Drummond Castle, directing his men to draw as near as they could without raising the alarm, and then, at dessert, told His Grace that he was his prisoner. The Duke received the tidings very coolly, saying there was no help for it; but in leaving the apartment he made the Captain, as if in courtesy, pass before him, and then suddenly starting back and locking the door, escaped by a private staircase from the house into the wood. He was quickly followed, and might perhaps have been retaken, had he not found a pony and leaped upon its back, without saddle or bridle, and only a halter on its head. By this means he made his way from his pursuers, and lay concealed in the neighbouring Highlands until, on the approach of Charles, he joined him with as many of his men as he could raise.

Lord George Murray was both an older and an abler man. With his brother Tullibardine he had taken part in the rebellion of 1715; he had been at the fight of Glenshiel in 1719, and had afterwards served for some years in the Sardinian army. Being then pardoned by the Government, he had since lived quietly on his estate in Scotland, had married, and was the father of a family * : nay, as it is said, he had even solicited a commission in the British army, which was however refused. He was by far the most skilful officer that appeared with the insurgents in the whole course of this rebellion. His personal hardihood and bravery, however conspicuous, might be rivalled by many others; but none could vie with him in planning a campaign, providing against disasters, or improving victory. Yet so far was he from being a formal tactician or lover of strict rule, that he strongly advised the Prince to trust to the national weapons and mode of fighting of the Highlanders, with some improvements of discipline, rather than attempt to instruct them in any more scientific manœuvres. But the merits of Lord George, as a commander, were dashed by no small

* Lord George was the ancestor of the present Duke of Athol. He has left a Military Memoir on the marches of the insurgent army (printed in the Jacobite Memoirs, p. 29-130.), which is very clear and able, but dwelling a little too much on his own services. His letter on the battle of Culloden appears in Home's Appendix, p. 359 -370.

COUNTER PROCLAMATIONS.

37

waywardness of temper, an impatience of contradiction, a blunt and supercilious address. A rivalry almost immediately sprung up between him and the Duke of Perth ; which, as we shall find, afterwards ripened into a quarrel very hurtful to their common cause. In these broils the part of the Duke was always espoused by Secretary Murray, an able and active, but selfish and intriguing man, who expected to wield a greater influence over Perth than over the superior genius of Lord George. Sir Thomas Sheridan also, whom Lord George once or twice fiercely rebuked for his ignorance of the British Laws and Constitution, became of course his personal enemy; and the Prince himself, who was equally ignorant upon those subjects, was often offended at his disrespectful

tone.

From Perth, Charles despatched a letter to the Earl of Barrymore in London, urging his party to strenuous exertions.* He also caused to be printed, and circulated as widely as possible, his Father's Proclamations and his own. Besides those put forth at his landing, he had been prevailed upon to issue a reprisal for that of the Established Government, setting a price of 30,000l. upon his head. For several days Charles stubbornly refused to follow what he termed "a practice so unusual among "Christian Princes;" he only yielded, at length, to the necessity of conciliating his officers, and then insisted that the price in his Proclamation should be no more than 301. Fresh importunities at last induced him to extend it to the same amount as in the Government; saying, however, he was confident no follower of his would ever think of doing any thing to merit such a reward. This generosity of Charles was more than once carried to a romantic extreme: thus, as we shall see hereafter, his reluctance to punish some acts or attempts of assassination, even to his own peril, provoked the discontent and murmurs of his army.

* Examination of Mr. Murray of Broughton, August 13.1746.

† See this document in the Collection of Declarations, &c. p. 22. signed Charles P. R. and countersigned John Murray. The concluding words are: "Should any fatal accident happen from hence, "let the blame lie entirely at the door of those who first set the infa66 mous example."

During their stay at Perth news reached the insurgents, that General Cope, deeply mortified at their descent into the Lowlands, was directing his march from Inverness to Aberdeen, with the intention of embarking his army, and returning with it for the protection of the capital.* On these tidings Charles formed his plans-not like Lord Mar's, to stand at gaze and wait for others to help him but to forestall his enemy's movement upon Edinburgh, by a movement of his own. Having completed his scanty preparations, he resumed his adventurous march on the 11th of September. It was found no easy matter to draw the Highlanders from their good quarters at Perth; but the Prince went first with the vanguard, and the rest joined him at Dumblane. "It was in this neighbourhood," observes one of the officers," that many of our fathers, and "several of us now with the Prince, fought for the same cause, just thirty years before, at the battle of Sheriff"muir." On the 13th they proceeded to the Fords of Frew, about eight miles above Stirling; since they could not cross the Frith, where several of the King's ships were stationed, nor yet the bridge of Stirling, which is commanded by the cannon of the castle. But at the Fords of Frew, the river being low at this season, they passed without difficulty; and Gardiner's dragoons, who had been left behind by Cope, retired before them, designing to fall back upon the other regiment which was now lying at Leith. As the insurgents marched on, the sight of their Royal Standard provoked some cannon shot from Stirling Castle, aimed, it is said, at Charles himself, but without effect; the town however gladly opened its gates, and furnished its provisions. Every thing was paid for, discipline being strictly maintained by the exertions of the officers; and Lochiel, finding one of his men plunder in spite of his repeated orders, shot him dead upon the spot.‡

The army was now passing over the plain of Bannock

*This intelligence is first mentioned in a letter of Lord George Murray's in the night of Saturday the 7th September. (Jacobite Memoirs.)

† Macdonald's Journal. (Lockhart Papers, vol. ii. p. 486.) Chambers's History, vol. i. p. 104.

APPROACH TO EDINBURGH.

39

burn on the next evening, the 14th, they were quartered in the town of Falkirk, or lay in some broom fields near Callender House. Charles himself was entertained at that mansion by its owner, the Earl of Kilmarnock, who hailed him as his sovereign, and assured him of his future services. According to the information given by the Earl, Gardiner's dragoons had intended to dispute the passage of Linlithgow Bridge next day, and the Prince, hoping to surprise them, sent forward before daybreak a detachment of a thousand Highlanders under Lord George Murray; but they found that the dragoons had decamped the evening before, and quietly took possession of the town and its ancient palace. A few hours later they were joined by the Prince in person, and his vanguard pushed forward to Kirkliston, only eight miles from Edinburgh. All the ground thus traversed by the insurgents is fraught with the brightest recollections of Scottish story. On that field of Bannockburn had Liberty and The Bruce prevailed that palace of Linlithgow was the birth-place of the ill-fated Mary, and afterwards her dwelling in hours alas how brief and few!-of peaceful sovereignty and honourable fame those battlements of Stirling had guarded the cradle of her infant son - there rose the Torwood where Wallace sought shelter from the English invaders yonder flowed the Forth, which so often had "bridled the wild Highlandman." Surely even a passing stranger could never gaze on such scenes without emotion still less any one intent on like deeds of chivalrous re- least of all the youthful heir of Robert Bruce and of the long line of Stuart Kings!

nown

Meanwhile the citizens of the capital, like a stormy sea tossing with successive billows, had been agitated by every alternation, according to the rumours that reached them, of presumptuous confidence or of craven fear. But little concern appeared at the first news of the insurgents. None of the friends of Government doubted their speedy dispersion or defeat; while the Jacobites (there, as elsewhere in Scotland, a very considerable party) concealed their secret hopes under an affected derision of the enterprise, and of all the measures adopted to quell it. But when the tidings came that Cope had marched to Inverness, and that Charles was descending from the moun

66

tains, the well-disposed inhabitants were struck with consternation, much heightened by the succeeding intelligence, that the Prince had already entered Perth. The Government newspaper indeed, the Edinburgh Evening Courant, continued to speak of the Highlanders in arms with most utter contempt, as "a pitiful ignorant crew, "good for nothing, and incapable of giving any reason "for their proceedings, but talking only of SNISHING (tobacco), KING JAMESH, TA RASHANT (the Regent), 66 PLUNTER, and NEW PROGUES! But this confident language was belied by the activity with which the preparations for defending the city were now pursued. A few days later, however, the magistrates and the inhabitants reverted to their feelings of security from the arrival of one of Sir John Cope's Captains, directing that transports for his embarkation might be immediately despatched to Aberdeen. These transports accordingly sailed on September the 10th; and from that time, says an eye-witness, the people of Edinburgh were continually looking up to the vanes and the weathercocks†, as conscious that their destiny hung suspended on the winds. But who shall describe their fresh panic, when they learnt that the young Pretender had not only passed the Forth, but that, driving the King's dragoons before him, he was actually within a few miles of their walls!

Against this danger the Castle of Edinburgh stood secure in its inaccessible position, and held a sufficient garrison, commanded by General Guest, an intrepid veteran. The city, on the other hand, was protected only by an antique rampart of varying height, from ten to twenty feet, which was embattled, but with parapets in most places too narrow for mounting cannon, and on the whole but little stronger than a common garden wall. Some fortifications, indeed, but hasty, slight, and incomplete, were added in this emergency, under the direction of Professor MacLaurin, the celebrated mathematician.‡ The defenders were still more contemptible than the defences. There was a Town Guard, of which the value

*This extract is given in Mr. Chambers's History, vol. i. p. 125. † Home's Hist. p. 63.

See Provost Stewart's Trial, p. 39. &c.