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DUNCAN ROBERTSON of Drumachin
was an ardent supporter of Prince Charles Edward, but through illness was
unable to be out in 1745. He, however, did much for the Prince's cause in
Atholl. After Culloden he skulked in the hills till the death, in 1749, of
his kinsman, Alexander Robertson of Strowan, the Jacobite poet. By that
event he succeeded to the chieftainship and estate. His wife and children
were threatened with military execution if they stayed in a little hut where
they had sought shelter. His tenants struggled in vain against the
Government, which was bent on his ruin. He was in hiding in numerous places
in Scotland until his escape to Holland in 1753. He reached Paris in this
year with his wife and four children, having 39 louis in his pocket. His
family had to live in exile for thirty-nine years. His two sons, Alexander
and Colzear, were officers in the Scottish Brigade in the Dutch service.
Strowan was intimately
connected with the principal Jacobite families of Scotland. He married one
of the eight daughters of the second Lord Nairne. One of her sisters was the
wife of Lord Strathallan, another of Lord Dunmore, another of Oliphant of
Gask, another of Robertson of Lude, and another of Graham of Orchill. Her
father, Lord Nairne, was a son of John, Marquis of Atholl, by Amelia
Stanley, the daughter of James, Karl of Derby, whose mother was a daughter
of the Duke of Tremouille.
As above stated, Strowan
skulked in Scotland for seven years after the ruin of the Prince's cause,
wandering, like him, from place to place. Looking to the number of places he
was in—no fewer than 157, it is wonderful how he escaped, more particularly
as the search after him was not allowed to drop. In a letter of Lady Gask of
26th April, 1753, referring to the arrest of Dr Cameron, the brother of
Lochiel, and the last who suffered for the Stuart cause, she says:—"Doctor
Cameron was carried to London. Great search has been made for Dune, and
others," the Dune, here being Strowan.
The following, copied from a
note-book in the handwriting of his son and successor in Strowan, will be
read with interest, more particularly when it is borne in mind that Carolina
Oliphant, Lady Nairne, the sweet singer of Strathearn, was the fugitive's
grand-daughter. Many of his hiding-places were the residences of the
followers and sufferers in the Rising, and how he evaded apprehension in his
wanderings seems even more surprising than the escape of the young Ascanius
himself.
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