Pickle the Spy; Or, the Incognito of Prince Charles

on-Letters to James III.-No cheque!-Barren honours-In London in 1749-His poverty-Mrs. Murray of Broughton's watch-Steals from the Loch Arkaig hoard-Charges by him against Archy Cameron-Is accused of

and Campbell of Lochnell-Pickle gives his real name and ad

by Pickle the spy to the English Government. His undated letters to his employers are not always easily attributed

d and the Lords of the Isles. In her roll-call of

he kings who in

Glengarry, Clanr

e streams from on

in union rush d

n of the chief of a great clan; and I thought he must be personating his master, for I could not believe in such villainy as the treason of a Highland chief. Next, I met allusions to the death of his father, and the date (September 1, 1754) corresponded with that of the decease of Old Glengarry. Presently I observed the suspicions entertained about Young Glengarry, and the denunciation of him in 1754 by Mrs. Cameron, the widow of the last Jacobite martyr, Archibald Cameron. I also perceived that Pickle and Young Glengarry both invariably spell 'who' as 'how.' Next, in Pickle's last extant epistle to the English Government (1760), he directs his letters to be

, mowed down two men at every stroke' at Killiecrankie, and also fought at Shirramuir. At Killiecrankie he lost his brother, and his son Donald Gorm (Donald of the Blue Eyes), who is said to have slain eighteen of the enemy. At Shirramuir, when Clanranald

f the Balhaldie family, chief of Clan Alpin or Macgregor, wrote the Memoirs of the great Lochiel, published in 1842 for the Abbotsford Cl

that he lossed nothing in the event. . . . The concerts and ingagements he entered into with his neighbours . . . he observed only in so far as suited with his own particular interest, but still he had the address to make them bear the blame, while he carried the pro

ome what he really was.' His portrait, [149a] in Highland dress, displays a handsome, fair, athletic young

de in the French service. In March 1744, he and the Earl Marischal were at Gravelines, meaning to sail with the futile French expedition from Dunkirk. In June 1745, Glengarry went to France with a letter from the Scotch Jacobites, bidding

of his youngest son; the eldest, as Glengarry told me, is in France.' [150b] On September 14, Forbes of Culloden congratulated Old Glengarry on his return home, and regretted that so many of his clan were out under Lochgarry, a kinsman. [150c] Old Glengarry had written to Forbes 'lamenting the folly of his friends.' He, like Lovat, was really 'sitting on the fence.' His clan was out; his second son ?neas led it at Falkirk. Alastair was in France. At the close of 1745, Alastair, conveying a detachment of the Royal Scots, in French service, and a piquet of the Irish brig

mes. [151b] Barrisdale had been taken by the English, but was almost instantly released after Culloden. One charge against him, on the Jacobite side, was that he had made several gentlemen of Glengarry's clan believe that their chief meant to d

eason to the cause was abroad. Young Glengarry says that he lay in the Tower for twenty-two months; he was released in July 1747. The Rev. James Leslie, writing to defend himself against a charge of treachery (Paris, May 27, 1752), quotes a letter, undated

1,800 livres; Young Glengarry is not mentioned. [152b] From Amiens, September 20, 1748, Young Glengarry again wrote to James. He means 'to wait any opportunity of going safely to Britain' on his private affairs. These journeys were usually notified by the exiles; their mutual suspicions had to be guarded against. In December, Young Glengarry hoped to succeed to the Colonelcy in the Scot

it now is, he is not in a condition to relieve you, as he would incline. But His Majesty being at the same time desirous to do what depends on him for your satisfaction, he, upon your request, sends you here e

water! As he was not without a sense of humour, the absurdity of the Stuart cause must now have become vividly present to his fancy. He must starve or 'conform,' that is, take tests and swallow oaths. But

demanded repayment of the advance, and detained four years of his pay in the French service. He 'can't receive his ordinary supply from home, his father being in prison, and his lands entirely destroyed.' To James's agent, Lismore, he tells the same story, and adds, 'I shall be obliged to leave this country, if not relieved.' [154] Later, in 1749, we learn from Leslie that he accompanied Glengarry to London, where Glengarry 'did not intend to appear publicly,' but 'to have the advice of some counsellors about an act of the Privy Council agai

says, 'I lent Young Glengarry 50l. when he was home in 1744, and I saw him in London just at the time I got out of gaol in 1749, and though in all appearanc

ein he regaled his examiners with anecdotes of a tavern keeper at Gravelines 'who threatened to beat the Pretender's son'; and of how he himself made Lord Sempil drunk, to worm his schemes

are of the buried hoard of Loch Arkaig. Lord Elcho, in Paris, puts the money taken by Young Glengarry and Lochgarry (an honest man) at 1,200 louis d'or. We have heard the laments of 'Thomas Newton' (Kennedy), who himself is accused of peculation by ?neas Macdonald, and of losing 800l. of the Prince's money at Newmarket. [156] We do not know for certain, then, that Young Glengarry vended his honour when in London in autumn 1749. That he made overtures to England, whether they were accepted or not, will soon be made to

s that Archibald Cameron has been damping all hearts in the Highlands. 'I have prevented the bad consequences that might ensue from such notions; but one thing I could not prevent was his taking 6,000 louis d'ors of the money left in the country by his Royal Highness, which he did without any opposition, as he was privy to where the money was laid, on

f the gold in the winter of 1749. Charges of dishonesty were made on all sides, and we have already narrated how Archibald Cameron, Sir Hector Maclean, Lochgarry, and Young Glengarry carried themselves

g to th

h 17,

ed to be mine to prove that he was acting by commission from me: what there may be in the bottom of all this I know not, but I think it necessary you should know that s

donald mentions a report 'too audacious to be believed; that Glengarry had counterfeited his Majesty's signature to gett the money that he gott in Scotland.' Glengarry 'was very capable of having it happen to him

ould have shared with him in that base and mean undertaking. I declare, on my honour and conscience, that I knew nothing of the taking of the

oney Cameron took was for the Prince's service. Yet we find no proof of this, and Torcastle's letter is difficult to explain on the hypothesis of Cameron's innocence. Glengarry tried to secure himself by a mysterious interview with the King. On May 23, at Rome, he wrote to Edgar. 'As His Majesty come

secret cellar, whence a dark stair l

the Duke of Bedford, who, of all men in England, is said by Jacobite tradition to have most frequently climbed James's cellar stair! Cumberland speaks of 'the goodness of the intelligence' now offered to the Government. 'On my part, I bear it wit

under a tree in the shield, had written to Waters, denouncing Glengarry's suspected friend, Leslie the priest, as 'to my private knowledge an arrant rogue.' Leslie has been in London, and is now off to Lorraine. 'He is going to discover if he can have any news of the Prince in a country which, it is strongly suspected, His Royal Highness has crossed or bordered on more than once.' In the later anonymous letter we are told of 'a regular correspondence between John Mu

ly (or, as he spells it, 'Jully') 15, 1751, Young Glengarry wrote from London to James and to Edgar. He says, to James, that the English want a Restoration, but have 'lost all martial spirit.' To Edgar he gave warning that, if m

'who as 'how,' an eccentricity not marked by me in any other writer of the period. This is a valuable trifle of evidence, connecting Pickle with Young Glengarry. In an undated letter to Charles, certainly of 1751, Glengarry announces his approaching marriage with a lady of 'a very Honourable and

the feet of George II., praying for her husband's life. 'Particularly Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell [Mrs. Cameron was a Campbell] told me, and others whom he could trust, that in the year 1748, or 1749, I don't remember which, as he, Sir Duncan, was going out of the House of Commons, Mr. Henry Pelham, brother to the Duke of Newcastle, and Secretary of State, called on him, and asked if he knew Glengarry? Sir Duncan

ht, the great scheme baffled, and her husband traduced, betrayed, and executed. By January 1754, Pickle had done the most of his business, as will appear when we come to study his letters.

himself, we shall see, in terms which apply to Young Glengarry, and to Young Glengarry alone. And, in his last letter (1760), Pickle begs that his letters may be addressed 'To Alexander Macdonnell of Glengarry by Fort Augustus.' It has been absurdly alleged that Pickle was James Mohr Macgregor. In 1760, James Mohr had long been dead, and at no time

O

ly of Gl

with Clanranald the supremacy of the Macdonalds. Scott says 'he seems to have lived a century too late, and to exist, in a state of complete law and order, like a Glengarry of old, whose will was law to his Sept. Warm-hearted, generous, friendly, he is beloved by those who knew him . . . To me he is a treasure . . . ' [165] He married a daughter of Sir William Forbes, a strong claim on Scott's affection. He left sons who died without offspring; his daughter Helen married Cunninghame of Balgownie, and

rom W. Henders

ber 5

Ethiopia in ye year 1748 wrot to Scotland a letter for Stewart of Glenbucky concerning Donald McDonell of Scothouse younger, and John Stewart with 20 other prisoners of

e Rarysho, and being a South country hiland man, that went over on the Darien expedition, and yet extant, being but a very young boy when he went off, seeing his countrymen, spok to them with surprize in their native tong or language, and by comoning but a short time in galick, found in whose's army they served, and how they suffered by the fate of war and disaster, after which he ordered them ashoar, and mitigated their confinement as far as lay'd in his power, but on them landing, by the Turks' gelosie [jealousy?] they were deprived of all writting instroments, for fear they sho'd give their friends information of the place they were in, and so it would probably happen them during life: if John Stewart of Acharn had not got his remot cousin Governor Stewart to writt a letter and inclosed one from himself giving particular information o

and is mentioned by Murray of Broughton, in his account of his expenditure, and of the Loch Ark