Edited by Frank R. Shaw, FSA Scot, Dawsonville, GA, USA
Email: jurascot@earthlink.net

Dear friend Clark McGinn has come forward with one of his better articles in my opinion. Continually, Clark has been and I predict will continue to be a tremendous supporter of these pages. He has done so while changing jobs and moving from London to Dublin. He has  completed his work for his PhD and the only thing left is to defend his thesis. Knowing Clark, it will be some of The University of Glasgow professors on trial and not him. He is still travelling speaking for Burns and the last I heard these trips would equate to 6.7 times around the globe and the 2014 Burns season is just beginning. I cannot imagine the energy, much less the time, he will burn up speaking for our Bard. I have a mere three speaking engagements over the next few weeks to deliver Immortal Memories. Mine will all be in Georgia – Atlanta, Savannah, and Statesboro. Clark’s travel will take him throughout Europe and the Northeast of America. Did I tell you I have only head him speak once and I had to travel 4,000 miles to do so in Glasgow. Not a finer speaker have I heard before or since. Actually, Google says Glasgow is 4004 miles if you add the miles from the Premium Outlet Mall (near our home) on 400 to the airport entrance!

What you will be reading today has to do with some men who talked among themselves some few years after Burns died and decided to celebrate his work in the “old clay biggin” where Burns was born. The Reverend Hamilton Paul was in charge and you will find an article on him by Clark McGinn if you go to Chapter 141 of our index. The article is entitled A Forgotten Hero. Clark has volunteered to write an article on each of the nine men who were guests at the first Burns Supper in 1801.  

There is an old cowboy saying, thanks to Zane Grey, I think of as I conclude this introduction. In the early days of the West being settled more than one river had to be crossed and trouble awaited many of them.  Dangers lurked everywhere from Indians to snakes to bears. Rivers of trouble were almost everywhere. The greatest compliment a cowboy could receive from another was “He’ll do to ride the river with” which if interpreted today  would mean “I got your back”. That describes Clark McGinn, a literary cowboy! (FRS: 1.15.14)   

PRIMROSE
By Clark McGinn

Like Robert Burns, I was born in the prosperous small town of Ayr. Like all county towns, Ayr is a network of networks, families, trades, clubs and positions of influence each of which collides and deals with the others in the drawing room, at the kirk, the street, in business or at the pub. Again, in our current century, like small towns all over, many fish have swum away to bigger ponds, but in our poet’s time in the eighteenth century, Ayr was a nexus of influence in what was one of the richest and most powerful counties within Scotland.

It was in that social environment that the Reverend Hamilton Paul convened the very first Burns Supper at Burns Cottage, Alloway on 21st July, 1801. Eight other guests joined in that innovative evening and it will come as no surprise, therefore, that these nine men though very different in many respects, shared a complex web of interlinked relations. One of the diners was called Primrose Kennedy and this unusually named guest has caused some careless commentators to go into print to say that a lady was present at the inception of the Burns Supper. That is definitely not the case: Primrose Kennedy was man, and a fighting man at that: albeit by then in retirement, Captain Kennedy was a veteran and hero of the British Army, and, oddly enough, a personal friend of George Washington.

But firstly, how did he get such an unusual name? It is still not uncommon in Ayrshire to use a name from the mother’s family as a Christian name for a couple’s second son. For example, I was named after my mother’s father John Clark and as my elder brother was already called John (after my paternal grandfather John McGinn) I was given my mother’s maiden name as my first name. Our hero’s father, David Kennedy, married one of his cousins who was called Miss Primrose Kennedy, so when his second boy was born in 1733, I suppose David faced the choice of either calling him ‘Kennedy Kennedy’ or ‘Primrose Kennedy’, and found the latter less silly. This naming convention causes havoc throughout traditional Ayrshire families as everyone ends end up with similar names. In this particular family, of Primrose’s five children one of his daughters was Primrose and his eldest son Quintin also married a cousin called Primrose Kennedy. Their oldest boy was, almost inevitably, christened Primrose William. PW Kennedy, in turn, married yet another cousin, whose mother was a third lady named Primrose Kennedy.  He died without issue ending the confusing patch of Primroses in Ayrshire.

Our Primrose was born in 1733 on his father’s small estate in south Ayrshire, which was called Drumellan. The house still stands, and can be found in the part of the county called Carrick, near Cumnock. The Kennedy family had been the virtual kings of that corner of Scotland for many centuries (not, however, without  various blood feuds and sanguinary battles with their rival lairds, the neighbouring Fergussons of Kilkerran and the Loudon branch of the Campbells in the north of Ayrshire).  In proof of their regional majesty the head of the Kennedy clan, the Earl of Cassillis (appropriately pronounced ‘castles’), lived in near-regal splendour in the family seat of Culzean Castle (pronounced ‘cullayne’) overlooking the beautiful Firth of Clyde and mighty curling-stone shape of the rocky island of Ailsa Craig. During Primrose’s life his chief and kinsman, Lord Cassillis spent a literal fortune in having the greatest architect of the day, the Scot Robert Adam, reconfigure the ancestral home into one of the gems of Scottish architecture, turning the old cliff-top stronghold into a neo-classical palace and landscaped gardens which make Downton Abbey look like a rather meagre flop house.  The Kennedy Lords still live there (with a grand collection of antiques and an even bigger collection of noble titles, as he is the 8th Marquess of Ailsa, the 19th Earl of Cassillis, the 21st Lord Kennedy and the 8th Baron Ailsa), but the castle and estate are National Trust for Scotland property now , and well worth a visit.

The Earl’s cousin, the laird of Drumellan, and his son were not of the core of the Kennedys, but came from a small, ancient but honoured side branch of the family tree. As such, they owned a small estate within the clan territory proportionate to their dignity. Primrose’s grandfather, Alexander, had sought to improve and extend his patrimony and had experienced some success in the initial years of the improvements which would be known as the agricultural revolution. However, he had taken on a load of debt to finance the heavy initial investment needed to secure long term improvements. In consequence, upon Alexander Kennedy’s death, his son David could expect little income from the estate as that was needed to pay off the mortgages over the coming years. So he needed an occupation to maintain his rank and lifestyle, therefore, in those turbulent times, in 1741 Lieutenant David Kennedy of Drumellan was one of the founding officers of the British 55th Regiment of Foot – which was in time to be renumbered the 44th and through constant, bloody service under the Crown, was to earn the proud nickname of ‘The Fighting Fours’.

After a few years of initial service in North America, David Kennedy was thrown into the civil war of the ‘Forty Five’ back home in Scotland. The 44th was one of the regiments encamped under General ‘Johnnie’ Cope at Prestonpans when the Jacobite army made its famous surprise day-break attack early in the campaign on 21st September, 1745.  Legend has it that Captain-Lieutenant Kennedy fought bravely, and while he was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a rebel soldier, he was in danger of being killed by a treacherous blow to his back from a second highlander creeping up behind him. Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the clan chief of the Camerons and one of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s generals, felt this an unchivalrous attempt on a brave man’s life and struck off the highlander’s head with his sword to save the valiant Kennedy from an ignominious stab in the back.  This nobility was typical of the man known  as ‘Gentle’ Lochiel, who would behave with consummate fairness when occupying Edinburgh and Glasgow for the Prince. He took Kennedy prisoner but in the ebb and flow after the battle, Drumellan was recaptured by some militia men loyal to the Crown and he was set free the following day. The 44th was effectively shattered as a regimental force at Prestonpans, and took no further part in the campaign which ended on the bloody field of Culloden Moor the following April.

After the defeat of the Young Pretender, and with Great Britain now at peace internally, the focus turned onto the world war against the French. The 44th had reformed to full strength and was given orders to sail once again for Great Britain’s growing North American colonies. David Kennedy used his influence on behalf of his son to obtain a position for the boy in his father’s regiment and so Primrose Kennedy was commissioned as an ensign (which was the junior rank of officer in those days, equivalent to a second lieutenant today). He was immediately posted to serve with his father across the Atlantic. Ensign Primrose Kennedy fought at Braddock’s monumental defeat at Monongahela in July 1755 in the Seven Years War (as we in Scotland call the French & Indian Wars), and, although Primrose was wounded, he was fortunate enough to be one of the survivors of that debacle, along with three fellow officers who would in time take the republican commission, but in those days they served under the Union Flag as Colonel George Washington and Doctor James Craik of the Virginia Regiment, and Captain Charles Lee a brother officer of the Kennedys in the 44th.

George Washington needs no introduction, and for students of American history, Lee will be remembered as an ambiguous figure with conflicted loyalty and immense ego which tarnished his reputation then, and now.  James Craik is perhaps slightly less well-known. A Scot by birth and an Edinburgh medical graduate, he was to become the first Surgeon-General of the USA, and served as the President’s personal physician, even attending his old friend on his death-bed.  Their camaraderie and military abilities were forged that day along with the young Scot, Primrose Kennedy.

The Colonel of the 44th had fallen on the field with Braddock and his wounded second in command , Thomas Gage  was under a cloud, so it fell upon the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in North America to promote one of the majors in the regiment to its command.  Major Eyre was preferred over Major David Kennedy and it was seen as no surprise that Kennedy, having been in poor health with rheumatism anyway, sold out his commission and sought permission to retire the following year. In fact there was a little politicking in the background. The Commander-in-Chief was the Earl of Loudon who was the head of the Ayrshire Campbells. He wrote to his master, ‘Butcher’ Cumberland at the War Office in London that he needed Kennedy back home in Ayrshire as the laird of Drumellan had political influence with the Kennedy Clan and Kennedy had promised to use that pull to help Loudon’s party in return for a passage home and a promotion to Lieutenant for his son. In addition to his step-up in his army rank, Primrose was now the heir to Drumellan estate as his elder brother Quinton had died unexpectedly while travelling in Europe. So a deal was struck with Loudon allowing David to return to civilian life and Lieutenant Primrose Kennedy saw out the remainder of the war in charge of the boats, barges and other vessels on Lake George which supported, amongst other missions, the attacks on Ticonderoga.  The records show that he was specifically chosen for this task as he was believed to have been ‘bred for the sea’: his superiors believing him to have a particular ability in combined land/sea operations given his South Ayrshire background and a presumed awareness of the techniques used by the audacious smugglers prevalent there who defied the Excise in night time operations to bring their contraband by boat from Ireland and the Isle of Man.

At the end of that war, following the fall of Quebec and the year of victories (1759 – a year which of course started with Burns’s birthday) the 44th crossed the Atlantic for a soporific tour of duty in Ireland, and it was here in 1772 that Primrose was promoted Captain. Around that time, his former comrades in arms from Monongahela were having to make difficult choices as the relationship between the Thirteen Colonies and the United Kingdom escalated from speeches, to laws, to protests, to shots and, terribly, to revolution. 

The tension in the Colonies meant that by the middle of 1775, the 44th Foot was now needed back in its old haunts to become a core resource in the establishment of the British military in North America. Soon, Captain Primrose Kennedy was to be in battle against the very men he with whom he had campaigned twenty years before, joining in the fighting at the battle of Bunker Hill (where he served on detachment, having arrived a few days ahead of his regiment) where he was once again wounded in the field. The 44th arrived in Boston a few days after the battle and after some garrison duty they, and their recuperating captain, were repositioned to defend Halifax, Nova Scotia from any Patriot push to the North.

Primrose took command of the light company of the regiment which was attempting to copy the loose formation and sharpshooting tactics of the Americans. The 44th were ordered South to take part in the assault on Brooklyn in August 1776, where Primrose received the third wound of his career. It cannot have been a grave wound, as he was in action weeks later where, in circumstances lost in the fog of war, Primrose pushed his luck one step too far and was captured by the American forces and taken in custody to Morristown, NJ. In the honourable convention of the day, he was released ‘on parole’ by command of his former companion in arms, General Washington, over the Christmas period in 1776 and was permitted to return to the British encampment. Parole was a common convention where a captured officer would be released from captivity by giving his word of honour not to fight against his captors until he could be exchanged for an officer of similar rank in a similar plight on the other side. Coincidentally, around the same time, the controversial General Charles Lee was ambushed by loyalist troops in an accidental encounter at Basking Ridge, NJ, and he wrote to General Clinton:

I have, I am told, an intimate Friend and Comrade in your Corps, Captain Primrose Kennedy of the 44th — I intreat you will assure him of my love and Friend- ship and send him a small portion of the Fruit [which Lee had sent as a gift to Clinton].

Lee was in a difficult position, not only as a Prisoner of War, but possibly as a traitor to Britain, as there was some concerns that he had accepted the US commission before formally resigning his commission from King George as a British officer. Lee wrote to his friend in stirring words upholding the republican ideal and defending his decision to fight against his former King:

To Captain Primrose Kennedy.

Sir:

The fortune of war, the activity of Colonel Harcourt, and the rascality of my own troops, have made me your prisoner. I submit to my fate, and I hope that whatever may be my destiny, I shall meet it with, becoming fortitude; but I have the consolation of thinking, amidst all my distresses, that I was engaged in the noblest cause that ever interested mankind. It would seem that Providence had determined that not one freeman should be left upon earth; and the success of your arms more than foretell one universal system

of slavery. Imagine not, however, that I lament my fortune, or mean to deprecate the malice of my enemies; if any sorrow can at present affect me, it is that of a great continent apparently destined for empire, frustrated in the honest ambition of being free, and enslaved by men, whom unfortunately I call my country-men.

To Colonel Harcourt's activity every commendation is due; had I commanded such men, I had this day been free; but my ill-fortune has prevailed, and you be-hold me no longer hostile to England, but contemptible and a prisoner!

I have not time to add more, but let me assure you, that no vicissitudes have been able to alter my sentiments; and that as I have long supported those sentiments in all difficulties and dangers, I will never depart from them but with life.

Given his status as a field officer, General Lee was released also on his parole but was not immediately returned to his own army. He was not kept in confinement, but was permitted to billet with two British officers of his acquaintance, one of whom was almost certainly Primrose, until an exchange was agreed to swap General Lee for a captured British general of equivalent rank in May 1778. That year saw the 44th in action in the Philadelphia Campaign, with Primrose commanding his company at the battles of Brandywine, Paoli and Germantown and, ironically, fighting against his friend Charles Lee at the battle Monmouth. It was after that conflict that it was the turn of the Americans to court-martial Lee for potential treason making him the only officer to be accused of treason by both sides in the revolution. He never recovered his reputation and died in 1782.

There is no mention of Primrose’s personal service in the regimental records of the time, nor during the 44th’s participation in the relief of Newport, RI in September 1778 which was the regiment’s last major outing in the American War of Independence.  From then until well after the defeat at Yorktown, the 44th was stationed in Canada until being finally ordered home to Britain in 1786. After Newport Primrose learned that his father David had died and so was he was now laird of Drumellan. It was time to go home and cultivate his sheep. The thrice-wounded Captain Primrose Kennedy decided, as was possible in those days, to sell his commission and rejoin civilian life to return to Scotland to manage his patrimony.  In March 1779 Captain William André (brother of Major Andre who was to be hanged the following year) bought Primrose out of the regular Army. Looking back, you can wonder if Primrose, like many Whig officers felt that the official policy of war against the colonies conflicted with the links of blood, trade and service that were shared by many on both sides of that conflict.

So after retiring from his country’s service after twenty-five years, Primrose Kennedy returned to live off his family estate in the Ayrshire countryside as the family property’s debts appear to have been paid off. In those days, there was no universal suffrage and the vote for Members of Parliament in the House of Commons was granted to property-owners of a defined wealth. The Drumellan estate was large enough to allow its owner one of the very few votes in the unreformed parliamentary election to represent the County of Ayr at Westminster.  The British government spent a lot of time in assessing the loyalties of individual electors as the secret ballot was not yet used in parliamentary elections. This was, of course, why allowing Primrose’s father an early retirement was valuable to the politicians back home. One report by secret agents working for the Tory Government (the ‘Political State’ report) characterised Primrose as:

‘Small fortune. A family. Influenced by Lord Cassillis. Will go with Sir A. Cathcart.’

Which clearly puts him into the opposition Whig camp, following in his father’s footsteps in challenging the Tory ministry of William Pitt the Younger and his Edinburgh fixer, ‘King’ Henry Dundas in Edinburgh. Primrose’s patrimony and reputation meant that he served as one of the deputies to the Lord-Lieutenant , the King’s representative in the County, responsible amongst other things for the raising of a militia in time of crisis, and as a Commissioner of Supply which in the days before county counsels, was a group of prominent landowners who collected a land tax and applied it to maintaining ‘the king’s highway’ of roads and bridges throughout the county, and met the cost of the rudimentary police service.

Other than his political inclination, we know little of his tastes or habits after he swapped his scarlet uniform with yellow facings for a blue and buff coat.  He certainly seems to have had a cultural side to his military life, as he is listed as a subscriber to the Second (First Edinburgh) Edition of Burns’s poems and his portrait was painted by the great Sir Henry Raeburn. He kept abreast of the war in Europe against Napoleon, no doubt by professional inclination or maybe a feeling that agricultural life was a bid dull, at the age of seventy, he volunteered to raise and command a company of the 1st Ayrshire Volunteers in early 1803, bringing his second son, William into the family tradition as an Ensign in the Volunteers at the end of that year, when Primrose was promoted to Major. (William went on to join the regular army and was to be killed on active service in now a totally forgotten, and probably relatively pointless, campaign in India in 1819). Primrose fought the wars in other spheres, too as he was active in fundraising for the Spanish guerrilla fighters who rose against the French invasion during the Peninsular War – men who were reacting very similarly to political and military events as did his old friends in 1776.

In 1801, the great enlightenment reformer and ex-Provost of the Royal Burgh of Ayr John Ballantine, who was the proud early patron of Robert Burns, came up with the idea of a commemorative dinner in honour of the Bard of Ayrshire, and asked his personal friends Captain Primrose Kennedy and Captain Hew Fergusson (an offshoot of the Kilkerran Fergussons), to call on Reverend Hamilton Paul and ask him to create a memorable evening to remember a man who was both a friend and increasingly a national hero. The rest is history, a history that is still acted out around myriad tables across the world around each and every 25th January.

As one of the founder members of the Allowa’ Club, Primrose was a regular attendee at their annual festivities, and from 1806 his son Quintin attended the Burns Suppers too.  Quintin was now employed in John Ballantine’s bank, Messrs Hunter and Co of Ayr, working under another guest at the first Supper, David Scott the firm’s accountant, and rose in time to the partnership of the bank and two highly respected terms of office as the Provost of Ayr.

Life was not, literally and metaphorically, without its trials. At the 1805 meeting of the Allowa’ Club a number of the officers of the 21st Regiment attended including Alexander Campbell who had married the daughter of Provost William Bowie.  In 1807, Major Campbell killed a brother officer in a messy duel at the regiment’s mess in Armagh, Ireland and despite Campbell calling on his Ayrshire friends, including Primrose, as character witnesses, Campbell were the only man to be hanged as a criminal for killing an opponent in a duel.

Notwithstanding the accidents of fate, all-in-all, our retired hero seems to have maintained a busy life with an active participation in the local politics of Ayrshire and family life with his wife Jacobina, three daughters and his two sons. Primrose appears to have enjoyed the live of a prosperous country gentleman, with money, leisure and many friends. Major Primrose Kennedy of Drumellan died on 25th August 1811 in his seventy-eighth year and several newspapers and magazines across Scotland carried his obituary:

At Ayr, in the 78th year of his age, Primrose Kennedy, Esq. of Drumellan. The earlier part of his life was devoted to the service of his country, in which he distinguished himself as a brave and able officer, and was honoured with the intimacy of many of the first military characters whom the present age has produced.

You cannot help but wonder what interesting stories he could have told of his comrades who had founded the United States of America? 

There is one interesting conjecture, though. For years, in Burnsian circles, there has been a rumour or more properly a legend that, in Burns’s late Dumfries days when the Bard was faced with accusations of disloyalty to the Crown, that the United States had considered sending a ship to rescue the poet who had praised General Washington in a famous Ode. There is an historical precedent, as the genuinely radical writer Tom Paine had been rescued (albeit without much official thought) by an American ship off Australia. There are connections, for Washington did own a copy of Burns’s poems in his Mount Vernon library (which had been given to him by Thomas Jefferson), and the President had an acquaintance with his Whig comrade-in-arms, Primrose Kennedy. There are closer coincidences, too. Doctor Craik was the illegitimate son of the old laird of Craik of Arbigsland outside Dumfries, one of whose legitimate daughters (Miss Helen Craik) was a correspondent of Robert Burns and whose other daughter who married Captain Hamilton who was Robert Burns’s landlord in Dumfries. So given Burns’s acquaintance with members of the Craik family, might they have corresponded with their illegitimate sibling, whose son was then George Washington’s private secretary?  There is a further tenuous Dumfries connection, inasmuch as John Paul Jones, the founder of the US Navy, was born on the Craik lands of Arbigsland. Could that be the source of the story or might there be some grain of truth in the myth? Primrose maintained not only the friendship of Washington and Craik, but around that time, the next in line to be chief of the Kennedy clan was Captain Archibald Kennedy, who lived in New York City in his mansion at One, Broadway  and was famous for being so even handed during the Revolution that neither side trusted him, so he returned to Culzean Castle as its 11th Earl in 1795. Could this nexus of family ties from the South-west of Scotland, military brotherhood and appreciation of Burns and his poetic message have been the basis of even a discussion of how to rescue the poet from his distress? On the other hand, there is no hard evidence and there is no reference to the poet in Washington’s official papers or correspondence. 

It is probably impossible to know if there was any semblance of a plan, but it would have been nice to sit beside Primrose Kennedy and raise a glass with him, under the thatch of Burns Cottage, to the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and the USA which was and remains an early exemplar of Burns’s much-hoped wish and prophecy ‘That man to man the world o’er, Shall brithers be for a’ that.’

©Clark McGinn, December 2013.

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