Charles’s ‘unparalleled good nature and humanity,’ and his strategic
skill. Murray had desired to be an aide-de-camp: he clearly thinks
himself a good judge of warfare. He was obliged to be Secretary, but did
not covet that office. He, alone, had any previous personal knowledge
of Charles, with whom he was such a favourite as to excite the jealousy
of Lord George Murray and of Maxwell of Kirkconnell. These jealousies
were of perilous consequence. Maxwell, writing after Murray was the
most detested man on earth, charges heavily against him: ‘He began by
representing Lord George as a traitor to the Prince; he assured him
that he had joined on purpose to have an opportunity of delivering him
up to Government.’ Lord George heard of this, and was deeply affected.
Prestonpans nearly opened Charles’s eyes, but Lord George’s ‘haughty and
overbearing manner prevented a thorough reconciliation, and seconded the
malicious insinuations of his rival.... He now and then broke into such
violent sallies as the Prince could not digest....’
Now the loyalty of Lord George is beyond all shadow of suspicion.
Till his death, in 1760, he was the faithful and devoted subject of
King James. Even Murray, in his MSS., does not breathe a word against
him. But, if Murray did, at first, conceive suspicions, and suggest
precautions, it is impossible to blame him. What was Lord George’s
position? He had been out, at Glenshiel, in 1719, with his brother,
Tullibardine. He was pardoned, and was residing in Scotland. He never
appears as a Jacobite in the negotiations of 1740-45. His brother
William, who, but for his steady Jacobitism, would have been Duke of
Atholl, came over with Charles. The actual Duke, _de facto_, Lord
George’s brother James, deserted Blair Atholl on the approach of the
Highlanders, and went to London. Tullibardine (William) assumed the title
of Duke, and occupied Blair. Lord George also joined the Prince. But
Murray had to ask himself, was Lord George in earnest? Murray knew the
treachery of the times, and had employed James Mohr Macgregor, known to
be a Hanoverian spy, to beguile Cope and the Lord Chief Justice. Was Lord
George, Murray would think, playing James Mohr’s part on the other side?
Murray had reason for suspicion. As late as August 20, 1745, after the
standard was raised at Glenfinnan, Lord George wrote to the Lord Advocate
from Dunkeld. He announced that, on the following day, he and Old
Glengarry would wait on Cope at Crieff. Cope was marching North to fight
the Prince. Lord George talked of ‘the Pretender,’ and sent information.
He _did_ wait on Cope. As late as September 1, he was corresponding with
his Hanoverian brother, Duke James, but, on September 3, he announced
to his brother that he was about to join the Prince. ‘Duty to King and
Country overweighs everything.’[39]
As a matter of fact, Lord George simply, if rather suddenly, changed
his mind, engaging, like Lord Pitsligo, ‘without enthusiasm,’ and it
seems without hope. He thought that honour called him. But to Murray
Lord George’s conduct in first colloguing with Cope, and then rallying
to Charles, must have seemed suspicious. It _was_ suspicious: to Cope it
must have appeared the blackest treason. ‘Lord George,’ Murray would say,
‘is betraying somebody; now, whom is he betraying?’
A curious piece of gossip has lately come to light. It was said that one
of the Highland army, in England, had a squabble with a wayfaring man,
and broke his staff, in which was found a letter from the Whig brother
Duke James, to Lord George, suggesting that, in a battle, he should
desert, carrying over the Atholl men. Probably the story is false, and
based on the sending _to_ Duke James of letters, by one of his servants,
concealed in the shank of a whip. In any case, Lord George was never
really reconciled to Murray, and Charles (after Lord George counselled
retreat at Derby, retreat at Stirling, and the abandonment of the
surprise at Nairn) never trusted, never forgave him, wished to imprison
him in France, and shut his door against him. James in vain remonstrated,
Charles was implacable.
At Carlisle, on the march southwards, there was a great quarrel. Lord
George resigned his commission, offering to serve as a volunteer.
Charles accepted the resignation. The Duke of Perth was acting as
commander-in-chief. He was a Catholic, and Lord George deemed that this
would have an ill effect, besides he himself was a much senior and
infinitely more experienced officer. Lord George also urged that Murray
‘took everything upon him, both as to civil and military.’ The Duke of
Perth then resigned his command, apparently on the advice of Maxwell of
Kirkconnell, who praises his magnanimity. Murray also, he himself tells
us, withdrew from the councils of war, ‘which seemed to quiet Lord George
a good deal.’ Lord George became general in chief, and distinguished
himself by skill and personal bravery. But the quarrel was never
reconciled. Unluckily Murray gives no account of the decision to retreat
from Derby. Then no more councils were held, and ‘little people’ (that
is, Murray) were allowed to advise: till Lord George and the chiefs sent
in a remonstrance.
Murray breaks off in his narrative at Derby, and does not resume it till
after Culloden. He had fallen ill at Elgin, in March 1746, where Charles
also had a severe attack of pneumonia.[40]
Murray was carried across country to Mrs. Grant’s house in Glenmoriston.
Everything fell into worse confusion after his departure, his successor,
John Hay of Restalrig, being incompetent. At Glenmoriston Murray heard
from Archibald Cameron of the defeat at Culloden. In the shape of a
letter from a friend of Mr. Murray of Broughton, he describes and
justifies his own conduct after ‘the wicked day of destiny.’
It is, perhaps, less easy to justify the conduct of his master. The
irredeemable point in Charles’s behaviour in Scotland was his withdrawal
from the remnant of his army, which met at Ruthven. There is much
obscurity as to the details, as to whether a place of rendezvous had been
fixed upon or not. But Charles knew where the army and officers were; he
received a scolding letter from Lord George, and he declined to return to
the forces. His distrust of Lord George had revived; he knew that there
were men who would not scruple to win their pardon by betraying him, and,
with Sheridan, O’Sullivan, O’Niel, and others, he made for the islands.
Murray, after news came of the defeat, was carried to Fort Augustus, and
thence to Lochgarry’s house. Hoping even yet to rally a force, he met
the wounded and outworn Duke of Perth at Invergarry, to no result. He
then was carried to Lochiel’s country, and Lochiel determined to wage a
guerilla war in the hills, expecting French assistance. Murray sent Archy
Cameron to Arisaig to get news of Charles, but Archy learned from Hay of
Restalrig that the Prince had already taken boat for the Isles. Archy
disbelieved Hay, but Charles had really gone, or was on the very point
of going (April 26). Certain news reached Murray and Lochiel; the chief
determined to remain with his clan, on a point of honour, and Murray
stood by Lochiel, as also did Major Kennedy. They could have fled in the
French vessels which landed the gold of the fatal treasure, but they were
resolute to stand by each other.[41] Those who departed were the dying
Duke of Perth, a sacrifice to his own chivalrous devotion: Lord Elcho,
who presently tried to gain his pardon; old Sir Thomas Sheridan, who soon
afterwards died, heart-broken, at Rome; Lord John Drummond, Lockhart of
Carnwath, and Hay of Restalrig.
Murray now arranged for the burial of the French gold, and then
Glenbucket, with the poet-soldier John Roy Stewart, Clanranald,
Lochgarry, Barisdale, Young Scotus, and Lovat, held a council. Lovat
proposed holding out in the hills, and promised the aid of his son,
Simon, and 400 Frazers. Murray suspected the old fox, and proposed that
all should sign a ‘band’ of mutual fidelity. Lovat would not sign!
The allies were to rendezvous in ten days at Loch Arkaig, and, later, the
meeting was deferred for another week. But the Master of Lovat ‘was never
so much as heard of’ at the tryst; Lochgarry brought but 100 men, and
Murray accuses him of treacherous intentions, this on the suggestion of
Barisdale. Now Lochgarry left, and did not return, nor did his sentinels
bring in news of an approaching English force. Of all this Lochgarry says
nothing in his report to Young Glengarry, published by Mr. Blaikie. But,
as we know with absolute certainty that Barisdale was an infamous coward,
liar, and traitor, while Lochgarry was loyal to his death, we need not
accept Barisdale’s evidence against a cousin whom he detested. However
it happened, no news came from Lochgarry, and, if Murray himself had not
sent out scouts, the whole party, with Lochiel, would have been taken
near Loch Arkaig.[42]
The game being now up, Murray made his way South, in exceedingly bad
health, aggravated by exposure and fatigue. His idea was to get a ship on
the East Coast, where Lochiel would join him, and to escape. But Murray
was captured, through information given by a herd-boy, at the house of
his sister, Mrs. Hunter of Polmood. He certainly did not intend to be
captured, and he says that, even after he was taken, he tried to arrange
about a ship for Lochiel. He also vindicates the conduct of his wife,
who was about to bear a child, and he justifies his honesty in money
matters. Now in money matters Murray’s hands were clean, and there is no
real ground for the charges against poor Mrs. Murray. But what Murray
does not say, is that, as soon as he was approached, after his capture,
by the Lord Justice Clerk, he promised ‘to discover all he knew.’[43]
He did not tell _all_ he knew, but on August 13, being examined in the
Tower, he told a great deal. About Traquair he spoke out: he named the
English Jacobite leaders, he told his tale about Macleod in the tavern
meeting, he sheltered Macdonald of Sleat, and even screened Lovat as far
as he dared: in fact, he took revenge on half-hearted Jacobites, and, for
some reason, did his best to hang Sir John Douglas. He sent in an account
of the Clans, in substance much like that in the MS. of 1750.[44] He
betrayed the secret of the Loch Arkaig treasure, and asked to be allowed
to go to the spot, and point it out to the agents of Government. In reply
to Murray, Traquair and Dr. Barry lied firmly, under examination, and Sir
John Douglas refused to answer any questions. They suffered imprisonment,
but escaped with life for lack of corroboration. Some legal jugglery was
needed before Murray could be accepted as King’s Evidence, but the trick
was played, and the Laird of Broughton publicly ‘peached’ at Lovat’s
trial. He declares that he peached with economy. ‘The utmost care was
taken to conceal everything that was not known by his own letters, of
which he was so sensible that he sent me thanks by Mr. Fowler (Gentleman
Gaoler of the Tower), for my forbearance, and said he was not the least
hurt or offended by anything I had said.’
Such are Murray’s excuses. He could have told more, and Lovat might have
died without his testimony, on the evidence of various Frazers. Murray
was pardoned in June 1748. He tried to provoke Traquair to a duel and
vapoured with cloak and sword behind Montague House. He associated with
Young Glengarry, whom he very probably thought an honest man, and his
visits a privilege. Glengarry doubtless got from Murray information
about the Loch Arkaig treasure, and, perhaps, picked up a few crumbs
of intelligence for his employers. His wife had not left Murray, in
1749, when he reconciled his lady to the loss of her repeater, pawned
by a priest named Leslie for the relief of Young Glengarry, who was
starving.[45] When Mrs. Murray left her intolerable lord is not exactly
known, nor is anything certain about her later fortunes. In May 1749,
Stonor tells Edgar that Murray’s ‘late actions have not only the
appearance of a knave but a madman, and it is the opinion of most
people he is really also the latter, several of his family having been
disordered in their senses, and his present situation sufficient to
cause it in him, as he can’t but feel the sting of such a conscience,
finds himself the outcast of mankind, and _is in circumstances extremely
indigent_.’ It follows that he did not keep the money buried in the
garden of Menzies of Culdares, some 4,000_l._[46] Traquair had Murray
arrested by a warrant of the Lord Chief Justice, for provoking a breach
of the peace.[47]
In 1764, Murray sold Broughton. His agent was Sir Walter Scott’s father,
and, as we all know, Mr. Scott threw the cup from which Murray had drunk
out of the window. The younger Dumas, probably by a chance coincidence,
uses this in his play, ‘L’Étrangère.’ After selling Broughton, Murray
is said to have lived in London, and family tradition avers that he
was visited by Charles, whom he introduced to his little boy as ‘your
_King_.’ This ought, then, to be dated 1766, or later. Murray is said to
have justified Stonor’s letter, already cited, by dying in a madhouse,
on December 6, 1777. He was sane enough, certainly, when he wrote his
‘Memorials.’ Such was Murray of Broughton, in spite of his treachery a
devoted believer in the Cause; till his capture, a brave, loyal, and
constant supporter of the Cause; a man by nature honourable, and a lover
of honour in others, as in Lochiel and the Duke of Perth. He sinned, when
he did sin, in violation of every tradition of education, and, in turning
Informer, wrenched every fibre of his moral nature. His servant, a poet
of the time remarks, set his master an example.
Behold, the menial hand that broke your bread,
That wiped your shoes, and with your crumbs was fed,
When life and riches, proffered to his view,
Before his eyes the strong temptation threw,
Rather than quit integrity of heart,
Or act, like you, th’unmanly traytor’s part,
Disdains the purchase of a worthless life,
And bares his bosom to the butcher’s knife.
But Murray renounced honour and lingered on the scene.
And whither, whither, can the guilty fly
From the devouring worms that never die?
‘Lead us not into temptation.’ The view of death brought Murray face to
face with a self in his breast, which, it is probable, he had never known
to exist: that awful contradictory self to which each of us has yielded,
though few in such extremity of surrender.
IV
MADEMOISELLE LUCI
In ‘Pickle the Spy’ mention was frequently made of ‘Mademoiselle Luci,’
the mysterious young lady who, from 1749 to her death in 1752, was the
French Egeria of Prince Charles. An exile, without a roof to cover his
head in any land but the States of the Pope, to which he declined to go,
the Prince was sheltered in the Parisian convent of St. Joseph by Mlle.
Luci and the lady styled _La Grande Main_ in the cypher of the Prince’s
correspondence. By dint of some research, I discovered that Mlle. Luci
was Mlle. Ferrand, while La Grande Main was her devoted friend, Madame
de Vassé. Both were very intimate with a person always alluded to in
the Prince’s correspondence as _le philosophe_. As Montesquieu lived
in the same street (the Rue Dominique) as these ladies (who directed
the Prince’s philosophical studies), as he was on friendly terms with
Charles, Lord Elibank, Bulkeley, and other Jacobites, I concluded that
the _philosophe_ of the correspondence was probably the author of
‘L’Esprit des Lois.’ This was a blunder which criticism should have
detected. The _philosophe_ was not Montesquieu, but the Abbé Condillac.
The proof is in the preliminary chapter of his ‘Traité des Sensations;’
he there dedicates that important psychological work to Madame de Vassé,
and deplores the death of their beloved Mlle. Ferrand. Condillac,
clearly, was their friend, _le philosophe_. Mlle. Ferrand, it seems,
was the instructor of Condillac, as well as the protector and literary
adviser of Prince Charles.
‘You know, Madame,’ says Condillac to Madame de Vassé, ‘to whom I owe
the light which at length scattered my prejudices. You know what part
she had in this book, that lady so justly dear to you, so worthy of your
friendship and esteem. I consecrate my work to her memory, and I address
you that I may share the pleasure of speaking about her and the pain of
our common sorrow. May this book be the monument of your friendship, and
preserve it unforgotten.’
A volume on the relations of sense and thought, like Condillac’s, is not
the place to which one naturally turns in search of information about a
girl who loyally served a proscribed Prince and a forsaken Cause. Yet
it is Condillac who attests for us ‘the keenness, the just balance, of
Mlle. Ferrand’s intellect, and the vivacity of her imagination, qualities
apparently incompatible, when carried to the pitch at which she displayed
them.’
The scheme of Condillac’s psychology cannot be discussed in this place,
but he says that he owed everything to Prince Charles’s friend. ‘She
enlightened me as to the principles, the plan, and the most minute
details, and I ought to be the more grateful, as she had no idea of
instructing me, or of making a book. She did not remark that she was
becoming an author, having no design beyond that of conversing with me
on the topics in which I was interested.... Had she taken up the pen,
this work would be a better proof of her genius. But there was in her
a delicacy which forbade her even to contemplate authorship.... This
treatise is, unhappily, but the result of conversations with her, and I
fear that I may have sometimes failed to place her ideas in their true
light.’
Had Mlle. Ferrand survived, Condillac thinks that she would not have
allowed him to acknowledge her influence on his work. ‘But how can I,
to-day, deny myself the pleasure of this act of justice? Nothing but this
remains to me, in our loss of a wise adviser, an enlightened critic, and
a true friend. You, Madame, will share the pleasure with me, you who will
not cease to regret her while you live.’ The philosopher speaks of ‘the
intellect, the loyalty, the courage, which formed these ladies for each
other.’ Loyalty, courage, wit, these women laid them at the feet of a
Prince not their own, and solely recommended to their tenderness by his
misfortunes.
‘Your friend, in dying, had this one consolation, Madame, that she was
not to survive you. I have seen her happy in this reflection. “Speak
sometimes of me with Madame de Vassé,” she said to me, “and let it be
with a kind of pleasure.”’ Such was the girl, so brilliantly endowed,
so brave, so affectionate, who did Prince Charles’s marketing, bought
him novels and razors, directed his choice of books, was the channel
through which his secret correspondence passed, was jealously regarded
by his mistress, Madame de Talmond, and died before the end of all hope
had come, before the Prince was renounced even by his own. To the angry
Madame de Talmond she wrote, ‘I am strongly attached to your friend [the
Prince] and for him would do and suffer anything short of stooping to an
act of baseness.’
There must have been something in Charles, beyond his misfortunes, to win
so much devotion from a woman of the highest intellect.
Mlle. Ferrand died, after a long illness, in October 1752. Her memory
is preserved only by a note in Grimm’s correspondence, by the touching
tribute of Condillac, and by the discovery of her kindness to a
proscribed Prince. While she protected and advised him, she was inspiring
a renowned philosopher, and keeping a secret which every diplomatist in
Europe was eager to learn. We naturally desire to know whether Mlle.
Ferrand was beautiful as well as talented and kind. But researches in
France have not brought to light any portrait either of Mlle. Ferrand,
or of Madame de Vassé, who long survived her friend, and was in
correspondence, about 1760, with the Earl Marischal.[48]
V
THE ROMANCE OF BARISDALE
While the Lowlanders, for nearly fifteen hundred years, had cast on
Highland robbers the eyes of hatred and contempt, Sir Walter Scott
suddenly taught men to think a cateran a very fine fellow. The
unanimity of a non-Highland testimony had previously been wonderful.
‘The Highlanders are great thieves,’ says Dio Cassius, speaking for
civilisation as early as A.D. 200-230. Gildas, in the sixth century,
calls the Highlanders (Picti) ‘a set of bloody free booters, with more
hair on their thieves’ faces than clothes to cover their nakedness.’
Early mediæval writers talk of the _bestiales Picts_ (‘the beastly
Picts’), and later Lowland opinions to a similar effect are too familiar
for quotation. To Scott was left the discovery of the virtues of the
honest cateran, who looked on cattle-stealing as an ennobling occupation
in the intervals of war.
Sir Walter’s opinion ran through Europe like the Fiery Cross. His
grandson, Hugh Littlejohn, stirred up by the ‘Tales of a Grandfather,’
dirked his small brother slightly with a pair of scissors in a childish
enthusiasm! Even the moral Wordsworth, moved by Scott, had a good word
for Rob Roy. Yet about that hero Sir Walter cherished no illusions. He
knew Rob’s Letter of Submission to General Wade, after 1715. Rob, of
course, had been out for King James, but he coolly says to Wade: ‘I not
only avoided acting offensively against his Majesty’s’ (King George’s)
‘forces, but, on the contrary, sent His Grace the Duke of Argyle all the
intelligence I could from time to time of the strength and situation of
the Rebels; which I hope his Grace will do me the justice to acknowledge.’
‘All the _demerits_ ascribed to him by his enemies are less to his
discredit than this one _merit_ which he assumes to himself,’ says
Jamieson.[49] The double-faced traitor, Rob’s son, James Mohr, one of the
bravest of men, _chassa de race_. The truth is that a life of plunder,
however romantic and however little regarded as immoral or degrading
by Highland opinion, really did foster, in educated men, the most
astonishing perfidy. This is the last vice we look for in the generous
cateran; and, indeed, the outlaws of Glen Moriston were as loyal to their
Prince as Lochiel. But the prevalent opinion that robbery, sanctioned by
tradition, does not degrade the general character, can be proved to be
an error. We read about Cluny that, in 1742-5, he held the usual belief.
‘He was certain it’ (the habit of robbery) ‘proceeded only from the
remains of barbarism, for he had many convincing proofs that in other
respects the dispositions of the people in these parts were generally
as benevolent, humane, and even generous, as those of any country
whatever.’[50]
Cluny was right about the untutored mass of the people, but he was wrong
about a few educated chiefs, who encouraged and lived on an unfortunate
tradition. Thus Sir Walter Scott writes about the thief whose history we
are to narrate, Macdonnell of Barisdale: ‘He was a scholar and well-bred
gentleman. He engraved on his broadswords the well-known lines:
Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.’[51]
Barisdale knew what was right; his following knew only his will. He was
the blackest of traitors; they were true as steel.
The specially robber tribes in 1715-45 were those of the dispossessed
Macgregors, whose hand was, necessarily, against every man’s hand; of
the Macdonnells in Knoydart; and of some of the Camerons in Lochaber and
Rannoch. Old Lovat, too, discouraging schools, kept up sedulously the
ancient clan ideas. No other sections of the Highlanders are accused,
even by Whigs, of robbery. Mackays, Mackenzies, Grants, Mackintoshes,
Macphersons, Macleans are not blamed, and such gentlemen of the Camerons
and Macdonnells as Lochiel, Scothouse, and Keppoch are specially
exculpated. Lochiel was a reformer within his clan. The gallant Keppoch
had forsworn the predatory habits which, in 1689, made his people
threaten Inverness. Of Scothouse we shall hear the most excellent report.
Now, it cannot be by a mere fortuitous coincidence that all the Highland
traitors, James Mohr, Old Lovat, Glengarry, Barisdale, and some others,
come precisely from the homes of cattle thieves, and from a factitious
hothouse of old clan ideas; from the Macgregor country, Knoydart, the
worst part of Lochaber, and Rannoch. Yet, so strange was the condition of
the North, that we find Barisdale, the meanest wretch of all, recognised
as an acquaintance by so high a Lowland dame as the ‘Great Lady of the
Cat,’ the Countess of Sutherland.
We now proceed to the story of the chief who loved a Virgilian quotation.