The Heart of ScotlandMoncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
History
The Heart of Scotland
Moncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
Perthshire (Scotland) -- Description and travel
Other Perthshire lairds had the same complaint to make of their tenants
as wanting in chivalry at this time; and several legal depositions might
be quoted to show what force was put upon such reluctant warriors. The
ladies of Jacobite families seem to have been especially active in
sticking white cockades “into the bonnets of such as would allow them.”
It was easy for the minstrel of Gask to make Charlie a darling in
retrospect; but he may well have seemed a nuisance to tenants whom the
Lady Nairne of the ’45 is described as ordering to turn out on pain of
eviction and seizure of their cattle; and the Duchess of Perth abused
the Whiggish Crieff folk as “d--d Judases to their master, the Duke.” At
farm towns, as well as kirk towns, men were now beginning to question
hereditary masterships. Of course unwillingness to take arms on the
beaten side would be made the most of immediately after the Rebellion;
but it seems to have been quite as genuine a sentiment as that of the
ladies and gentlemen who in our day sing so sweetly of dying for the
young Chevalier, not to speak of stronger enthusiasts who have devised a
postage-stamp bearing the
[Illustration: THE FALLS OF TUMMEL]
effigy of the Bavarian princess they recognise as their legitimate
sovereign--with which, indeed, “for the sake of practical convenience,”
they are advised to use also the head of “the Lord Edward,” turned
upside down.
Civil war brought sufferings in high as well as in low life, when Lord
George Murray besieged his own ancestral seat of Blair, garrisoned by
English soldiers, and tried to set it on fire with red-hot balls, but
had to make off towards Culloden. He, who had taken part in all the
Jacobite movements of the century, escaped to die in France; and his son
eventually succeeded to the dukedom. Less fortunate was poor Duke
William, the eldest brother, who bore the second title of the family,
while the Pretender decked him with a vain dukedom of Rannoch. He died
in the Tower, betrayed for a reward of a thousand pounds by a Scot who
earned also the scorn of the English officers concerned. Lord George,
the best soldier of the Prince’s army, got little enough gratitude from
the master who frowned on him in their common adversity. All along he
seems to have been much distrusted by his own party; and his fame has
not always fared better with posterity, though now well-armed champions
come forward to clear his memory from such charges as the “no quarter”
order at Culloden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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