnaughten. Did it ever arrive? In the Stuart Papers is a
letter signed ‘J. Barclay,’ and undated. It is clearly from Murray to
Charles, and announces the journal entrusted to Traquair, but contains no
warning.[37]
In a letter of March 14, 1745, to James, Charles refers to this letter
announcing the journal and other despatches, which had not arrived—as
Traquair never sent them. On April 9, Charles appears to refer to
Macnaughten’s budget of letters as not yet deciphered.[38]
From London Traquair sent only a note of doubtful and, at best, of
insignificant meaning. Nothing whatever was settled or arranged. Then
came Sir Hector, chief of the Macleans, to Scotland, where he was
arrested. Now, Murray reflected that the epistle sent by Macnaughten
‘contained rather a wish than an advice, and might not be sufficient to
prevent the Prince’s coming.’ Murray therefore sent, as a final warning,
that set of papers which Traquair had not forwarded, entrusting it to
Young Glengarry, at the end of May 1745. But Glengarry did not succeed in
seeing Charles, who was thus left without warning not to come. Perhaps no
warning would have stopped him; at all events he received none, and the
die was cast. The Prince embarked on June 22.
Murray’s whole book is one of self-justification. He may clear himself of
having suggested the unaided enterprise to Charles. But, partly through
the frivolity of Traquair, partly through the zeal of Murray, Charles was
left without decisive admonition. He saw his party distracted: for a year
and a half France had treated him ‘scandalously’ (as even the patient
James averred), and he determined to force the hands both of France and
the Jacobites. He pawned the Sobieski rubies—‘the Prince would wear them
with a very sore heart on this side of the water’—he put his life to
the hazard. If ever an attempt was to be made at all, Charles did well.
England was empty of troops. A success or two, the Prince reckoned, must
unite the distracted party on the one hand, and tempt or compel France
to action on the other. His motto was _de l’audace_! If all men had been
Lochiels, if the Duke of Hamilton, Macleod, Traquair, Lovat, Beaufort,
Barrymore, Orrery, and the rest, had honour and truth, if France had
such a thing as a policy, and could seize an opportunity, Charles would
have won the Crown. But many men are not Lochiels, and, if France had
a policy, it was not to restore the Stuarts, but to use them as a mere
diversion.
By the end of May Macnaughten returned, with news that Charles would be
in Scotland by July. This caused Murray much chagrin, but he at once
warned Perth, Lochiel, and Macleod. To the Duke of Hamilton he gave the
Prince’s commission, ‘which he accepted with great cheerfulness.’ Murray
then went to Lochiel, who remarked that every man of honour was bound to
rise, and who quite trusted Lovat and Macleod. He leaned on broken reeds.
Lovat temporised, Macleod turned his coat. Here Murray’s MS. breaks off,
and he continues the history of the Rising ‘from Moidart to Derby.’