The appearance of ‘Pickle the Spy’ was welcomed by a good deal of clamour on the part of some Highland critics. It was said that I had brought a disgraceful charge, without proof, against a Chief of unstained honour. Scarcely any arguments were adduced in favour of Glengarry. What could be said in suspense of judgment was said in the Scottish Review , by Mr. A. H. Millar. That gentleman, however, was brought round to my view, as I understand, when he compared the handwriting of Pickle with that

P. 12, note, for twenty-two in 1716, read twenty-three P. 17, note, for 33,900 read 33,950 Transcriber’s Note: These corrections didn’t need making: presumably the printers did it, but neglected to remove this list....

In a work where we must make the acquaintance of some very unfortunate characters, it is well to begin with a preux chevalier . If there was a conspicuously honest man in the eighteenth century, one ‘whose conscience might gild the walls of a dungeon,’ as an observer of his conduct declared, that man was the Earl Marischal, George Keith. The name of the last Earl Marischal of Scotland haunts the reader of the history of the eighteenth century. He appears in battles for the Stuart cause in 1715 a

About the Earl’s first years in the company of the great Frederick little is known or likely to be known. Deus nobis hæc otia fecit , he may have murmured to himself while he refused the Prince’s insistent prayers for his service, and put his Royal Highness off in a truly Royal way, with his miniature in a snuff-box of mother-of-pearl. The old humourist may have reflected that men had given lands and gear for the cause, and now, like the representative of Lochgarry, have nothing material to show

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’ lodg

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

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’ fa

The bayonets of Cumberland scarcely dealt a deadlier blow at Jacobitism than the spades which, in gentle and unaccustomed hands, buried the treasure of French gold at Loch Arkaig. About this fatal hoard, which set clan against clan, and, literally, brother against brother, something has been elsewhere said. But the unpublished reports given by spies and informers in the Cumberland Papers and the Record Office throw a great deal of unexpected light on the subject. Our purpose is, first to offer w

This affair of the treasure caused endless calamities, especially involving Cameron of Glenevis, a place within two or three miles of Fort William. The relationship of this family to the head of the clan, Lochiel, stands thus: Archibald Cameron of Dungallon, who died in 1719, was the husband of Isabel Cameron of Lochiel. By her he left two sons and three daughters, of whom Jean married Dr. Archibald Cameron of Lochiel, the last Jacobite martyr; while Mary married Alexander Cameron of Glen Nevis.

The years 1752-1754 were full of trouble for Highlanders. The Prince was intriguing desperately with Scotland, and with Prussia. The Elibank Plot was matured and betrayed. Dr. Cameron and Lochgarry were stirring up the Clans. Cluny remained as untakable as Abd-el-Kader. The Government were alarmed at once by Pickle, by their ambassadors abroad, and by Count Kaunitz. The Forfeited Estates had been nationalised, ‘for the improvement of the Highlands,’ factors had been appointed to raise and collec

The modern autobiographical romance of adventure has perhaps been overdone. The hero is always very young and very brave; he is mixed up with great affairs; he is a true lover; he marries the heroine, and he leaves his Memoirs (at six shillings) to posterity. Stereotyped as is the method, and mechanical as are most of the novels thus constructed, it is interesting to compare with them a set of genuine Memoirs, which actually are what the novels pretend to be. Colonel John Macdonell, the author o

Readers who have followed the adventures of Pickle the Spy may care to know what were the later fortunes of his inseparable companion, Young Glengarry. These fortunes were not answerable to the expectations of the Chief. The death of Henry Pelham, in March 1754, blighted, as we shall learn, the hopes which Glengarry, like Pickle, had founded on the promises of the Prime Minister, and left him a debtor to Government for claims on his lands. That Young Glengarry, on reaching his estates in Novembe

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 clamo

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 H

These two letters of Pickle’s, not published in full in Pickle the Spy , illustrate ‘The Case against Glengarry’ in this volume. In the letter dated Edinburgh, 14th September, 1754, we find that, immediately on hearing of his father’s death, the writer sent a note to Gwynne Vaughan, an English official, and went to Edinburgh, writing from Newcastle on his way North. His ‘family affairs are in confusion.’ Now Old Glengarry died in Edinburgh, on September 1, 1754, and, as has been elsewhere shown,

‘The Rebels had an implacable Illwill and Malice against Him (Macleod) as they alledged, and many of them believed, that he not only deserted, but betrayed their Cause: what truth there is in this I will not take upon me to determine.’ So says the writer of the MS. 104, ‘The Highlands of Scotland in 1750.’ ‘Surely never did man so basely betray as did Macleod, whom I shall leave for the present to the racks and tortures of a guilty conscience, and the just and severe judgement of every good man.