Ignorant, perhaps, of the character of Barisdale, unwilling, at least, to dispense with his aid, Prince Charles visited him in August 1745, made him a colonel, and gave a major’s commission to his son, young Archibald Macdonnell of Barisdale, a lad of twenty in 1745. Our ‘Impartial Hand’[55] declares that Coll, though at Prestonpans, was not under fire, which seems improbable. Barisdale may have been with the Prince in the second line (fifty yards behind the first, says the Chevalier Johnstone), or, in the oblique advance of the first line, Lochiel and James Mohr may have routed the English before Barisdale could engage. But, in a letter of Thomas Wedderburn to the Earl of Sutherland, we read (September 26, 1745), ‘Three troops that were making their way for Berwick were pursued by Barisdale, and 150 men, who all stript to their shirts, on foot, who overtook the dragoons, I suppose by turning a hill and gaining ground that way, and made them prisoners, for which Barisdale was made a knight bannarett’[56]—knighted, that is, like Dalgetty, on the field. After Prestonpans, according to the Impartial one, confirmed by the ‘Culloden Papers,’ and by Broughton’s ‘Memorials,’ Barisdale, by Sheridan’s advice, was sent north, to work on Old Lovat. Sheridan reckoned that no man was likely to have so much influence with that subtle schemer as the bluff Barisdale, with ‘his devouring looks, his bulky strides, his awful voice, his long and tremendous sword, which he generally wore in his hand, with a target and bonnet edged broad upon the forehead.’ Barisdale, thus accredited, worked both on Lovat and Lord Cromarty, who raised his peaceful tenants by threats of burning their cottages and cattle.[57] Cromarty might have reported, like a Highland recruiting officer in later days, ‘The volunteers are ready; they are all lying bound hand and foot in the barn.’ Many of the Highlanders did not want to fight, though they fought so well. Barisdale also sent ‘the bloody cross,’ we are told, through the Frazers, who marched reluctantly under the Master of Lovat, a St. Andrews student, himself as reluctant as he was brave. At Falkirk, Barisdale is said to have been with the second line, and later ‘he set out to collect the public money, the greater part of which he kept to himself.’