The Lyon in Mourning, Vol. 1: or a collection of speeches, letters, journals, etc. relative to the affairs of Prince Charles Edward StuartForbes, Robert
History
The Lyon in Mourning, Vol. 1: or a collection of speeches, letters, journals, etc. relative to the affairs of Prince Charles Edward Stuart
Forbes, Robert
Charles Edward, Prince, grandson of James II, King of England, 1720-1788; Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746 -- Sources
[Sidenote: _fol._ 217.] When Ferguson asked Kingsburgh where Miss
MacDonald and the person along with her in woman's cloaths lay all
night in his house, he answered, 'I know in what room Miss MacDonald
herself lay, but where servants are laid when in my house, I know
nothing of that matter, I never enquire anything about it. My wife
is the properest person to inform you about that.' Then he had the
impertinence to ask Mrs. MacDonald, Whether or not she had laid the
young Pretender and Miss MacDonald in one bed? To which she answered,
'Sir, whom you mean by the young Pretender I shall not pretend to
guess; but I can assure you it is not the fashion in the Isle of Sky
to lay the mistress and the maid in the same bed together.' Then
Ferguson desired to see the different rooms where their late lodgers
had slept; and after seeing them he said, it was pretty remarkable
that the room in which the maid had slept seem'd to look better than
the one where the mistress had been laid; and this behoved to confirm
him in the belief that it was the young Pretender in women's cloaths
who had been along with Miss MacDonald. Kingsburgh's daughter said
it could not be the person he meant in women's [Sidenote: _fol._
218.] cloaths, for that she had heard that person ask something (a
bottle of water) from Miss MacDonald in Erse. 'This,' says Ferguson,
'confirms me more and more in my opinion, for I have often heard that
a fellow went to Rome some years agoe on purpose to teach the young
Pretender the Erse language.' This, by the bye, is a gross mistake
in Ferguson; for the Prince could not speak a word of Erse till he
arriv'd in Scotland, and he knew but very little of it till he was
forced to commence wanderer for the preservation of his life, and
then he learned to speak it pretty well, which prov'd of very great
use to him.
When Kingsburgh and Miss MacDonald were made prisoners and brought
before General Campbell (which happened at different times) both
of them honestly own'd the parts they had acted, and, if I rightly
remember, declarations were written from their own mouths and they
subscribed them.
* * * * *
_N.B._--Miss Flora MacDonald called her disguised handmaid Bettie
Bourk, or Burk, an Irish name, and made the dress of a piece with the
proposed character, being a hood with a long mantle almost down to
the heel.[98]
[98] See ff. 525, 595.
ROBERT FORBES. A.M.
MR. CAMERON of Glenevis[99] gave the following NARRATIVE to
several persons in Edinburgh after his liberation out of the
Castle of Edinburgh, which happened some time in the beginning
of July 1747. He said--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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