Thus, in a generation, the son of Archibald and grandson of Col, the former a brigand and thief alike of cattle and herrings, became a peaceful subject, and protector of the very class of fishermen whom his grandsire had plundered. We may drop a tear over old romance, but reality has its alleviating features. There is absolutely no kind of villainy of which Col of Barisdale was not eminently guilty. Oppression, cruelty, cowardice, theft, and treachery were all among his qualities, were all notorious, yet, till after Culloden, Col could laugh at the law, and was not shunned by society. We have seen that Col accuses Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat of corrupting his honour, and advising him to sell himself. This may, or may not, be true. The sympathies of Sir Alexander had been Jacobite, before 1745, but Murray of Broughton states that in 1741 he was very angry when Balhaldie put his name on a list of adherents presented to the French Court. ‘He declared he had never given him any authority to do so.’ A statement to the contrary effect will be found in Mr. Mackenzie’s ‘History of the Macdonalds,’ page 234. In 1744, Murray represents him as ready to rise if French troops were landed. Murray repeats, in justice, that Sir Alexander’s promises were purely contingent; they depended on the existence of a ‘well-concerted scheme,’ and there was none. But Sir Alexander not only did not come out, he was won over by Forbes of Culloden to the Hanoverian Cause. ‘I should be sorry,’ says Murray, ‘to have so bad an opinion of mankind as to think any of them cappable of attempting an apologie for him.’ Murray, in his examination, lied in Sir Alexander’s interests, saying ‘he always absolutely refused to have anything to do with the Pretender.’ But, after Preston Pans, Sir Alexander, moved by that victory, said, in the hearing of Malcolm Macleod of Raasay, that he would now raise 900 of his clan and march south to fight for King James. Next morning, however, he received a letter from Forbes of Culloden, and instantly ‘was quite upon the grave and thoughtful, and dropt the declared resolution of his own mind.’[68] In fact, he turned Hanoverian. Later, in the crisis of the Prince’s wanderings, Sir Alexander was not at home when his wife, Lady Margaret, connived with Flora Macdonald to secure Charles’s escape from Skye. Lady Margaret wrote to Forbes of Culloden that Flora was ‘a foolish girl,’ and thanked God that _she_ knew nothing of the Prince’s being in hiding near her house. Sir Alexander, on the other hand, confessed to Forbes that Flora put his wife ‘in the utmost distress by telling her of the cargo she had brought from Uist.’[69] It was fortunate for everybody, himself included, that Sir Alexander was away from home. He wrote the following letter to Cumberland, confessing nothing:— _From Sir Alexander McDonald to H.R.H. giving intelligence of Pretender’s movements_