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The Anecdotage of Glasgow
Prince Charles in Glasgow, and Miss Clemintina Walkinshaw


WHEN Prince Charles Edward Stuart was in Glasgow, 1745-6, he is said to have been not only conciliatory in his conduct, but to have done his utmost to ingratiate himself with its citizens. He ate twice a day in front of Shawfield House, Trongate, in which he had taken up his residence. His dress was usually of fine silk tartan, with crimson velvet breeches, but sometimes he wore an English court coat, with the ribbon star and other insignia of the Order of the Garter.

But all his charms of person and of manner had little effect upon the people of Glasgow. He made great efforts to secure the partisanship of the ladies, but his influence among them was of no great extent; and as for the men, Provost Cochrane relates that the only recruit he got was— Ane drunken shoemaker, who must have fled his country for debt, if he had not for treason."

On tIme 3rd of January, 1746, after a stay of ten days, the Highland army left Glasgow, and resumed its northward march. The prince, it is said, admired the beauty and regularity with which the city was built, but he bitterly remarked that nowhere had he found so few friends.

there was, however, one notable exception. It was while he was in Glasgow that Prince Charlie met with Clemintina Walkinshaw, who, after his escape to France, was sent for by him, and became his mistress. She was the youngest of the ten daughters of John Walkinshaw, Esq. of Camlachie and Barrowfield, and is said to have been a very beantiful woman. She was created Countess of Alberstorff by the King of France.

She had a daughter to the Prince, who was legitimised by a special deed recorded in the parliamentary register of Paris in 1787, and this daughter was named Charlotte Stuart, Duchess of Albany. Robert Burns, who had a spice of Jacobitism, as well as of Jacobinism, celebrated her in his song, The Bonnie Lass of Albany. Miss Walkinshaw died at a good old age in 1802, fourteen years after her paramour, who died at Rome in 1788, and in his last days was addicted to intemperance.


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