not the least curious. Both the spy and the chief entertained great
expectations from Government, and both confess that these hopes ‘vanished
with those then at the helme,’ obviously, that is, with Henry Pelham’s
death.
Glengarry goes on, in his letter to Macleod, ‘_but to be explicit
on this_’ (namely, on his ‘being made sure’ of the abandonment of
Government’s claims on his estate) ‘and the confusion my father and the
late unluckie troubles left this estate would draw to tow great lenth, I
will therefore reffer it till meeting.’ He ends with compliments ‘to Lady
Macleod, and the two lovely little Misses.’
It would have been pleasant to hear Glengarry when, over a bottle, he
was ‘explicit’ on the reasons for which Henry Pelham promised to abate
the demands on his estate. Government knew that Glengarry was in the
affair of Loch Arkaig. They arrested his accomplices in 1751, but left
him free. Government knew, by their spies, that Glengarry frequented the
Earl Marischal in Paris in 1752, and that, in 1753, he was perpetually
running over, as a Jacobite agent, to Paris. But they then arrested
Glenevis and Fassifern, while they promised to abate their claims on
Glengarry’s estate! To explain all this to Macleod ‘over a magnum,’ as
Glengarry elsewhere convivially remarks, could not be an easy task. His
letter, in the draft, is undated, but on the same page is a letter to his
solicitor, Mr. Orme, W.S., dated ‘Greenfield, 21 June, 1758.’ In this
letter he speaks of that just cited as having been sent ‘by this very
post.’ Macleod was in Edinburgh, but left before Glengarry’s appeal could
reach him. Now, without the 400_l._ the Chief could not go to town. He
therefore wrote again to Macleod, repeating his supplication, and being
‘explicit’ indeed as to his former patron in the Government, though not
as to the reasons for his patronage.
‘An absolute discharge of the heavie claim the Government has against me
I was once promised, but those that was then at the helme _are no more_.’
The only person of those ‘then at the helme’ who was now, in 1758, ‘no
more’ was precisely Henry Pelham. He died in March 1754. Pickle was his
‘man.’ Pickle had received promises from him which were never fulfilled.
So, oddly enough, had Glengarry! We know what Pickle’s services to Henry
Pelham had been; we can guess at those of Glengarry. But after Henry
Pelham’s death—in fact, at the very time of his death—Prince Charles’s
party broke up for ever in England, and the Earl Marischal quarrelled
irreconcilably with the Prince. The services of Pickle were therefore
no longer needed. Pelham’s engagements with him were not kept, and the
promise to Glengarry, by a coincidence, was also broken by the faithless
English Government.
People who maintain that Glengarry was not Pickle may be asked to produce
a theory which will account for the singular series of coincidences in
the fortunes of the Chief and the spy. Even in this new coincidence
alone, it will be interesting to see how they explain the circumstance
that Glengarry, like Pickle, found his expectations blasted, and the
promises made to him unfulfilled, in consequence of the death of
Pickle’s employer, the brother of the Duke of Newcastle. What possible
claim could a professed Jacobite agent, known for such to Government,
as young Glengarry was, have on the good offices of the First Lord of
the Treasury? It has been fondly suggested that Pickle was an unknown
miscreant, personating Glengarry. That will be shown to be physically
impossible; but, granting the hypothesis, why was Glengarry, no less than
Pickle, favoured by Henry Pelham? No other person can be meant by the
phrase ‘those at the helme,’ now ‘no more.’ Newcastle, indeed, was out of
office in 1756, if ‘no more’ is explained as ‘out of office.’ But when
Glengarry wrote to Macleod in 1758 Newcastle was again at the Treasury.
Macleod would not back Glengarry’s bill for 400_l._ His agents advised
him against this measure. In February 1760 Pickle, who was anxious to
go to London, asked the Duke of Newcastle to send him a bill, payable
at sight, ‘for whatever little sum is judged proper for the present.’
The Duke’s answer, with the bill payable at sight for the little sum to
defray Pickle’s travelling expenses, is to be directed by his Grace
‘To Alexander Mackdonell of Glengary by Foraugustus.’
Apparently, then, Pickle had some means of getting at Glengarry’s
correspondence. The two gentlemen spell ‘Fort Augustus’ in the same
singular way. On September 11, 1758, Glengarry wrote to Mr. Orme’s
subordinate:—
‘Will you dow me the favour to order me the “Calledonian Mercury”
regullarly every post to the care of Mr. William Fraser, merchant at
forAugustus?’
The almost unvarying uniformity in bad spelling which marks Pickle and
Glengarry will be commented on later.
The last years of Glengarry were disturbed by the legal results of an
early piece of domestic slyness. His father, old Glengarry, commonly
described as a weak, indolent man, married, first, a lady named
Mackenzie, of the Hilton family. As his eldest son was not of age in
January 1745 the marriage may have been in 1723 or 1724. After bearing
a second son, Æneas, and apparently a daughter, Isobel, Lady Glengarry
died (1727). In a deed of 1728 we find Old Glengarry already remarried
to a daughter of Gordon of Glenbucket, who in 1724 was nearly murdered
by evicted Macphersons. The stepmother of Young Glengarry was a managing
woman, and ‘factrix’ of her husband’s estates. Now, in 1738 Old Glengarry
pawned or ‘wadsetted’ his lands of Cullachy to his kinsman Lochgarry. The
wadsetter paid 2,000 merks in money and gave bills for the rest. But in
January 1745, when Alastair was in Scotland on furlough from his French
regiment, Old Glengarry formally ‘disponed’ his estates to his eldest
son. Doubtless this was done with an eye to the chances of a rising; in
any case, the transaction was kept a secret from Glengarry’s wife and
factrix.
Hence arose trouble, for the pawned estate of Cullachy had been
redeemed. Lochgarry had been paid his 2,000 merks, or they were set
off against another debt, but his bills were not returned to him. They
lay in Lady Glengarry’s custody, and she could not be asked for them
without revealing the secret transference of the whole property to
Young Glengarry in 1745. He therefore gave Lochgarry a written promise
that the bills should never be used against him. But Lochgarry being
attainted, after 1745, and exiled, his possessions were forfeited to the
Crown. Government therefore demanded, in 1758, that Glengarry should
redeem from them Lochgarry’s wadset of Cullachy. He pleaded that it was
already redeemed before 1745, but of this he could bring no evidence. He
writes to his Agent on August 2, 1758, that he is not certain of the year
of the wadset (really 1738), as he was not then in the kingdom; he was in
France. ‘Lochgarry being more in debt to the familly than the [amount of
the] mortgage, he delivered up his contract of wadsett, which I thought
was all the seremony necessary; and the signature being tore from it was
laid, according to custom, among the family papers, which were carried
off, and are now in Sir Everard Falconer’s custody.’ He knows little of
estate affairs, ‘as I was always abroad.’ His rental of 1744 was burned
with the house of his factor, Donald McDonell, Younger of Scotus.
After the Rebellion, he did not meddle in matters of the property, till
his father’s death (1754). ‘The tenants could hardly pay what would
subsist him.’
‘Every tenant took possession of what farme he pleased.’ In 1746 ‘Mrs.
Mc.Donell of Lochgary being destitute of all suport, having a numerous
family of young children, came from Badenoch, took possession of
Cullachy, and there lived untill she followed her Husband abroad.’
‘The lands of Cullachie was only set till lately from year to year, the
tenants were frequently removed, I know of no written rentall, it is
not customary ... Discharges were not formerly required, nor were they
necssary.’
Glengarry explains all this to his Agent on January 6, 1759:—
‘When I got disposition to my Father’s estate I was then under age, at
this time Lady Glengarry, _how_ [who] then had so much to Say with her
husband, the Disposition Grant was concealed from her, and as the Bill
granted by Lochgarry was in her Custody, had they demanded it would have
Discovered the Scheme in my favours, I granted my Obligatory to Lochgery
that these Bills should never make against him.’
The sense can be puzzled out of the anacoloutha.
On February 3, 1759, he repeats his story:—
‘I will only observe that the reason of the bills not being cancelled
or retired by Lockgerry, was that they were then in Lady Glengarry’s
custody, and that the disposition of my Father’s estate in my favour was
keept secret from her, which would have been discovered had Lochgerry
demanded his bills, and this occasioned my giving him my obligation they
should never make against him.’
The whole affair is a specimen of the informal manner in which Highland
business was done. The frequency of ‘removals’ of tenants also throws
doubt on the theory that Evictions were a novelty introduced by the
Commissioners of Forfeited Estates. The anarchy after Culloden is shown
by the squatting of tenants on whatever farms they chose to select.
The Judges could not be induced to accept Glengarry’s account of the
redemption of Cullachy, as he had no documentary evidence, and Cullachy
appears, after the Chiefs death, among his mortgaged lands.[117]
The latest of the drafts in Glengarry’s Letter Book are of December 1758,
January 1759. He appears much aggrieved by Colonel Trapaud, Governor
of Fort Augustus, for the following cause: his ground-steward had been
claimed, unjustly it seems, as a deserter from the army. A party of
soldiers then acted in the manner described in the following draft, which
has no date or address:—
‘The party in the dead of night was posted round my hutt, of which I was
ignorant untill my servants were stopped from going from door to door.
Alarmed at this, I suspected some straglers were come to break open some
valts in the old Castle, which was formerly Done.’
The indignant chief drafts the following remonstrance to Colonel Trapaud:—
‘I never thought to have reason to write you in so cooll a
strain. My own Behaviour, not to mention the pollitess showen
to you by my friends in Generall since you lived in this
countrey claimd a more Gentle return, and as our Actions are
always above Board It depends upon yourself that the same
Harmony Should allways subsist, and I will be very happie still
to remain,
Sir,
Your sincere friend and Humble servant.’
Trapaud’s behaviour, Glengarry writes, is ‘picking,’ and Pickle also
spells _pique_ ‘pick.’ The worst of it is that Glengarry ‘is lick to
lose the use of his eyes,’ for at the time of this assault in his ‘hutt’
he was exceedingly ill. ‘I am now writting,’ he says to Colonel Lambert
(January 6, 1759) ‘in this confus’d stile with only the fowrth part of
one eye open, beeing near losing my life with a plague of a distemper,
which, when recovered, seised my eyes.’ On January 15, 1759, he tells
Captain Forbes that he can hardly see. On February 24, 1759, he expresses
a civil surprise at Macleod’s refusal to back his bill for 400_l._ On
February 3, he was still ‘hardly able to crall,’ but intended to go
south; his sister Bell was going to Edinburgh. Macleod’s persistent
refusal probably made the journey to London impossible, where Glengarry
expected ‘to be off or on with the Government claim against my estate.’
There are no later drafts in the Letter Book, but Pickle, at all events,
had the use of _his_ eyes when he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle on
February 19, 1760,[118] offering to raise a regiment. Glengarry, six
weeks later, urged the same proposal through the Duke of Atholl.
On April 21, 1761, Glengarry made his will. He recommends his sister and
sole executrix to seal up his cabinet, which is not to be opened ‘till
the friends of the family meet.’ The Macdonnells of Greenfield, Leek, and
Cullachy are then ‘to see all the political and useless letters among my
papers burnt and destroyed, as the preservation of them can answer no
purpose.’
Mr. Fraser Mackintosh, who publishes these extracts, adds, ‘why Glengarry
who lived several months after the execution of his will, did not himself
destroy the papers above alluded to, can be conjectured by people for
themselves—all that need be said here is that their destruction was a
pity, and the reason given unsatisfactory.’[119] His affairs ‘were found
to be in a deplorable state.’ It may be conjectured that Glengarry clung
to his papers, which must have been compromising enough. If his malady
again affected his eyes, he might be unable to select the documents which
it was wiser to destroy. Nor could he well endure to entrust ‘my sister
Bell’ with the task of selection. She must not know her brother’s guilt.
That secret must have oozed out, for it has left traces in tradition.[120]
Thus closed miserably a singular career. Impoverished, dying in a ‘hutt,’
beside the ruins of his feudal castle, distrusted, not even permitted to
see his young nephew and heir, Glengarry reaped the harvest sown by his
mysterious attendant, Pickle.
XI
THE CASE AGAINST GLENGARRY
Of all the companions of Pickle, the most inseparable was Glengarry. Now,
since the appearance of ‘Pickle the Spy,’ the author has been denounced
before the Gaelic Society! Amidst ‘applause’ a Celtic gentleman, the
news-sheets say, accused me of bringing a charge of an odious nature,
_without any proofs_. Of course, if I have no proofs, nobody who thinks
so need argue against what I, myself, regard as a chain of irrefragable
circumstantial evidence. Nor am I aware that any arguments, beyond
clamour, have been advanced, in favour of Glengarry’s innocence, except
those which I shall presently examine. But first I must meet the charge
of wresting facts to suit my ‘prepossessions.’
I had no prepossessions: how should I? If I knew so much as that there
was any young Glengarry, before I read the Pickle letters, it was
the limit of my information. These documents were pointed out to me,
several years ago, by Sir E. Maunde Thompson, when I was in search of
a manuscript to print for the Roxburghe Club. I began to read them,
where they are to be found, scattered through five or six volumes of the
Pelham Papers, in the British Museum. They are not all in sequence in
one volume, nor in chronological order. On a first hasty examination,
nothing appeared to indicate their author. I therefore had transcripts
made of the Pickle Letters, and, after reading them, arranged them
chronologically, being helped, where dates failed, by their allusions to
public events: such as the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the death
of Henry Pelham, and so forth.
On a first glance at the originals, I had no hope of detecting the spy
called Pickle. He might be a servant, secretary, or retainer of any
Jacobite family. But indications as to his identity kept occurring,
when once the papers were sorted, and the hunting instinct awoke in
the reader, the fever of the chase. Pickle was apparently no ‘paltry
vidette,’ for he was in close relations with the Prime Minister, Henry
Pelham, and, later, with the Duke of Newcastle. Now a lacquey may, as
Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s dispatches show, report to an Ambassador,
but a Prime Minister is less easy of access. Next, Pickle was, or had
succeeded in persuading Pelham that he was, a person of the first
importance in the Highlands. A critic has replied that, of course, a
spy would pretend to be important, and, naturally, would be accepted as
such. Ministers are scarcely so gullible. They do not accept a casual
stranger’s identity without inquiry.
Presently it appeared, from a letter of the Court Trusty, or Secret
Service man, Bruce,[121] who attended Pickle in Edinburgh, that he
now, by his father’s death, was head of a great clan. Pickle’s father’s
death occurred in September 1754. Now, on examination, it appeared
that Old Glengarry, and no other Chief, died on September 1, 1754, in
Edinburgh, where we find Pickle, with Young Lochgarry, in mid September.
Pickle, writes Bruce, the Court Trusty (signing ‘Cromwell’) is adulated
by military society in Edinburgh, where he stays for at least a month.
He is to be observed, when he goes North, by the Governor of Fort
Augustus, near which lie Glengarry’s lands. The Governor (Trapaud) writes
unfavourably of the new Glengarry (December 13, 1754), and Pickle writes
that he will, if not permitted the use of arms, prevent officers from
shooting over his lands.
Pickle then is, or affects to be, a young Chief, just come, by his
father’s death at Edinburgh, in September, into estates near Fort
Augustus. He is also, or pretends to be, the chief of the Macdonnells,
for he says (April 1754), ‘there could be no rising in Scotland without
the Macdonnells: he is sure that he shall have the _first_ notice of
anything of the kind; and he is sure that the Young Pretender would do
nothing without him.’ Finally (as stated on p. 209), writing to the Duke
of Newcastle (Feb. 19, 1760), he speaks of Pickle in the third person,
says that he is ready to raise a Highland regiment (which only a Chief
could do), and ends, ‘Direction’ (of reply) ‘To Alexander Mackdonnell,
of Glengary, by Foraugustus.’ Before I read that line, I had said to a
Highland friend, ‘The traitor is a Macdonald.’ ‘Not Clanranald, I hope,’
he answered, and then Pickle’s last letter gave me the clue to Glengarry.
Thus there was, and could be, no ‘prepossession’ on my part. The
circumstances all pointed direct to Glengarry, or to a personator of his,
and to no one else. Thus it became a ‘working hypothesis’ that Pickle
either was, or was personating, Glengarry: a Chief on terms of perfect
intimacy with Prince Charles. He was, or affected to be, a Macdonnell,
a Chief, with lands near Fort Augustus, to which he succeeded by his
father’s death in September 1754, the date of the death of Old Glengarry.
Taking Pickle’s identity, natural or feigned, with Young Glengarry, as
a working hypothesis, it became necessary to trace the career of that
chief. At every stage, in every detail and date, after 1750, whatever
was true of Young Glengarry was found to be true of Pickle. Every gleam
of light that revealed the long forgotten incidents of Young Glengarry’s
career, after 1750, fell also on the sinister features of Pickle. My
hypothesis thus ‘colligated’ all the facts. New facts from MSS. came
into view after my book was published; my hypothesis colligated these
also. Everything fell into its place: everything coincided in the
identification of Pickle with Young Glengarry.
To upset the evidence of a long series of coincidences, all pointing in
the same direction, some hypothesis other than the hypothesis that Pickle
is Glengarry must be advanced. Only one alternative suggestion has been
ventured, as far as I am aware—namely, that Glengarry was _personated_
throughout, for ten years, by some unknown ‘inward’ or close intimate,
calling himself ‘Pickle.’ That hypothesis I shall prove to be not only
morally but physically impossible, to demand a physical and moral
miracle. We are left, then, with the equation, Pickle = Glengarry.[122]
To the _a priori_ objection, that it is morally inconceivable that
a Highland Chief, of character hitherto unsuspected, should sink so
low, I need hardly reply. Too many Chiefs, from the death of Malcolm
MacHeth, had been in the same _galère_. Young Glengarry, moreover, _was_
suspected by several independent witnesses. We have also read the story
of Barisdale, Glengarry’s cousin. _A priori_ improbability there is none.
We therefore proceed to examine the career of Young Glengarry, and to
show how his comings and goings, his entrances and exits, the changes in
his fortunes, his unconsidered private letters, his spelling, and his
handwriting, all combine to identify him with the author of the Pickle
Correspondence.
About the early years of Alastair Ruadh Macdonnell of Glengarry it is
unnecessary to write at great length. Born apparently about 1725, for
he was not of age in the beginning of 1745, Young Glengarry had one
brother of the full blood, Æneas, accidentally shot at Falkirk in 1746.
He had also a sister, Isobel. Before 1728 his mother died. Wodrow says
that she was imprisoned by her husband on an islet, and died of hunger
(1727). Young Glengarry now received a stepmother, a daughter of Gordon
of Glenbucket. He does not seem to have been attached to this lady, who
bore two sons to Old Glengarry. According to Murray of Broughton, Young
Glengarry ‘was most barbarously used by his father and mother-in-law’ (p.
441). Alastair, at all events, was sent to France as early as 1738, where
he was not likely to learn English orthography. His own, though pretty
consistent in its blunders, is of the kind which Captain Burt found
prevailing in the Highlands.
Alastair’s boyhood was probably unluxurious. Burt tells the following
curious anecdote on this head. After 1715, the Castle of Invergarry,
which had been adorned by the father of the Glengarry of Shirramuir, was
gutted by the English soldiery. It was refurnished and made inhabitable
by the agent of a Liverpool Company, who smelted iron in the district.
Glengarry, meanwhile, ‘inhabited a miserable hut of turf, as he does to
this day’ (1735?). To this manager, a Quaker, a number of gentlemen
of the clan paid a visit. After receiving them hospitably, the Quaker
observed that they would always be welcome in ‘my house.’
‘God d—n you, Sir, your house! I thought it had been Glengarry’s house.’
They then assaulted the Quaker, who was rescued by his workmen.[123]
Alastair was better lodged in France, where, in 1743, he got a Company
in the Royal Scots. In 1744 he was with Pickle’s friend, the exiled Earl
Marischal, at Dunkirk, meaning to start with the futile French expedition
from Gravelines.
How that expedition was ‘muddled away’ we have told in the essay on the
Earl Marischal. At this time the Earl in France, and Murray of Broughton
in Scotland, gravely distrusted James’s agents in France, Sempil and
Balhaldie. Now Balhaldie was a connection of Lochiel, and was aware that
Murray held him in suspicion. He, therefore, after the collapse of the
expedition of 1744, sent over to Lochiel Young Glengarry, ‘freighted with
heavy complaints’ against Murray. Lochiel next, in the spring of 1745,
brought Murray and Young Glengarry together. The young Chief told Murray
that Balhaldie accused him of bidding the Prince come to Scotland, with
or without French assistance, and ‘seat himself on the throne, and leave
the King at Rome’ (which was precisely what James desired and Charles
repudiated).[124] Glengarry was therefore to warn the party against
Murray. Murray told Glengarry the real facts—namely, that Balhaldie
was too imaginative, and Glengarry seemed quite satisfied. Indeed, he
produced a letter to the same effect as regards Balhaldie from Æneas
Macdonald, the banker, and, later, the informer.
Glengarry and Murray presently met at that strange tavern gathering in
Edinburgh, where, out of the company, Traquair, Lovat, Glengarry, Murray,
Macleod, and Lochiel, Lochiel alone preserved his honour. Glengarry then
went to the Highlands with letters for Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat
and other gentlemen. In January 1745 Glengarry had induced his father
secretly to dispone to him his lands, an action which became a serious
trouble to him later. In May 1745 Murray sent him with despatches to the
Prince in France, and with reasons why Charles should not come unless
accompanied by a French force. Late in 1745 Young Glengarry was taken at
sea, and lodged in the Tower.