current. I must own that the melancholly news [Old Glengarry’s
death] gave me an inexpressible shock, the only thing that
abates my greife is that my dear late friend is so well
represented in your dear person. I pray that all the powers
above may combine to make you shine even above your noble
Ancestors. I hope that Hevon will long preserve and prosper
you for the protection of a poor name that seems at present in
a very tottering and abject condition; No doubt this accident
will naturally retard your coming to this place [London] yet I
can’t think otherwise than that your interest calls you hither
has soon you may have settled your domestique concerns.
‘I have a line from Samer [probably St. Omer] by which I
understand that the whole Coy [Corps?] seem’d determined to
get ride of Loch[garry] at all events surely he’s a most
incorrigible man, and if a certain person [the Prince] does not
interpose he must fall a sacrafice to his enemies’ resentment
and to his own folly. Mrs. Macdonald and the young folks join
in compliments, our friendes of Crevan street salute you, and I
ever am, My dear Cous,
‘Yours whilst J. M.
‘London: Sept. 12, 1754.
‘I did not receive your note dated wednesday till Thursday 12
o’clock.’[154]
Thus, all Pickle’s movements at this solemn hour of Old Glengarry’s
decease tally with those of Young Glengarry. Pickle is adulated by the
army people, and goes North to his estates near Fort Augustus, whence the
Governor reports on—Glengarry.
Can Pickle, then, while Glengarry is in Scotland, after his father’s
death, be posing in Edinburgh as himself a young, newly orphaned chief,
going to his lands near Fort Augustus; personating Glengarry, in fact—for
no other Chief had just lost his father?
Mr. Millar says: ‘Whoever Pickle was, it was clearly his intention
to personate Glengarry.... It is hardly possible to imagine that an
impostor could have deceived the Edinburgh folks, to whom Glengarry must
have been well known,’ and whom, hurrying to his father’s funeral, and
to arrange his affairs, he must just have visited, for Old Glengarry
died in Edinburgh. I venture to call such an impersonation a physical
impossibility, prolonged, as it was, for some six weeks. It is
_physically impossible_ that, both in London and Edinburgh, many men who
knew Young Glengarry should have supposed another person—Pickle—to be
that hero. Yet, if the personation was played off, it was not discovered,
then or later; for Pickle continued to be the informer, and to be the
shadow of Glengarry. As soon as it is admitted that Pickle is feigning
to be Glengarry, the case for that Chief’s innocence is given up.
The personation, among people who knew Glengarry intimately well, is
_impossible_.
Pickle’s day of usefulness had gone by. On April 24, 1755, an official
gave in a report of a conversation with the Chief, ‘the head of a great
Clan of his name,’ who wanted money.[155] In April 1756 Pickle again came
to London, and dunned the Duke of Newcastle: ‘not the smalest article
has been perform’d, of what was expected and at first promised. I am
certain my first friend’ (Pelham) ‘mentioned me to the King....’[156] In
an undated letter he speaks of being on an ‘utstation’ in the Highlands,
and talks of Glengarry in the third person.[157] He tells of Glengarry’s
greatness, of Jacobite overtures to him, and repeats his usual fond
demands.
In 1758, 1759, we know, from his own letters, that Glengarry was eager to
go to London, to make terms about the fines on his estate. But Macleod
would not back his bill for 400_l._ On February 19, 1760, Pickle wrote
the last letter to Newcastle extant in the Pelham Papers. He speaks
of Pickle in the third person, but he writes in Pickle’s hand. Pickle
wants to give information; Pickle wishes to raise a regiment (and so did
Glengarry), if he gets ‘the Rank of full Colonel, the nomenation of his
Officers, and suitable levie money:’ also ‘a bill payable at sight’ for
travelling expenses. He ends, ‘Mack mention of _Pickle_. His Majesty
will remember Mr. Pelham did, upon former affairs of great consequence.
Direction—_To Alexander Mackdonell of Glengary, by Foraugustus_.’[158]
A reply from Newcastle directed to Glengarry would be opened by
Glengarry, and then, if Glengarry did not write Pickle’s epistle of
February 19, 1760, where is Pickle? Mr. Millar suggests that, ‘if Pickle
were a traitor in Glengarry’s family, he must have been in a position
to intercept the reply to this letter, or the whole plot would have
been exposed.’ This is a romantic hypothesis. There is no trace of any
gentleman (such as Pickle was) eternally in attendance on Glengarry. And
why did the hypothetical traitor offer to raise a regiment, which only
Glengarry could do? There is no conceivable motive for writing such a
letter on the part of any one but Glengarry, who was terribly pressed for
money, and could raise a regiment. Besides, the physical impossibility of
Pickle’s supposed personation has already been demonstrated. Glengarry,
who had long been in very bad health, died on December 23, 1761. The
nature of his will has been explained.
The internal evidence of identity in the authorship of Pickle’s and
Glengarry’s letters remains to be considered. Both write the same
shambling style. In an age of bad spelling both have a long list of
blunders in common. I give a few:—
1. aquent acquaint.
2. estime esteem.
3. tow two.
4. dow do.
5. sow so.
6. triffle trifle.
7. { jant } jaunt.
{ chant }
8. { utquarters out quarters.
{ utstation out station.
9. pick pique.
10. { Foraugustus } Fort Augustus.
{ forAugustus }
11. how who.
12. lick like.
13. supplay supply.
14. relay rely.
15. puish push.
Of these, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14 occur, sporadically, in other
Scotch writers of the age, as in the Gask Correspondence. Pickle combines
them all. But I have not elsewhere met 7, 8, 9, 10, 15. ‘How’ for ‘who’
(11) I have met in Macleod of Raasay’s letters in the ‘Lyon in Mourning,’
and in one letter of 1725, while ‘howse’ for ‘whose’ occurs in a Scotch
epistle in the Cumberland MSS. The _accumulation_ of these fifteen
mis-spellings is the common note of the orthography of Pickle and of
Glengarry. It constitutes a note of identity of authorship.
But, believers in personation may say, ‘Pickle had carefully studied and
adroitly copied Glengarry’s orthography, as, _ex hypothesi_, he wished to
pass for that Chief.’
Then why did he not also imitate Glengarry’s handwriting?
Glengarry wrote two hands; one is a sprawling scrawl, sloped much to the
right, in his rough drafts of letters, preserved in his Letter Book; the
other is merely the same hand written smaller, closer, not so sloped, in
his letters, for example, to James and Edgar. The Windsor Letters, the
neater and more careful, I could not compare with those of Pickle at the
British Museum. But I took Glengarry’s Letter Book, or folio of scrawled
drafts, thither, and Mr. Millar (author of the criticism in the _Scottish
Review_) kindly compared the two sets of documents, he having much
experience in such studies. I append what is essential in his report,
contributed to the _Dundee Advertiser_ of April 28, 1897.
‘Mr. Lang has come into possession of much new evidence upon
the subject. Amongst other documents he has the Letter-book
in which Glengarry frequently copied his letters with his own
hand and signed them. This book comes from an unchallengeable
source. By Mr. Lang’s invitation I had to-day the pleasure of
comparing the handwriting of Glengarry in this book with the
Pickle letters in the British Museum. At the first glance one
would say that the manuscripts are so unlike superficially
that they were not both written by the same person. Glengarry
wrote a wide, sprawling hand, with a very distinct slope
towards the right. The Pickle letters are all written in
the vertical style, and the lines are small and neat. When
examined more closely, however, there is a striking similarity
in the details. Having selected Pickle letters that contained
similar words to those in the Letter-book, I have made a
careful comparison of them minutely. It is beyond question
that whoever Pickle was he wrote in a feigned handwriting to
prevent identification should any letter miscarry. If Glengarry
wished to feign another hand than his own, the most obvious
way of effecting his purpose would be to change the sloping
style into the upright style. When Pickle wished to disguise
his hand he used the upright style. There are several letters
which Glengarry wrote in a very peculiar manner. The capital
letter “T,” for instance, was distinctly Glengarrian. But
the capital “T” written repeatedly by Pickle is absolutely
identical with that used in the Glengarry book. Such words as
“most,” “humble,” “Sir,” “I,” and “Tho’” are precisely the same
in form in both cases, the only difference being the change of
the slope. There is only one curious fact which comes out after
careful examination. When Glengarry is writing adjectives that
begin with the letter “d” he generally uses a capital. Tickle
never does this, but uses the small “d” instead, yet that small
“d” is exactly similar in form to the same letter written by
Glengarry. This is certainly minute criticism, and might not
be sufficient alone to establish the case against Glengarry;
but when the other fact is borne in mind, that Pickle and
Glengarry make the same errors in the spelling of uncommon
words, the confirmatory proof is very strong. It is not likely
that any letter exists in which Glengarry fully acknowledges
his treachery, and the main evidence must therefore be
circumstantial. If Mr. Lang had now to begin writing his book
with all the additional evidence before him which he has
obtained since its publication, he would probably find few
who would dissent from his conclusion that Pickle the Spy
was no other than Alastair Macdonnell of Glengarry. There may
be coincidences in events in the lives of two men; but it is
incredible that Pickle, when disguising his handwriting, should
fall into the same formation of many of the letters which was
peculiar to Macdonnell of Glengarry. Though begun upon a mere
surmise by Mr. Lang, extended research seems to confirm his
notion as to the identity of these two personages. It is not
a pleasant conclusion for any one who believes that all the
Highlanders engaged in the Rising of 1745 were indomitable and
patriotic heroes. There were blacklegs in the army of Prince
Charles Edward, as there are in every movement of the kind; but
there were also noble characters prepared to shed their blood
and sacrifice their prospects in support of what they believed
to be the rightful cause. Glengarry, apparently, must now take
his place among the execrated traitors.—I am, &c.
‘A. H. MILLAR.
‘London: April 26, 1897.’
I am no expert in handwriting, and I offer no opinion, except that
Pickle’s confessedly feigned hand is more like Glengarry’s careful hand,
in the Stuart Papers, than like his sloping scrawl, meant only for his
own eyes (and these nearly blind) in his Letter Book. The Duke of Atholl
has compared letters from Glengarry, in his possession, with those of
Pickle, and has arrived at the same conclusion as Mr. Millar. Pickle’s
hand is Glengarry’s, disguised.
Such is my chain of evidence towards proving the personal identity of
Pickle and Glengarry. Both men, it is hardly worth while to add, had been
officers in French service. I am aware of not one discrepant feature
to discredit the identity which Pickle practically asserts, when he
declares himself (corroborated by Bruce) to have become, by his father’s
death, Chief of the Macdonnells, just when Old Glengarry died, and Young
Glengarry succeeded to the headship of the clan. To sum up the whole case:
Young Glengarry’s conduct, as far as we know, is stainless, till, after
endeavouring to ‘conform’ in October 1747, he presently poses as a
religiously faithful subject, or devotee, of James in January 1748. He is
starving in London, which he visits in July 1749, his father being soon
after released from Edinburgh Castle. Young Glengarry, in the winter of
1749, visits Cluny at Dalwhinnie, in company with Glenevis, Lochgarry,
and Angus MacIan. Glengarry obtains, by his own admission, a share of
the treasure, and then formally charges Archy Cameron with looting 6,000
_louis d’or_. Archy accuses him of forgery; they carry their quarrel
before James in Rome. Early in 1751 Glengarry, though he is not known
to have taken the oaths, is allowed to reside in London, and announces
his approaching marriage with an English lady. But Glengarry is already
suspected, and he knows it; for when Leslie, the priest, is charged
with treason by the Jacobites, Glengarry says that the blow is aimed
at _him_. Nothing is proved against Leslie, but stories of Glengarry’s
intimacy with Murray the traitor, and the spy Samuel Cameron, called
Crookshanks, are anonymously brought by Blair and Holker. In October 1751
Samuel’s brother, Glenevis and Downan, arrested for their share with
Glengarry in the matter of the French gold, accuse Glengarry of informing
against them. They lie in gaol in Fort William; Glengarry (though the
Government know him to be their accomplice) lives freely in London, and
travels where he pleases.
In November 1752, April 1753, we have the affair of the Elibank Plot. On
one side is Pickle, who is to lead Highlanders in London; Pickle, without
whom his clan, and the North, can do nothing; Pickle, a friend of Prince
Charles, and a correspondent of the exiled King in Rome; Pickle, who is
‘very weake’ after a serious illness in Paris (February-March, 1753);
Pickle, the constant associate of the Earl Marischal; and on the other
side is Glengarry, who claims every one of these notes for himself. Both
Pickle and Glengarry are friends of Baron Kennedy’s. Glengarry is known
to Government to be a trafficker with France, and with the dreaded envoy
of Prussia, the Earl Marischal, but Government consults Pickle in place
of arresting Glengarry. Pickle has had great promises made to him by his
employer, Henry Pelham, so has Glengarry. Both complain of the breach of
these promises after Pelham’s death. Pickle comes and goes to Prince
Charles in France in August 1753. Glengarry is accused, to Government, of
visiting France at the same time as a Jacobite agent. Jacobites are being
arrested all over the country, but not a finger is laid on Glengarry.
Pickle and Glengarry both leave London for Edinburgh on the news of Old
Glengarry’s death, both are then bereaved young chiefs going to their
northern estates near Fort Augustus. In this capacity Pickle, for some
six weeks, is the centre of military attention in Edinburgh. Pickle
wishes Bruce to assist him in drawing up a judicial rent-roll. Bruce
surveys the lands of Glengarry. Pickle now, like Glengarry, remains in
the North, where both are magnates, but both are poor. Pickle offers to
raise a Highland regiment, and asks the Duke of Newcastle to direct his
answer to Glengarry. The spelling of Pickle and Glengarry is identical in
a score of peculiarities, and Pickle’s handwriting is that of Glengarry
in a simple disguise.
What makes Pickle’s design to raise a regiment especially interesting is
the fact, now to be proved, that _Glengarry entertained the same wish at
the same moment_. He wrote to the Duke of Atholl to that effect, on April
5, 1760, and his letters are printed in the Duke of Atholl’s ‘Chronicles
of the Atholl and Tullibardine Families’ (iii. 476-477). Thus Pickle and
Glengarry were inseparable to the last.
Whoever is unconvinced by this array of circumstantial evidence
against Glengarry must, at least, suggest an alternative hypothesis
which will colligate the facts. The hypothesis of a personation of
Glengarry by Pickle has been proved absurd and impossible. Recent
research, after the publication of ‘Pickle the Spy,’ has added to the
original evidence proof of Glengarry’s insincerity as a Jacobite; the
Glenevis affair; the promises made to Glengarry, as to Pickle, by Henry
Pelham; the identification of ‘Cromwell’ (Bruce); the relations of
Glengarry with Pickle’s friend, Baron Kennedy; a few new similarities
of Pickle-Glengarry spelling; the identity of their handwriting; and
their simultaneous desire to raise a regiment. All these facts confirm
the previous conclusion. A false hypothesis is not apt to be strongly
confirmed by facts unknown when it was framed, nor would a jury regard
the charge against Glengarry as ‘without any proof in the world.’ To
say so, as has been audaciously done, is to illustrate prejudice, not
to enlighten criticism. In truth, the game was up as soon as the person
calling himself Pickle offered to raise a clan regiment, and asked the
Duke of Newcastle to reply to Glengarry. More than one interpretation
of that fact there could not logically be. But what is logic? A Lowland
pedantry!
XII
OLD TIMES AND NEW
Some years ago, when fishing in Loch Awe, I found a boatman, out of
Badenoch, who was a charming companion. It may be the experience of
others also that an English keeper usually confines his conversation,
at least with strangers, to the business in hand, whereas a Scottish
or Highland attendant will talk about Darwinism, Mr. Herbert Spencer,
history, legend, psychical research, religion, everything. The boatman
had a store of legends, and one day we fell to conversing on the old
times, in the Highlands, and the new. He voted for the old. Among the
advantages, he mentioned the game; and then, with sparkling eyes, the
plunder! Property, of old, had been _les vaches d’autrui_, the cattle of
Lowlanders and of other clans.
Often, since that day, one has reflected on the old times and the new.
The old were not wholly what is supposed. Thus Mr. Mackenzie, in his
‘History of the Camerons,’ contrasts the manly sport of the past with
the modern driving up of deer to be shot down by ‘drawing-room’ gunners.
Stalking is more common now, but the drawing-room way was the old way!
‘The tenants drive everything before them, while the laird and his
friends are waiting with their guns to shoot the deer.’ So writes Burt,
between 1726 and 1740. ‘When the chief would have a deer only for his
household,’ he does not stalk it himself; ‘the gamekeeper and one or two
others are sent into the hills, ... where they often lie night after
night to wait an opportunity of providing venison for the family.’[159]
I have seen in the Highlands heart-breaking destitution. I have seen an
old shivering woman gathering nettles for food near Tobermory. On one
side of a river I have seen scantily clad girls hanging about listless,
in the rain, beside hovels more like the nests of birds than human
habitations. On the other side of the water were comfortable cottages and
thriving crops. The former was the Protestant, the latter the Catholic
side of the stream, which the Reformation did not cross. In the bleak
cold of June, on Haladale, I have said, ‘Who would stay here that could
go away?’ The gillie observed that he had been in America, running the
blockade, but he vastly preferred Haladale. He numbered his horses and
kine; he was a man of substance. But, poverty for poverty, give me
nettles and shell-fish in the North, before fried fish (and too little of
that) in the New Cut.
Moved by the extreme wretchedness in which some Highland cotters seem
to live, by the cry of ‘congested districts,’ by the laments of the
evicted, and by the belief in ‘good old times’ behind the Forty-five,
a Lowland observer naturally asks himself if the old times were really
so good? In one respect, and that essential, they bear the palm: the
people, as a rule, loved and revered their Chiefs, and the Chiefs adopted
at least the airs of popularity among the people. Even Young Glengarry,
not a model Chief, resented the oppression of tenants falsely accused,
as he maintained, of being deserters.[160] Moreover, the poor did not
live, generally speaking, in view of the luxurious rich. Clanranald and
Glengarry had castles which must have been built at the expense of the
undefined ‘services’ of their people long ago; but the warrior Glengarry
of Killiecrankie discouraged refinement and delicacy of living. The
smaller lairds lived plainly, even poorly. Occasional feasts were given
to the Clan. Every man ‘was treated as a blood relation.’ Consequently,
if destitution existed, it did not provoke social hatred and discontent.
This, at least, is quite certain.
On the other hand, the presence of extreme poverty, of famines, by no
means rare, of exactions which Lowlanders considered tyrannical, and the
occurrence of evictions, before 1745, seem equally well established.
Ignorance was one safeguard against discontent, and in the absence of
schools, in the rarity of the Presbyterian clergy, with their innate
democratic ideas, ignorance flourished. Over-population was encouraged,
by minute subdivision of lands, for the purpose of increasing the Chief’s
military following. Thus poverty was artificially fostered, and, with it,
idleness and habits of plunder and of tippling.
This little picture of a Highland home is given in a book of 1747:[161]
‘I have seen in their Huts, when I have been walking, and forced to
retreat thither for Shelter from the Rain, their Children, sometimes many
in a Hut, full of the Small Pox and [at?] their Heighth, they having been
lying and walking about in the Wet and Dirt, the Rain at the same time
beating through the Thatch with Violence; so that I used to get from one
End of the House to the other to keep dry; but it was all in vain, the
Rain soon following me. These children at the same time seemed hearty,
drinking Whey and Butter-milk, Wet and Cold with the Inclemency of the
weather, and yet so well!’
This sketch was drawn somewhere in the country between Inverness and Fort
William, after Culloden.
The raising of the early Highland regiments (1756-62) relieved the
population, but also diffused knowledge, while the Chiefs’ power, as
sanctioned by law, was destroyed. The soldiers, who had seen the New
World, whether gentry and officers or privates, did not incline to
stay at home when rents were raised. They emigrated to America, almost
by clans, in years of famine, as in 1782. The Chiefs were alarmed and
indignant; they were also needy. They screwed up rents, introduced sheep,
moved populations to the coast, or evicted them. Voluntary emigration
(the wisest policy) was succeeded by the removal of clansmen who were
reluctant to go, or who could not afford to go, their poor goods not
being marketable. Many even sold themselves into voluntary slavery for
their passage fare.
Some chiefs became opulent for a generation; their families were ruined
by their following of George, Prince Regent; their estates fell into
English hands, and forests were made at the expense of new evictions.
This is a brief and gloomy account of what followed Culloden. An example
may be given in the case of the great Glengarry family.
On the death of Glengarry, in 1761, his affairs were found, as was
natural, in a lamentable condition. To study them and the later changes
on his estate is to gain a view into the heart of Highland grievances.
Fortunately materials for this examination exist, and have been published
by Mr. Fraser Mackintosh in his ‘Antiquarian Notes’ (1897).
Perhaps it may be best to begin by giving a brief account of the way in
which such estates as Glengarry’s were usually occupied by the clansmen.
The Chief let to tacksmen, or leaseholders, gentlemen of his clan, part
of the lands which he did not hold in his own hand. Part of his ‘tack,’
again, the tacksman cultivated; part he let out to cotters, ‘under which
general term may be included various local denominations of _crofters_,
mailers, &c.... Frequently they have the command only of a small share of
their own time to cultivate the land allowed them for maintaining their
families. Sometimes the Tacksman allows a portion of his own tillage
field for his cotter; sometimes a small separate croft is laid off for
him, and he is likewise allowed, in general, to pasture a cow, or perhaps
two.’[162]