Jacobite Correspondence of the Atholl Family
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JACOBITE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE ATHOLL FAMILY, DURING THE REBELLION, M.DCC,XLV.–M.DCC.XLVI. FROM THE ORIGINALS IN THE POSSESSION OF JAMES ERSKINE OF ABERDONA, ESQ. EDINBURGH: PRINTED FOR THE ABBOTSFORD CLUB. M.DCCC.XL. THE ABBOTSFORD CLUB, M.DCCC.XL. President JOHN HOPE, Esquire. RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF ABERDEEN. ADAM ANDERSON, Esquire. DAVID BALSOUR, Esquire. 5 CHARLES BAXTER, Esquire. ROBERT BELL, Esquire. ROBERT BLACKWOOD, Esquire. BINDON BLOOD, Esquire. BERIAH BOTFIELD, Esquire. 10 JAMES BURN, Esquire. WILLIAM BOWIE STEWART CAMPBELL, Esquire. HON. HENRY COCKBURN, LORD COCKBURN. JOHN PAYNE COLLIER, Esquire. JAMES CROSSLEY, Esquire. 15 JAMES DENNISTOUN, Esquire. JOHN DUNN, Esquire. REV. ALEXANDER DYCE, B.A. HON. JOHN HAY FORBES, LORD MEDWYN. JOHN BLACK GRACIE, Esquire. 29 DAVID IRVING, ESQUIRE, LL.D. JAMES IVORY, ESQUIRE, SOLICITOR GENERAL. HON. FRANCIS JEFFREY, LORD JEFFREY. JAMES KINNEAR, Esquire. GEORGE RITCHIE KINLOCH, Esquire. 25 DAVID LAING, Esquire. REV. JOHN LEE, D.D. WILLIAM HUGH LOGAN, Esquire. JAMES LUCAS, Esquire. WILLIAM MACDOWALL, Esquire. 30 JAMES MACKNIGHT, Esquire. JAMES MAIDMENT, Esquire. THEODORE MARTIN, Esquire. JOHN MILLER, Esquire, M.D. WILLIAM HENRY MILLER, Esquire, M.P. 35 REV. JAMES MORTON, B.D. ROBERT NASMYTH, Esquire. EDWARD PIPER, Esquire. ROBERT PITCAIRN, Esquire. JOHN ROBERTSON, Esquire. 40 RIGHT HON. ANDREW RUTHERFURD, LORD ADVOCATE. ANDREW SHORTREDE, Esquire. JOHN SMITH, YOUNGEST, Esquire. EDWARD VERNON UTTERSON, Esquire. RIGHT HON. SIR GEORGE WARRENDER, BART. Treasurer. 45 JOHN WHITEFOORD MACKENZIE, Esquire. Secretary. WILLIAM B. D. D. TURNBULL, Esquire. th At a Meeting of the ABBOTSFORD CLUB, held at Edinburgh the 26 day of November 1838, “Mr. LAING having stated that JAMES ERSKINE OF ABERDONA, Esq., had, through the medium of JOHN HILL BURTON, Esq. Advocate, kindly offered to the CLUB for publication, the “CORRESPONDENCE OF THE MARQUIS OF TULLIBARDINE, (assuming the title of DUKE OF ATHOL,) during the Rebellion in 1745”—the originals of which are preserved among the Family papers at Aberdona,—the Meeting directed the thanks of the Members to be returned to Mr. ERSKINE, —accepted his obliging offer, and instructed the Secretary to order transcripts to be immediately made for press. At the same time the editing of the Work, for the use of the Members of the ABBOTSFORD CLUB, was confided to Mr. BURTON and Mr. LAING.” INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. THE ABBOTSFORD CLUB is indebted for the following series of Letters to the politeness of JAMES ERSKINE of Aberdona, Esq., among whose family papers they have for many years been deposited. On the manner in which they may have come into the hands of one of Mr. Erskine’s ancestors, neither the documents themselves, nor any extraneous information, traditionary or written, throw any light. It might be natural to presume, from the evidence they were calculated to supply against the leaders of the Rebellion, that they came officially into the hands of Charles Erskine, Lord Justice-Clerk, (the lineal ancestor of the present proprietor of the papers,) who, at the period to which they refer, was a Senator of the College of Justice, under the title of Lord Tinwald. As they bear no evidence, however, of having passed through any public office, a more plausible theory, as to the mode in which they had been acquired, seems to be the following:—In 1748, Lord Tinwald’s son, James Erskine, Esq., was appointed sheriff-depute of Perthshire, and in the same year his father was elevated to the dignity of Lord Justice-Clerk, in the room of Lord Milton. About this period, the new sheriff had, in all probability, by some means or other, discovered and obtained possession of these documents; which,—at a date so long after the Rebellion, the punishment of many of the individuals compromised by the correspondence, and the death of others,1—he conceived that he would better aid the returning tranquillity of the country by suppressing altogether, than by using them as the means of further vengeance against those whose misdeeds he probably thought had been already sufficiently atoned for. With this view of the matter, he had, in all likelihood, deposited these “cold ashes of rebellion” in his private archives, where they have since remained, along with other more harmless correspondence and family papers. That there cannot be a doubt of their authenticity, an inspection of the Letters, even in their printed form, will at once establish; and the Editor may add, on the information of the proprietor, that the late Duke of Atholl, many years ago, expressed to a mutual friend of Mr. Erskine and his Grace, his knowledge of this correspondence being in Mr. Erskine’s hands, and his desire that it should not be made public, at least in his lifetime,—probably not caring to have the misguided, though gallant exertions of his grandfather, brought back to the recollection of the public, although his Grace’s known loyalty and national spirit might well have expiated the failings of a far more misguided ancestor, and had long afforded a guarantee to the public, in regard to himself, that 1 Among these was the unfortunate Marquis of Tullibardine himself, who died in the Tower of London on the 9th July 1746. In him the savage virtues of his race, Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts, were dead. The reader may perhaps be disappointed who expects in these letters much additional information relative to the more public transactions of the insurrection. The large body of evidence already laid before the public would seem to have well nigh exhausted that branch of the subject; and the utmost that can be now looked for, is the corroboration of any points that may have been made the ground of discussion, or considered as standing in need of farther evidence. Among these points is the conduct of Lord George Murray; and it is to be regretted that the gap in the present series, embracing the whole period from the army’s entering England, until it reached Falkirk on its retreat northward, renders it impossible to draw from it any additional particulars regarding the coolness that took place between Lord George and Charles Edward, or the part which the former took in regard to that retreat, which, without doubt, tended greatly to abate the sanguine hope and spirit that had hitherto attended the enterprise. The numerous letters of Lord George, at other dates, show sufficiently that he acted throughout with the utmost energy and zeal, nor is there any allusion made to his having experienced injury or withdrawal of confidence at the hands of Charles Edward or any of his councillors; from the beginning to the end of the campaign, his letters breathe the same language of unwearied and ungrudging devotion to the cause; but it is evident, from the accounts given in his and other letters of the continual desertion of the Highlanders, and the difficulty of keeping them together, that the retreat from England was a measure of absolute necessity. No means had been left unused, (and it is chiefly on this head that these letters constitute a new body of evidence,) to raise men for the service and to keep them from leaving it. The enthusiastic loyalty of the Clans, regarding which so much has been said and sung, may hereafter, with propriety, disappear from the pages, at least of history. More perfect evidence of quite as arbitrary an exercise of coercion as Napoleon’s conscript scheme, and certainly much more indiscriminate, cannot be required, than what is afforded by the letters of the Marquis of Tullibardine and his agents in the following pages. It has not been considered necessary to prefix a systematic account of the parties who figure in this correspondence. The principal actors in the events which it serves to record, have been long familiar to the world both in history and romance; and any peerage will at once give all the necessary information regarding the births, marriages, and deaths of the Marquis of Tullibardine, Lord G. Murray, The Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Strathallan, Lord Nairne, &c. &c., while the principal chieftains and landed proprietors are in like manner chronicled in Douglas’ Baronage and other works of a similar nature. With regard to the inferior agents, the numerous Robertsons, Spaldings, &c., the “fortes Gyae fortesque Cloanthi” of Atholl, it would doubtless require a knowledge of Gaelic, and a pilgrimage to the scene of their career, to acquire any competent information; and it is not probable that the result would repay the pains taken to arrive at it. There is, however, one individual who makes a rather prominent figure in this correspondence, whose name has not hitherto, (so far at least as is known to the Editor,) been connected with the events of the period. The Doctor Colvill, who so frequently corresponds with the Marquis and his satellites regarding all the measures which they had the task of carrying into operation, was undoubtedly the Honourable George Colvill, fourth son of the eighth Lord Colvill of Culross, who is said by Wood to have been a physician in Dundee, and to have died unmarried in 1755. It is worthy of remark that his elder brother, (who had distinguished himself at the battle of Dettingen,) commanded the North British Fusileers at the victory of Culloden; and a nephew, of the same name, son of the ninth Lord Colvill, is also mentioned by Wood as having “pursued the rebels into Scotland under the Duke of Cumberland.” Such divided politics in families were, as is well known, far from uncommon in Scotland at the period. The style employed by most of these correspondents is neither better nor worse than the usual language of their time. The Marquis of Tullibardine, having lived much abroad, seems to have lost any facility of composition in his native language that he may have ever possessed, and in one letter printed in the Appendix, (No.