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The Jacobite rebellions—The Earl of Mar as courtier and rebel leader —Aberdeenshire
and the Union—Colonel Hooke's mission—Mar's "hunting party"—Fire-raising to
compel his vassals and their tenants to rise—Proclamation of the
Pretender—The Jacobites occupy Aberdeen and elect a town council—Landing of
the Pretender at Peterhead: His court at Fetteresso — Flight of James and
Mar, and collapse of the rebellion—The forfeited estates: The York Buildings
Company's operations—The Earl Marischal's return — The political influence
of the Church : Moderatism— Overhaul of the universities—Cattle-lifting and
smuggling—The ' second Jacobite rising—Meagre part taken in it by
Aberdeenshire —Lord Lewis Gordon and the other leaders—The Jacobites in
Aberdeen—Its relief by Cumberland—The severities after Culloden—Final
suppression of cattle-lifting—Abolition of hereditary jurisdictions:—Social
and economic changes.
Before King George set foot on British soil he had received the Earl of
Mar's effusive letter proffering service and loyalty, and as the king would
have nothing to do with any of Queen Anne's ministers, Mar, who was an
accomplished courtier, the brother-in-law of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and
the friend of St John and Harley, as of Pope and Arbuthnot, tried to
strengthen his position by a memorial tendering the fealty and duty of the
MacDonalds, Camerons, Macphersons, Macintoshes, and other Highland clans.
But his overtures were neglected. For nearly a year after his dismissal he
hung about the Court, and then, in August 1715, started in disguise for
Braemar and Kildrummy on his ill-starred mission. As Secretary of State he
had with the Earl of Seafield, the Chancellor, taken part in promoting the
Union, and it had been supported in the Scottish Parliament by a majority of
the north-eastern representatives—the Earls of Kintore and Findlater, and
Lords Forbes, Fraser, and Banff among the nobility, and of Commoners Sir
Alexander Ogilvie of Forglen, Sir Thomas Burnett of Leys, Abercromby of
Glassaugh, and William Seton, younger, of Pitmedden, the member for
Aberdeenshire, who was one of its foremost advocates. Opposed to it were the
Earl of Erroll and the Earl Marischal, who saw in it the loss of their
hereditary offices of High Constable and great Marischal of Scotland; and
Moir of Stoneywood, Gordon of Pitlurg, and James Ogilvie, younger, of Boyne.
But the Union had not, in its early years, fulfilled the promises and
expectations held out by its promoters. Its advantages were not yet fully
apparent, and its drawbacks in connection with some of the fiscal laws
bulked largely in the public view. By its settlement of the Protestant
succession in the House of Hanover and the Presbyterian Church, it acted as
a challenge to the Jacobites and Episcopalians, who were numerous in the
north-east. Every element of discontent and disaffection lent itself to the
purposes of Mar. On the other hand, the Union was accepted, on the whole, by
the ruling class in the city of Aberdeen, which, included many
merchant-burgesses engaged in the foreign trade, one of whom, Provost John
Gordon, formerly a factor at Campvcre, was the first representative of the
city, with its associated burghs, in the British Parliament, and had an
allowance from his constituents to meet his expenses in London.
Before the Act had obtained
the royal sanction Colonel Hooke, a Jacobite refugee in the French service,
was on his way to Slains Castle to intrigue with the Jacobite and other
malcontents, at the instance of Louis XIV., and incite them to play his game
against England. The Earl of Errcll seems to have encouraged the French
views, and the Duke of Gordon was interpreted as doing so, as were also Lord
Saltoun, Lord Panmure, and some of the southern nobility; but on the whole
there was a unanimity of prudent reserve among the Jacobite notables. In
process of time Admiral Fourbin, with his fleet from Dunkirk, made his
appearance off Montrose, turned south, and anchored at the Isle of May until
the English fleet was descried, and then steered north again as far as
Buchanness, and thence away finally to sea, leaving a ship that had gone up
the Firth of Forth to fall into the hands of Admiral Byng.
In the latter part of Queen
Anne's reign the Government was favourable to the Jacobites, but the
discontent in Scotland continued, and there was friction between the Scotch
and English representatives, over the opposition of the House of Lords to
the Duke of Hamilton's English peerage as also over the malt-tax, which was
alleged to violate the rights of Scotland under the Act of Union ; and it
was during the tension caused by these questions that Lord Findlater, who
had been one of the supporters of the Act of Union, brought forward a motion
in the House of Lords for its repeal, which was defeated only by a majority
of three.
When the news of the death of
Queen Anne reached Aberdeen a number of youths paraded the streets at night,
headed by two fiddlers playing Jacobite melodies. Coming to the well which
then stood near the Cross, they "took water in their hats" and drank to the
health of the Pretender. A report of the escapade, which was of a piece with
proceedings of the same kind in other towns, reached London, and the Earl of
Mar, as Secretary of State, wrote to the magistrates directing them to cause
the persons guilty of such treasonable practices to be apprehended and
prosecuted according to law. Inquiry was made, and the depositions of
various persons were sent to the Government, the magistrates reporting that
the inculpated individuals had absconded and were beyond the city
jurisdiction, and giving the names of four who resided in the sheriffdoms of
Moray and Aberdeenshire.1 Twelve months afterwards Mar himself was
organising a rebellion in favour of the Pretender. A meeting of the merchant
and trade burgesses, called by the provost in consequence of a report that
the Highlanders were in motion and might attack the town, resolved to take
defensive measures. This was on the 3rd of August 17x5, and as Mar attended
the Levee in London on the 1st, it would appear that the movement among the
Highlanders began before he arrived in the north.
On his way from Elie, where
he landed from his voyage from England, Mar sought the adhesion of Jacobites
in Fife and Forfar, and from his Castle of Kildrummy he issued invitations
to a number of the nobility, ostensibly for a great hunting-party to be held
at Braemar on the 26th of August. The hunting-party was a convenient pretext
for such a gathering, and Braemar had the twofold advantage of being central
for many of the nobles, lairds, and chiefs whose presence was desired, and
remote from the observation of the Government. A large number of the great
territorial families were represented at the gathering, including Mar's
immediate neighbours, the Dukes of Gordon and Atholl (by their sons the
Marquis of Huntly and the Earl of Tullibardine), the Earl of Breadalbane (by
Campbell of Glenderule), Lords Southesk, Ogilvy, Stormont, and Drummond; the
young Earl Marischal, whose strong-willed Drummond mother was a relative of
Mar, represented the Lowlands of Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire, and with
him was the Earl of Erroll; and of the other Jacobite nobility there are
said to have been present the Earls of Carnwath, Linlithgow, Nithsdale, and
Traquair, Viscounts Kenmure, Kilsyth, and Kingston, Lords Duffus, Nairn,
Rollo, Seaforth, and Strath-allan, and the Chief of Glengarry. The lairds of
Glen-bucket and Strowan cannot have been absent, and the company must have
included Mar's Farquharson vassals and others whose names are not on record.
Mar delivered an address, and the existence of a war-chest of ^100,000 was
announced. Consultations took place elsewhere — we hear, for instance, of
another "hunting-party" at Aboyne— and Scottish Jacobitism and discontent
were everywhere on the alert. Great difficulty, however, was experienced,
not only by Mar himself, whose position was chiefly that of a feudal
superior having no direct relations with the mass of the people, but
doubtless by the other prime movers in the rebellion, in getting their
vassals and tenants to rise. A letter which the earl addressed to John
Forbes of Jnverer-nan, his " bailie of Kildrummy," takes him severely to
task for remissness and lack of zeal. " Jocke," so the letter begins, " ye
were right not to come with the hundred men ye sent up to-night when I
expected four times that number;" it was " a pretty thing" that only the Mar
men should be refractory; " I have used gentle means too long, and shall be
forced to put other means into execution." The vassals were to be treated as
enemies unless they were forthcoming, and intimation was to be made to the
tenants that if they did not attend a party would be sent to burn or take
away all their possessions. The gentlemen were to appear in their best
accoutrements on horseback, no excuse to be taken, and Forbes himself was to
be at their head. Alar kept his word. One of his vassals was David Lumsden
of Cush-nie, and in the cases of a dozen of Lumsden's tenants taken
prisoners at Preston evidence was given which satisfied a court held at
Alford that the threats and oppression used by Mar and his agents
sufficiently accounted for their participation in th§ rebellion. The men
fled from their houses for several days to escape the impressment, and at
last their houses and cornyards were set on fire by the recruiting parties,
the men being ultimately captured, marched as prisoners to Braemar, and sent
off for service in the English expedition, where the chances of desertion
were less than nearer home. Even in Braemar itself the Jacobite leader had
his disappointments. Farquharson of Invercauld, in whose house he had been
staying, and Gordon of Aber-geldie broke away from him, and risked the
burning with which he threatened them rather than the graver perils of
rebellion.
It was on the 6th of
September that with religious solemnities Mar raised the standard of
insurrection at Braemar, on a commanding spot now covered by the hotel where
the modern village is entered from the east. A fortnight afterwards the
Pretender was proclaimed by Earl Marischal at the cross of Aberdeen, and at
Dundee by a new Graham of Claverhouse, at Montrose by the Earl of Southesk,
at Brechin by Lord Panmure, and at various places by other adherents of the
Jacobite party. The bells of Aberdeen were rung at night and the town was
illuminated, the citizens who refused or neglected to illuminate being "
rabbled " by the Jacobite mob. The town council and magistrates were of
Hanoverian sympathies, but the Convener of the Trades, with the deacons and
box-masters, were Jacobites, and entertained the Earl Marischal and his
friends at a feast in the Trades Hall. When the council met next day the
Jacobites presented themselves in powerful array, and demanded possession of
the arms and ammunition belonging to the town and the keys of the
blockhouse, which were either given over or seized; and Captain John
Bannerman, who had been commissioned by Marischal to that end, took command
of the .town. Popular sentiment was evidently in favour of the Pretender,
though the merchant-burgesses and middle-class generally adhered to the
cause of King George. On the eve of the annual election of town council and
magistrates the Earl Marischal returned from Inverugie. The old council did
not attempt to appoint their successors, alleging that as the Trades were in
rebellion no valid election could be held. A head-court of the burgh was
thereupon convened by the earl in the New or East Church of St Nicholas and
a Jacobite council elected on his nomination, with Patrick Bannerman as
provost, while Moir of Stoneywood, Moir of Scotston, and James Bisset,
younger, of Lessendrum, country gentlemen who were also burgesses of the
city, were appointed councillors. The old religious divisions came again
into prominence, and after some opposition the New Church was left for the
use of the Presbyterian ministers and people, while in the Old Church Dr
George Garden, Mr Robert Blair, and Dr Burnet preached from Sunday to Sunday
and prayed for .James VIII. The Marquis of Huntly arrived in the town on the
3rd of October with seventy horsemen on his way to join the insurgent army,
and with Lord Pitsligo was entertained by the Jacobite magistrates at the
Council House as well as by the Trades.
The inevitable requisitions
for supplies soon reminded the citizens of the burdens that had so often
been laid on the town. After the raising of the Jacobite standard at Braemar,
but before the proclamation of the Pretender in Aberdeen, the Hanoverian
town council had sanctioned the purchase of 200 stand of arms, and had given
effect to an order from the Lord Justice-Clerk to seize all the gunpowder
belonging to the merchants and send the greater part of it to Edinburgh for
the use of the Government. Within a few weeks came demands from the Earl of
Mar, as " commander-in-chief of his Majesty's forces in Scotland," for 300
Lochaber axes, for immediate payment of £200 sterling as "six months' cess,
in full of all former cess," and for raising under the name of a loan a
further sum of ^2000, a first instalment bf £500 to be transmitted
immediately. Four cannon were to be forwarded by sea to the Marquis of
Huntly, and later on a . head-court of the citizens agreed to furnish and
defray the charges of a troop of thirty horse for the Earl Marischal's
squadron. Another requisition was for the transportation to Perth of a
printing-press and supply of type belonging to James Nicol, the town's
printer.
The Pretender landed at
Peterhead with six followers on the 22nd of December, and passed through
Aberdeen incognito to the Earl Marischal's house of Fetteresso, where he
assumed the status of king, received loyal addresses from the magistrates
and Episcopal clergy of Aberdeen and the professors of the two universities,
and conferred on Provost Bannerman the honour of knighthood. James made his
way to Perth, and reigned for three weeks in Scone Palace. But the southern
Jacobite army had been extinguished at Preston, Mar had failed at
Sheriffmuir, and rumour came to Scone that Argyll was approaching. The
gallant Gordon of Glen-bucket swore that the loyal clans would fight round
their king 10,000 strong, but Mar had lost his appetite for fighting, and
the Pretender, who had not nerve for such a situation, wished himself well
out of Scotland.
So much of the Jacobite army
as had not "melted away" into its Highland glens was led down the Carse of
Gowrie and along the sea-coast until it reached Montrose, where the
Pretender and his commander-in-chief slipped on board a French vessel,
telling their anxious followers that they were bound for Aberdeen by sea. In
point of fact they were escaping to France. The army thus cravenly deserted
was in a woful plight. At Aberdeen the question of making a stand was
considered, but it was concluded that there was no chance of successfully
doing so. Most of the prominent men sailed from Aberdeen or some other
north-eastern port for the Continent, and when Argyll reached the town he
found it empty of Jacobites of note. The rising had commanded the sympathy
of many persons of position in the north-east, and in the hands of a
military leader of ability and resolution, in the state of opinion and
feeling prevailing throughout Scotland, a much more protracted struggle
would have taken place. But Mar's vanity was the ruin, as it had been the
origin, of the insurrection. He had none of the qualities of a great leader.
In a short time the Earl
Marischal and his brother are found at Cardinal Alberoni's conference at
Madrid, which resulted, among other things, in the Spanish-Jacobite
expedition to the West Highlands and the fiasco in Glenshiel. The sentence
of death against Marischal was of none effect because he kept out of the
way, but there was no escape from the forfeitures decreed in the special
Acts of Attainder that were passed against him and against Mar, Panmure, who
had recently acquired the Aberdeenshire estate of Belhelvie, Southesk, who
held (as Panmure also did) an extensive territory on the southern borders of
the county, and the other Jacobite leaders or partisans.
The forfeited estates were
placed in the hands of commissioners "in order to raise money out of them
severally for the use of the public," and in Aberdeenshire as elsewhere the
commissioners found themselves beset by difficulties. Their English law was
couched in exotic phraseology which the Scottish courts were not eager to
interpret or apply, while Scottish creditors of the attainted noblemen
hastened to the Court of Session with claims that left small margin for the
public. Sequestrations of the estates were ordered, and Jacobite nominees of
the creditors were appointed as " factors" to deal with the revenues and
properties. Thus Thomas Arbuthnot, the Earl Marischal's agent in Peterhead,
who had been with him in the rebellion, was appointed factor on the
Marischal estates; and Thomas Lumsden, who had been Panmure's adviser on
political matters as well as his agent in matters of business, was invested
by the court with full powers of administration over the Panmure estates.
Parliament, on being appealed to by the commissioners, empowered them to
sell the estates, and, on a sale taking place, those of Marischal, Panmure,
and Southesk in Aberdeenshire or on its borders were purchased by the York
Buildings Company. In acquiring the properties the company fell heir to some
of the difficulties of the commissioners, and it soon had others of its own.
By the Jacobites it was disliked as Hanoverian, by the Marischal tenantry it
was regarded as a usurping absentee corporation and a common enemy. After
some experience of the stiffness of the tenants and the slowness of the
law-courts, the company proceeded to lease the estates to "tacksmen," or
middlemen, who were to pay a fixed rent and deal individually with the
tenants. Provost Gordon and his son-in-law, Provost Robert Stewart — the
latter of whom had been in office when the Pretender was proclaimed—became
joint-lessees of Fetteresso; Belhelvie wras leased by Provost George
Fordyce; and Sir Archibald Grant, the member of Parliament for Aberdeenshire,
jointly with his brother-in-law Alexander Garden of Troup, obtained leases
of the Marischal estates in Buchan and other large interests in the
forfeited lands.
The company and its lessees
addressed themselves with more zeal than wisdom to the task of developing
their estates and establishing new industries. Mining for iron and other
metals was revived in Glenesk, and iron mines were opened on the banks of
the Conglass—a tributary of the Aven in Upper Banffshire; but as fuel,
except peat, was scarce in that district, the ore had to be transported on
packhorses across the hills to iron - works that were established at
Culnakyle on the banks of the Spey, where the pine-woods of Abernethy
furnished the raw material of charcoal, and where preparations were made for
carrying on the industry on a grand scale. " Strathdoun pigs" were placed on
the market; but after much capital had been laid out, it wras found—for
General Wade's roads were still unmade—that the problem of transport alone
would be fatal to a successful iron manufacture in such remote regions, and
a crisis in the affairs of the company brought the experiment to an abrupt
termination. Another of the company's operations was to float timber down
the Spey in rafts for shipment to England—the raft and raftsman being a
novelty in the north. One benefit which the company conferred at the remoter
seats of its industrial enterprises was to familiarise the public wiith
better methods of organising labour than had hitherto been known. Skilled
workmen wTere brought from the south, whose ways of life as well as of work
differed widely from those of the inhabitants; and by its roadmaking and
sawmills in the Speyside forests, and its systematic prosecution of the
timber trade, the York Buildings Company contributed in its degree to the
development of northern industry. The middlemen-lessees of the agricultural
estates had such advantageous bargains with the company as left an ample
recompense for the difficult business of collecting rents, and the
Aberdeenshire leases were renewed as they expired; but it does not appear
that agricultural improvement made any notable progress under them.
After the two brothers Keith
had risen to the highest positions in the service of Frederick the Great,
and the younger, as Field - Marshal, had fallen in the battle of Hochkirchen,
the elder—Earl Marischal—who kept himself clear of the second Jacobite
rising, obtained a reversal of his attainder, and held the earldom of
Kintore, to which he fell heir, for the last seventeen years of his life. He
had a friend at Frederick's Court in the person of Sir Andrew Mitchell of
Thainston, the British ambassador, and was on terms of the greatest
friendship with Frederick himself. Marischal served his country by revealing
to the elder Pitt the Bourbon family compact, the secret of which he had
learned when Prussian ambassador at Madrid 3 and he received a grant of
public money which enabled him to buy back his Buchan estates on easy terms,
for none would bid against him. But Inverugie, in its ruins, had little
charm for his childless old age, and Frederick easily persuaded him to
return to the Court at Potsdam. The estates were resold—the greater part of
them becoming the property of James Ferguson, the eminent Scottish judge
known as Lord Pitfour.
A great change in public
sentiment took place in the course of the thirty years between the first and
second Jacobite rebellions. Most of the Aberdeenshire adherents of the
Stuart cause were convinced by Mar's failure of the futility of armed
resistance, if not of the soundness of Whig and Hanoverian principles. The
influence of the Church was exerted on the side of the Government, and after
1716 there was little Jacobitism among the parish ministers. Differences
there were among them; but it is noteworthy that the Presbyterian Secession
of 1733 got little support in the north-east, and the Erskines did not draw
a single recruit from the ranks of the ministers between the Dee and Spey.
One of the measures following
the suppression of the rebellion of 1715 was another and final " purgation "
of the two universities. A royal commission of visitation in 1 717 deprived
King's College of its principal, its civilist, and two of its regents. At
Marischal College the principalship became vacant by death, but the
professors of mathematics and medicine and four regents were removed. The
only professor left in office was Dr Thomas Blackwell, who held the chair of
divinity, and who, as a staunch Presbyterian, had been sent by the General
Assembly to London to oppose the passing of the Toleration and Patronage
Acts. Blackwell was now promoted to the principalship; Colin Maclaurin, at
the age of a modern undergraduate, was appointed professor of mathematics,
to be succeeded, 011 his removal on the recommendation of Sir Isaac Newton
to the corresponding chair at Edinburgh a few years later, by John Stewart,
son of the provost, one of whose colleagues was to be the eloquent and
accomplished David Fordyce, who, while still a young man, perished by
shipwreck as he svas returning from Holland. Another was Thomas Black-well,
the younger, who first was professor of Greek and afterwards principal.
George Chalmers, minister of Kilwinnmg, was appointed Principal of King's
College. Alexander Garden, younger of Troup, an advocate in Edinburgh, of
the influential Whig connection and lessee of forfeited estates, became
civilist in 1717, and sold the office for 4500 merks in 1724 to Alexander
Fraser, sub-principal, for his son. John Ker and Daniel Bradfut, both
undistinguished, came north with Chalmers to be regents under royal warrants
issued at the instance of the Commission of Visitation. The first of four
members of the family of Gregory who held the office of " mediciner" in
King's College was appointed in 1725. Both colleges finally ceased at this
"purgation" to be an influence on the side of Jacobitism or Episcopacy.
The turbulence of the
Highlands, including the upland glens of these counties, had all along been
largely due to economic causes; and the reports of General Wade, who was
ordered to investigate the manners and customs of the Highlanders and " the
state of the country in regard to the robberies and depredations said to be
committed," disclose an organised system of cattle - stealing and blackmail,
by means of which the Celtic clans subsisted on their Lowland neighbours.
Some of the more daring banditti, as Gilderoy and John Dugar in the
preceding century, not only stole cattle and horses but captured members of
wealthy families and held them at ransom, as in the case of a relative of Dr
John Forbes of Corse, for whom a great sum was demanded, but whose release
by Dugar without payment was procured through the intervention of Huntly.2
Action was taken by the central authority from time to time with a view to
the suppression of these "cattle-lifting" raids. Thus in 1672 Alexander
Farquharson of Invercauld was ordered by the Privy Council to enter into a
bond, under a penalty of 3000 merks, in addition to indemnification of
persons wronged, for the good behaviour of his people, and to exact bonds of
relief, of similar purport, from his vassals residing at a distance; and a
general Act of 1686 provided that in all leases there should be a clause
obliging tenants and their dependents to live peaceably and regularly. Yet
in 1689-90 Lord Forbes's tenants were despoiled by raiders from Badenoch,
Braemar, and Upper Banffshire—the country round the base of the
Cairngorms—of 158 cattle, 18 horses, and 830 sheep. The chiefs tried to
repudiate the responsibility which the Government threw upon them, and
attributed the depredations to "broken men." In truth, however, they were
part of an organised system, in the persistence of which we may see the
natural and indeed necessary result of the overpopulation of high-lying
mountain regions where the cereals do not ripen except in favourable years.
To enforce the law against cattle - stealing was to compel the people to
migrate or starve, for there was not subsistence for them in the produce of
their own lands.
The heritors of the
Presbyteries of Alford and Kincardine organised in 1700 a system of mutual
insurance, and imposed on themselves a tax to secure the apprehension and
prosecution of the chief robbers by whom their estates were harried. About
the same time a sort of Highland police was formed, consisting of small
companies of soldiers under some of the chiefs, for the purpose of
repressing disorders. When General Wade was making his roads he organised
half-a-dozen such companies—the Black Watch, as they were called—to patrol
the Highlands and suppress blackmail and cattle-stealing. These companies
were after a time transformed into a regiment of regular troops; and then we
find Macpherson of Cluny, in the character of a patriotic blackmailer,
organising in 1744 a "watch for the security of several counties in the
north of Scotland from thefts and depredations," which was to act
impartially against all depredators, whether their victims paid for his
services or not.
The opening up of the central
Highlands by General Wade's roads was the most effective of the measures of
the Government after the suppression of the rebellion. Little had come of
the Disarming Acts of 1716, except that obsolete weapons were imported from
Holland and surrendered at a profit; but the new trunk roads and military
stations had a significance and potentiality that were plain enough to the
Highland chiefs and clans, who had been astonished at seeing Wade driving
along in a coach and six horses. Wheeled vehicles were a novelty in the
north. Sir Archibald Grant records that in. 1720 he could not get his wife
conveyed by chariot from Aberdeen to Monymusk, and that in the early years
after the Union there was no coach, chariot, or chaise, and but few carts,
north of the Tay. General Wade opened up the Highlands not only to wheeled
vehicles but to effective patrolling by troops, and the easy and rapid
transport of artillery. But his roads did not extend to Aberdeenshire or
Banffshire, and while raiding by caterans from distant parts was to a
certain extent checked, there was a hungry population in the upper glens of
the Dee, the Don, and the Banffshire streams, to which repression was
starvation.
The opening up of the
Highlands involved a serious detraction from the power and position of clan
chiefs and landlords. At the same time many of the Lowland gentry, and even
of the nobility, were miserably poor. Apart from Jacobitism the Government
was unpopular, political and social discontent were rife, and hostility to
the Union was stimulated by increased taxation. These discontents were not
aggressively manifested in the north-east, where nothing occurred bearing
any resemblance to the Shawfield and Porteous mobs; but the fiscal laws
induced a development of smuggling, and all along the coasts of Buchan and
Banffshire the local population was concerned in the contraband traffic,
receiving large quantities of foreign spirits and wines on dark nights for
concealment in recesses of the rocks or in the sand, to await opportunities
of inland transport and sale. The revenue laws and the consequences of the
Porteous mob affected Aberdeenshire indirectly, by giving strength to
Jacobitism and sedition in other parts of Scotland.
The first harbinger of the
outbreak was a missive from the Marquis of Tweeddale, as Secretary of State,
with the king's message to Parliament on the subject of a projected invasion
in the interests of a Pretender with the support of France. In reply to this
missive a loyal address was sent back by the Town Council of Aberdeen, and
on the announcement of an insurrection in the West Highlands in August 1745
it was resolved to arm the citizens in twelve companies.
Sir John Cope encamped on the
high ground west of the Denburn on September 11, 1745, when returning from
his futile expedition to Inverness, and insisted on taking with him in the
transport ships in which his force was about to sail for the Forth the
cannon at the blockhouse and the small arms belonging to the town. The town
council at once agreed to give up the cannon as unserviceable for defence
against landward attack, but only yielded up the small arms when threatened
with the king's displeasure and on Cope's representation that they would
inevitably fall into the hands of the rebels.
Though Aberdeen was occupied
by the Jacobite insurgents for five months in 1745-46, neither the city nor
either of the counties played any considerable part in the rising.
Circumstances had greatly changed since 1715, when the rebellion had its
origin and much of its strength in the north-east. Mar and Marischal were
now unrepresented, and the second insurrection was organised elsewhere and
had none of its prime movers in these counties. Prudential considerations,
enforced by memories of Mar's rebellion, restrained many influential persons
of Jacobite leanings from declaring themselves. Avowed Jacobites would have
entered the field had the Prince's cause prospered. The Earl of Aberdeen,
for instance, was on the point of being led by the early successes of the
rebel cause to take part in the rising, when his somewhat sudden death saved
him from final committal to so grave a step.
Lord Lewis Gordon, brother of
the duke, and a youthful cavalier of the dashing and semi-quixotic type,
after some apparent hesitation, took the side of the Prince, was appointed
his Lord - Lieutenant for the two shires, and became the acknowledged leader
of the north-eastern Jacobites, though he had no hand in the initiatory
stages of the rebellion. The duke himself held aloof, though it was his
chamberlain that proclaimed the Pretender in Aberdeen. The
deputy-lieutenant, who was also governor of the city, was William Moir of
Lonmay. The office had been offered to Erskine of * Pittordie, but he
prudently held aloof, as he had done in 1715 when the call to action came
from his kinsman the Earl of Mar. Nearly all the Forbeses were loyal, but
the most considerable Aberdeenshire participant in the insurrection was
Alexander Forbes, fourth Lord Pitsligo, who had fought for the Pretender at
Sheriffmuir and was now a man of advanced years, a religious idealist, whose
high personal character inspired confidence and brought a numerous response
from his Buchan neighbours to his call to arms. Lord Pitsligo was a
legitimist with an honest belief in the divine right of kings, and it is
recorded that when he had marshalled his troop of cavalry in Aberdeen he
took off his hat, looked upwards with a solemn appeal to heaven that the
cause was just, and in the same breath gave the order to march. Gordon of
Glenbucket, than whom there was no more thorough soldier, was again in the
forefront. In Aberdeen itself the most active of the Jacobites was James
Moir of Stoneywood, nephew of the governor; and of the old families in the
neighbourhood Irvine of Drum, Menzies of Pitfodels, and Sir Alexander P>annerman,
espoused the Jacobite cause. Francis Farquharson of Monaltry commanded the
Aboyne battalion, consisting to a large extent of his own kinsmen and their
retainers from Upper Deeside. Among the other gentlemen of Banffshire and
Aberdeenshire who took part in the insurrection were Sir William Dunbar of
Durn, Sir William Gordon of Park, the Gordons of Avochie, Blelack, Carnousie,
Cobairdy, and Hallhead, Ogilvie of Auchiries, Byres of Tonley, Hay of Rannes,
and Fullerton of Dudwick; but the representation of the two counties is
significantly meagre, and confined for the most part to houses of minor
importance.
And while there was a
prevailing indisposition among the county families of the north-east to
follow the lead of the Murrays and Drummonds, who were at the head of the
rebellion, the attitude of the general body of the people was that of
decided aversion to the appeal to arms. Cope had left the town ten days when
John Hamilton, the Duke of Gordon's chamberlain, arrived in Aberdeen
(September 25) with a company of twenty-five horse and seventy foot to
proclaim the Pretender. Some of the more ardent Jacobites among the citizens
at once joined him, and the keys of the Market Cross having been obtained,
the provost, James Morison, younger, of Elswick, was sent for. The provost
could not be found until a peremptory order was announced that unless he
presented himself at once his house would be burned. He was then marched as
a prisoner to the Town House, where some of the magistrates and council were
already in compulsory attendance. The Jacobites ascended the cross, taking
with them the provost and his colleagues, and thus appeared before the
populace with the ostensible acquiescence and support of the civic
authorities while the Pretender was proclaimed and the sheriff-substitute
read his manifestoes.
In the town council records
it is stated that the Jacobites endeavoured, even to the extent of using
force, to get the provost to join them in drinking the health of the
Pretender, "and several other treasonable and rebellious healths," and that
on his refusal they "poured the wine down his breast, caused the bells to be
rung and made public rejoicings, and, as a pretended jubilee, threw open the
prison doors, whereby those that were committed for murder and other crimes,
as well as for debts, made their escape." Provost Morison himself described
the incident in a letter to Lord President Forbes, who replied, " The usage
you met with at your Cross and your resolute behaviour I had formerly heard,
nor need you doubt that it shall be properly represented in due time. The
discontinuance of your election"—the annual election of town council and
magistrates — "is what you could not help under the circumstances. The good
people must at present live in the most neighbourly way they can, as none, I
believe, would choose to act." But there was no heart in the rebellion in
these parts, and Aberdeen, with its civic rulers, was substantially loyal.
The main problem before the
Jacobites was that of recruiting. Lord Lewis Gordon's difficulties in
procuring men were far greater than those of Mar had been. Lord Lewis, who
was occasionally in Aberdeen, zealously seconded by Moir of Stoneywood who
was constantly there, did his best to induce Aberdonians to enlist. " They
come little speed," remarks John Bisset, the city minister, in his diary,
which chronicles many facts and details showing that pubi c sentiment was to
a large extent favourable to King George. Bisset notes with delight the
cheering for King George by the boys in the streets, and their
manifestations of d sapproval at the grammar-school on the masters'
temporarily dropping the king's name out of the prayers. The Duke of Gordon
having enjoined his people to keep clear of the insurrect'on, Lord Lewis
found himself without personal followers from the family domains. In the
early days of the rising he met the Jacobite gentlemen of Deeside at Aboyne
Castle and at the house of Gordon of Blelack, but only to find out how
reluctant the people were to commit themselves, and how baleful to
Jacobitism was the influence of the Presbyterian ministers. Of the
reluctance of the people of Aberdeenshire to rally to the standard of their
"lawful prince" he writes to Stoneywood with much bitterness; and of
Banffshire, with regard to raising the cess and levying men, he says, "We
have been obliged to use great threatenings, although no real hardships have
been used, and in the lazy way the country is in, together with the
unnatural methods the ministers and other disaffected people make use of to
restrain the people from doing their duty, there is no raising the quotas of
men without seeming violence." Another of Stoneywood's correspondents
reports having engaged nine "servant lads," who were "induced to draw back
by the diabolical lies of their Presbyterian preacher." The minister
of Logie-Mar, regardless of the sentiments of his principal heritor, was
praying one Sunday that the army of the rebels might be scattered and their
counsels brought to nought, when an indignant lady parishioner burst out
with the demand, " How dare ye say that an' my Charlie wi' them !"1 Charles
Gordon of Blelack was a colonel in the prince's army, and the interrupter
was his mother. The ingenuous excuses offered by Erskine of Pittodrie for
holding aloof may be taken as marking the attitude of many others. His
health was broken, he wrote to Moir of Stoneywood, and he could not bear the
fatigue and exposure of campaigning. "As for raising men," he continued, " I
see such a backwardness it will only be the greatest force that will bring
them out; and as for myself, I am worse situated that way than any of my
neighbours. I have more widow women that have tacks in my interest than
there are in several parishes round me; and if I should force out the men
that hold the ploughs the tack must lie unlaboured, and I fancy you will
easily believe I cannot support my family without rent. But I shall be well
pleased to scrimp myself to give money to raise my proportion of men
volunteers — forced men will be of no use." Such were the considerations
that restrained many a Jacobite at heart from openly declaring for the
Prince. Lord Lewis issued orders that one fully equipped soldier should be
furnished for every ^100 of valued rent, or sterling in lieu of each man,
under pain of military execution. The need for money was as urgent as the
need for men. Aberdeen was ordered to pay its year's cess to the governor,
but on the town, through its head-court, making a representation on the
subject, a compromise was arranged under which the payment of ^1000 into the
needy rebel exchequer was accepted for the time as a full discharge.
There was no actual warfare
in either county except the skirmish at Inverurie (December 23), in which
Lord Lewis Gordon with his Aberdeenshire Lowlanders, including the Aberdeen
men under Moir of Stoneywood, with the Aboyne battalion under Farquharson of
Monaltry, surprised and defeated a body of Highlanders, consisting chiefly
of the two loyal clans of Macleod and Munro, whom Lord Loudon had sent from
Inverness to the relief of Aberdeen. A few of the loyalists were killed and
forty-one taken prisoners. The warfare at this stage was not without its
chivalrous features. Lord Lewis, in response to an appeal addressed to him
by the laird of Macleod from Gordon Castle the day after the battle,
undertook that all possible care should be taken of the wounded, and " every
civility" shown to the prisoners, with the exception of " Regent Chalmers "
of King's College, Forbes of Echt, and Maitland of Pittrichie, who, he said,
had acted the infamous part of spies and informers, and the two last
especially, who had "given a great deal of bad advice to a certain great man
who shall be nameless"—no douot his own ducal brother. These he held it to
be " consistent neither with honour nor inclination" to treat as prisoners
of war.
The north-eastern regiments
had their part in the battle of Prestonpans, in the expedition to England,
at Falkirk, and at Culloden. There was no bolder, braver, or more
inspiriting warrior in the field than " Old Glenbucket," as he was called;
and the other officers—Lord Lewis Gordon, Lord Pitsligo, Monaltry,
Stoneywood, Gordon of Avochie, and their subalterns—acquitted themselves
with credit and with the zeal of men who had staked everything on the issue.
The general direction of the campaign was not in their hands, and for its
blunders they were not responsible. Some of the men who had been forced into
the ranks were more eager to escape from them than to fight. On the
Government side a company of local militia, lately enrolled in the Deeside
Highlands as an auxiliary or reserve for the " Black Watch," which had been
transformed into the forty-third regiment of regular troops,1 refused to
embark with Cope at Aberdeen, and from another there were numerous
desertions on the eve of the battle of Prestonpans. Similar desertions
occurred on the Jacobite side, as in the case of a hundred of Stoneywood's
men who were ordered to embark at Find-horn for a search expedition in
Sutherlandshire ; and individual desertions appear to have been numerous.
But there is no reason to doubt that on the whole the north-eastern
regiments, consisting though they did almost entirely of inexperienced
soldiers, fought resolutely and steadily in the Jacobite cause.
The relief of Aberdeen by the
Duke of Cumberland at the end of February 1746 was no doubt welcomed by the
citizens generally, tl lough it does not appear that avoidable hardships had
been inflicted upon them by the Jacobites. The town council record speaks
favourably of the Duke, who with his * army remained in the town for six
weeks, and on his departure appointed six ex-provosts, and six other
citizens, to be governors of the city till order should be restored. Less
pleasing accounts of him appear in Bishop Robert Forbes's Jacobite Memoirs,
where particulars are given of his violence and inconsiderateness as
occupant, for the time, of the house in the Guestrow of Mr Alexander
Thomson, advocate, an adherent of the Whig interest; though still more
discreditable was the rapacious conduct of General Hawley in the adjacent
house of Mrs Gordon of Hallhead, whose husband was with the Jacobite army.
The testimony of Bisset may be cited in support of the view that the conduct
of the Jacobite soldiers while in the city was better than that of the
English army.
When Cumberland started from
Aberdeen on the 8th of April on his northward march by Oldmeldrum, Turriff,
and Banff, he left a garrison of 200 men in Robert Gordon's Hospital, which
had lately been built, but was not yet open for its educational purposes.
Eight days afterwards the tired and starving Jacobite forces met with their
final overthrow on Drummossie Moor, and the process of severe repression set
in. Farquharson of Monaltry, and a few other officers, were taken prisoners,
with a number of their men, but most of the principal officers escaped. They
lurked among the hills or in Lowland places of concealment, and many of them
endured great privations, but betrayal was practically unknown. Lord
Pitsligo lived in disguise on his estate in Buchan, or under the shelter of
his neighbours. Lord Lewis Gordon wandered from Fochabers to Strathbogie,
and thence to Aboyne and Birse, until he found his way to France, where
under an assumed name, and with health broken by the hardships he had
suffered, he survived only a few years. The fugitives, of whom there were
many in Upper Deeside, were aided by their kinsmen and neighbours, whose
fidelity to the vanquished was proof against all offers of reward for the
detection and surrender of rebel refugees. Farquharson of Invercauld, whose
conduct when rebellion was afoot was more correct than his sentiments, was
helpful to his kinsmen when the soldiers were in search of them. His
daughter, in the absence of her husband, /Eneas Mackintosh of Mackintosh (an
officer in the Government service who contrived to be taken prisoner by his
Jacobite friends), raised the Mackintoshes in the Stuart interest, and is
said to have enlisted 300 Farquharsons from Deeside. " Colonel Anne," as she
was called, is one of the heroines of northern tradition and romance, and
was an involuntary prisoner after Culloden.
While the stern work of
repression was in progress, a proclamation was published in the churches
throughout Aberdeenshire giving notice that " wherever arms of any kind are
found, the house, and all houses belonging to the proprietor, shall be
immediately burnt to ashes "; and that if any arms were discovered
underground, "the adjacent houses and fields shall be immediately laid waste
and destroyed." In the Act of Attainder against the leaders of the
rebellion, forty-two are included, but only five of the names are connected
with these shires—Lord Pitsligo, Lord Lewis Gordon, Sir William Gordon of
Park, Gordon of Glenbucket, and Farquharson of Monaltry; but the secondary
list of exemptions from the Act of Indemnity includes many Aberdeenshire
names.
One of the last incidents of
the rebellion in Aberdeen was the issue of an order to the magistrates by
the Earl of Ancrum, as military commander, for the bells to be rung and the
houses to be illuminated on the anniversary of the accession of George I.
(August 1). It was not customary to commemorate other accessions than that
of the reigning monarch, and while the bells were rung, the demand for
illumination was disregarded. Things were carried with a high hand by the
soldiers, who went through the town at night smashing windows and committing
other acts of outrage under colour of loyalty. Notwithstanding pleas that
the town was under military rule, the magistrates arrested one of the
officers concerned in the affair, and their remonstrances were followed by
the early transference from Aberdeen of the commanding officer, while
proceedings for the recovery of damages were ultimately compromised, on the
intercession of the commander of the forces in Scotland and others, on
payment of a sum sufficient to reimburse the poorer citizens.
The abolition of the
hereditary jurisdictions, and the overthrow of the clan system, had less
importance for Aberdeenshire, where the only organised clan was that of
Farquharson, than for the Highlands ; but even here, as curtailing the power
of the landlords over the people on their estates, it involved a social
change of some importance. Compensation for the loss of offices and
jurisdictions, under the Act of 1747, was awarded to the Duke of Gordon, the
Earl of Erroll, the Earl of Seafield and Findlater, Lord Braco (who had
acquired extensive interests in the counties, including some of the estates
forfeited after 1715), Lord Saltoun, Sir Arthur Forbes of Craigievar, and
Urquhart of Meldrum; while other claims were rejected, chiefly on a decision
of the Court that lords of regalities could not split them on selling part
of their lands.
Importance is also
attributable to the military measures that followed Culloden, one of which
was the stationing of small pickets of troops in the Highland districts of
the two counties, finally to suppress the practice of cattle-lifting. The
headquarters of this service were at first established at Tarland, with
subordinate posts at Inchrory, the head of Glengairn, above the Linn of Dee,
Glenclunie, Spital of Glenmuick, and Glenclova in Angus, commanding the
various routes by which the caterans returned with their booty. While these
posts were being established, forty-three head of cattle were intercepted
from "the thieves of Rannoc'n." Overtures were made to the commanding
officer at Tarland that he should "live and let live," by confining his
attention exclusively to the shires of Aberdeen and Banff; and the Duke of
Gordon's factor in Upper Banffshire sought, by a boycott, to starve out the
picket at Inchrory.1 But the practice was completely suppressed, and after a
year or two the several pickcts were concentrated as small garrisons in the
castles of Braemar and Corgarff, a detachment attending the Tarland market,
which long continued to be a scene and occasion of turbulence.
The problem of subsistence in
the higher glens, where neither the habits of the people nor the conditions
of soil and climate offered much prospect of relief through agriculture, was
now graver than ever, and a time of great poverty and hardship set in
shortly after the middle of the century, from which a certain amount of
relief was found by the enlistment into the army of large numbers of the
young men. The 43rd regiment or Black Watch, and also Keith's regiment and
the Gordon Highlanders, both of which were raised in 1759, were largely
recruited from West Aberdeenshire and the Highlands of Banffshire. In the
development of another form of smuggling, namely, the illicit distillation
of whisky and its transport to market in the large towns, the population of
the remoter districts was generally implicated in the latter part of the
eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century. By such means
some money was obtained, and the perils and adventures of this demoralising
traffic were in keeping with those of the cattle-lifting days. But by this
time the old tenures were superseded, holdings were being consolidated and
the arable land enclosed, sheep-farming had come into vogue as the best
means of utilising the natural pasture of the hills, and " clearances," or
compulsory removals of small occupiers from particular areas, were carried
out from time to time. For the Highland tracts of the two counties, as for
the Highlands generally, the last Jacobite insurrection was not so much a
dynastic struggle as the expiring throes of the old social order ; and if
the adjustment of the population to the new economy was to be a slow process
and attended by hardships, its completion was to be one of the most
beneficent changes recorded in social history. For the north-east of
Scotland generally the last of our civil wars coincides with the beginning
of the era of agricultural improvement and of a social and economic
transformation greater than had been witnessed since it was colonised by the
ancestors of its present inhabitants. |
