|
When the zeal and activity of the military in pursuing the
leading fugitives on the one had, and the great care of the government to prevent their
escape to the continent on the other, are considered, it is surprising that so many
succeeded in their attempts to leave the kingdom. Besides the Earls of Cromarty and
Kilmarnock, and Lord Macleod, the only other Jacobite chiefs who fell into the hands of
the government were the Marquis of Tullibardine, Lords Balmerino and Lovat, and Secretary
Murray. The Marquis being unable, from the bad state of his health, to bear the fatigue of
running from covert to covert, surrendered himself, on the 27th of April, to a
Dumbartonshire gentleman, who committed him to the castle of Dumbarton; and Lord
Balmerino, by the advice of Mr Grant, younger of Rothiemurchus, most unwisely delivered
himself up at Inverness, two days after the battle of Culloden. After having the
mortification of witnessing, from the summit of a mountain, the conflagration of his seat
of Castle Downie by the king's troops, Lord Lovat took refuge in the western parts of
Inverness-shire, and finally concealed himself in the hollow of a tree which grew on a
small island in Loch Morar, where he was apprehended early in June by a party from the
Furnace sloop of war. When discovered, he was wrapped up in a blanket; and, though he had
between five and six hundred guineas in his pocket, had been obliged to live twelve days
in his miserable retreat on oatmeal and water. Being unable, from his great age and
infirmity, to ride, he was carried in a litter to the royal camp at Fort Augustus.
Secretary Murray contrived to escape from the Highlands, and sought for safety in the
house of his brother-in-law, Mr Hunter of Polmood, in Peebles-shire; but information
having been given of his retreat, he was apprehended on the morning of Saturday, the 28th
of June, by a party of St. George's dragoons, carried to Edinburgh, and committed the same
evening a prisoner to the castle.
Macdonald of Barisdale and his son were also taken prisoners, but were almost immediately
set at liberty. That a man who had taken such an active part in the insurrection as
Barisdale did should be been liberated unconditionally is very improbable; and it was
generally understood that he had entered into an engagement to apprehend the prince, and
deliver him up to the Duke of Cumberland. So strong were the suspicions of Charles and his
friends of Barisdale's treachery, that when Colonel Warren arrived in the West Highlands
for the purpose of transporting Charles to France, he actually seized Barisdale and his
son, and carried them along with him to that country as prisoners. A list of charges, in
the shape of interrogatories, was afterwards drawn up by Charles in Paris, to each of
which Barisdale was required to make a direct and particular answer in writing; but the
nature of his answers, if he made any, is not known. There may have been no foundation for
these grave charges; but well or ill founded, an opinion long prevailed in the Highlands
that Barisdale had been unfaithful.
If Glengarry's apprehension proceeded upon the information of the gentlemen of his own
clan, they must have had better grounds for taking the extraordinary step they are alleged
to have done than the mere assertion of Barisdale; but the charge against Glengarry seems
highly improbable, as it is scarcely credible, if, as stated, they had letters from him in
their possession, advising them to take up arms in support of Charles, while he himself
kept back, that he would, by such a perfidious act, have put himself in their power.
Glengarry, after his apprehension, was sent to London, and, along with the other chief
prisoners, was committed to the Tower, where he suffered a long and tedious confinement.
Young Glengarry had been taken up some months previously and sent to the Tower, in which
he was kept a close prisoner for twenty months.
Notwithstanding the sanguinary ferocity with which Cumberland's soldiers hunted down the
unfortunate fugitives, the lives of a considerable number of those who were taken or
surrendered themselves were saved from immediate destruction by the interference of a few
humane persons, who did everything in their power to put a stop to the exterminating
system of these bloodhounds. Though they thus escaped the merciless sword of the
destroyer, they were nevertheless doomed to suffer the most extraordinary privations.
After having been cooped up in the loathsome prisons of the north, without any attention
to their wants, many of them were afterwards huddled together in the holds of ships, where
they were condemned unheeded to pine away, and, amidst a mass of filth and corruption, to
inhale the seeds of pestilence and death. Of 157 persons who were immured for eight months
in the hold of one transport, only 49 survived the cruel treatment they received.
Meanwhile several of the chiefs of the insurrection succeeded in effecting their escape to
the Continent. The Duke of Perth, Lord John Drummond, Lords Elcho and Nairne, Maxwell of
Kirkconnel, and others, embarked at Lochnanuagh, on board one of the French ships which
arrived on the western coast about the end of April. The Duke of Perth, who had been long
in bad health, died on the voyage. Another party of twelve or thirteen persons, including
Lords Pitsligo and Ogilvy, and Hunter of Burnside, after skulking some time in Buchan, got
a vessel which conveyed them to Bergen in Norway. The British consul applied to the
governor to have them secured, but he disregarded the application, and the party proceeded
to Sweden. Stewart of Ardshiel, and General O'Sullivan also succeeded in reaching France.
Old Glenbucket, after being hunted from place to place, eluded his pursuers by assuming
the garb of a beggar, and allowing his beard to grow. In the month of November he escaped
to Norway in a Swedish vessel. Lord George Murray remained in concealment in Scotland till
the month of December, when, after paying a private visit to his friends at Edinburgh, he
took shipping at Anstruther in the Frith of Forth, and reached Holland in safety. |
