The companions of Pickle: Being a sequel to 'Pickle the spy'Lang, Andrew
History
The companions of Pickle: Being a sequel to 'Pickle the spy'
Lang, Andrew
Jacobites
The last years of Glengarry were disturbed by the legal results of an
early piece of domestic slyness. His father, old Glengarry, commonly
described as a weak, indolent man, married, first, a lady named
Mackenzie, of the Hilton family. As his eldest son was not of age in
January 1745 the marriage may have been in 1723 or 1724. After bearing
a second son, Æneas, and apparently a daughter, Isobel, Lady Glengarry
died (1727). In a deed of 1728 we find Old Glengarry already remarried
to a daughter of Gordon of Glenbucket, who in 1724 was nearly murdered
by evicted Macphersons. The stepmother of Young Glengarry was a managing
woman, and ‘factrix’ of her husband’s estates. Now, in 1738 Old Glengarry
pawned or ‘wadsetted’ his lands of Cullachy to his kinsman Lochgarry. The
wadsetter paid 2,000 merks in money and gave bills for the rest. But in
January 1745, when Alastair was in Scotland on furlough from his French
regiment, Old Glengarry formally ‘disponed’ his estates to his eldest
son. Doubtless this was done with an eye to the chances of a rising; in
any case, the transaction was kept a secret from Glengarry’s wife and
factrix.
Hence arose trouble, for the pawned estate of Cullachy had been
redeemed. Lochgarry had been paid his 2,000 merks, or they were set
off against another debt, but his bills were not returned to him. They
lay in Lady Glengarry’s custody, and she could not be asked for them
without revealing the secret transference of the whole property to
Young Glengarry in 1745. He therefore gave Lochgarry a written promise
that the bills should never be used against him. But Lochgarry being
attainted, after 1745, and exiled, his possessions were forfeited to the
Crown. Government therefore demanded, in 1758, that Glengarry should
redeem from them Lochgarry’s wadset of Cullachy. He pleaded that it was
already redeemed before 1745, but of this he could bring no evidence. He
writes to his Agent on August 2, 1758, that he is not certain of the year
of the wadset (really 1738), as he was not then in the kingdom; he was in
France. ‘Lochgarry being more in debt to the familly than the [amount of
the] mortgage, he delivered up his contract of wadsett, which I thought
was all the seremony necessary; and the signature being tore from it was
laid, according to custom, among the family papers, which were carried
off, and are now in Sir Everard Falconer’s custody.’ He knows little of
estate affairs, ‘as I was always abroad.’ His rental of 1744 was burned
with the house of his factor, Donald McDonell, Younger of Scotus.
After the Rebellion, he did not meddle in matters of the property, till
his father’s death (1754). ‘The tenants could hardly pay what would
subsist him.’
‘Every tenant took possession of what farme he pleased.’ In 1746 ‘Mrs.
Mc.Donell of Lochgary being destitute of all suport, having a numerous
family of young children, came from Badenoch, took possession of
Cullachy, and there lived untill she followed her Husband abroad.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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