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
Thus Glengarry undeniably frequented the old Earl Marischal, no less than
Pickle did, and the English Government knew it. Yet they did not arrest
him, as they arrested Glenevis, Downan, Fassifern, Archy Cameron, and
tried to arrest Lochgarry, on all of whom Pickle had informed. Moreover
Glengarry, in Paris, is not starving, but has a servant out of livery,
and two in livery, keeps or hires a carriage, or uses that of the Earl
Marischal.
I respectfully submit that these seven common notes of Pickle and of
Glengarry cannot possibly be explained, except on one of two hypotheses.
Either Pickle is Glengarry, or he is audaciously personating Glengarry,
not only by letter, but bodily. For he promises to visit Henry Pelham ‘in
person,’ and Henry Pelham, with the English officials and police, cannot
but have known the aspect of Glengarry, a man who, for twenty-two months,
was an important state prisoner in the Tower, and had, later, lived
openly in London, though, as we shall see, under surveillance.
That point I prove thus: on August 12, 1753, Charles, in hiding at Liège,
and elsewhere in the Netherlands, desired, as he notes in a draft, an
interview ‘with G.’[143] In August, or September, 1753, Pickle sent
in accounts of his interview with Charles, in whose company he had
travelled from Ternan to Paris. The Prince asked Pickle to allow arms to
be landed on his estate, which Pickle refused, ‘nobody knowing as yet in
what manner the forfeited estates would be settled.’[144] Pickle himself
is now in England.
Now we know, from a report in the State Papers, that, in 1753, the
English Government received intelligence from a spy on Glengarry. ‘Mr.
McDonald of Glengarry has been several times in France within these three
weeks, and is suspected to be an agent for the Young Pretender, who, it
is believed, has been lately in Paris, incog. N.B.—The above-mentioned
Mr. McDonald lodges at the second House on the right hand side of the way
in Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand, and is a young, fair, full-made
man.’[145]
Thus, just when Charles wishes to meet ‘G,’ Glengarry is coming and
going from France to England, suspected by a spy to be a Jacobite
agent, while Pickle is reporting to the English Government on his own
simultaneous journeys and interviews with the Prince. Yet the English
Government, though independently informed of Glengarry’s movements, and
his familiarity with the Earl Marischal (whom they know to be intriguing
for the Jacobites with Prussia), arrest Clanranald, arrest Fassifern, but
never touch Glengarry!
This is not the limit of their favours. Far from incommoding Glengarry,
Henry Pelham promises that Government will remit all their large claims
on his estate. For this, as least, we have Glengarry’s written word, as
has been shown already in ‘The Last Days of Glengarry.’[146]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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