Flora macdonald, p.13
Flora Macdonald, page 13
In 1750 Flora was sometimes in London, sometimes in Edinburgh, and sometimes in Skye. In the closing months of the year, she settled in the last of those places. Now twenty-eight years old, she had fixed on a partner for life. The husband whom she married on November 6, 1750, was Allan Macdonald, Old Kingsburgh’s elder son, and the place of their union was her mother’s house in Sleat, according to the Scots Magazine issue for that month, rather than the Sleat parish church. A branch of her descendants in Vancouver long maintained that Flora wore a black silk dress at her wedding. The recent deaths of her two younger half-brothers in circumstances now unknown would account for this somber choice. Others, perhaps influenced by the glorious hues of her portrait by Richard Wilson in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and following the Reverend Alexander Macgregor, Flora’s early biographer, have claimed that she wore for the ceremony a robe of Stuart tartan, an earlier present from a “lady friend” in London. An earasaid, or plaid stole, was traditionally worn over one shoulder of their dress by women in the Highlands, an example of which may be seen in Ramsay’s portrait of Flora now at the Ashmolean. Indeed, an enterprising woolen manufacturer in the 1820s was to offer, among other fancy designs, a “plaid worn by Flora Macdonald,” based on the Macdonald tartan in that painting. It is not inconceivable that Flora wore both silk and earasaid, rather than a tartan wedding robe, on November 6, adopting mourning dress for the exchange of vows and Highland dress for a ceilidh, or dance, later that same day.
Allan of Kingsburgh appeared an excellent choice of spouse. Now aged thirty, he had been previously educated outside Edinburgh, at the expense of the late Knight, and the widowed Lady Margaret continued to show the factor and his family every favor. As lieutenant of a Skye militia, the young man had been on garrison duty at Fort Augustus when Flora and his father had so fatefully become embroiled in the prince’s Hebridean adventures. Hopes of preferment in the military sphere had faded after the death of Sir Alexander, his patron. It was intended, however, that in due course Allan would succeed his father, now aged sixty-three, as factor to the Sleat estate. To render him still more appealing to his bride, Allan was, as a North Uist bard would one day relate, stalwart in build, dark-haired, and with a red and white complexion.
The large man, the little woman, appeared ideally suited when they wed. Robert Forbes wrote from Leith to Old Kingsburgh the following January, “The welfare of the happy pair I heartily rejoice at…. [A]ll friends and well-wishers…agree in affirming it to be one of the best judged events of life that could be devised by any set of honest folks.” Dr. Burton, in York, was also delighted by the news. “I heartily wish my worthy Flora as happy as it is possible to be on this side [of the] grave,” he averred, “and that she may live to see her children’s children so too.”
Forsaking the more sophisticated circles in which she had recently moved, Flora had returned to her roots. Moreover, the finances of the young couple were on a very secure footing, as the contract of marriage, witnessed by Flora’s stepfather and others at Kingsburgh in early December, attests: “The said Mrs Flory Macdonald assigns, transfers and dispones [disposes],” ran the document, “to the said Allan Macdonald, her husband, his heirs and assignees…the sum of seven hundred pounds sterling.” Under common law, married women’s property and assets passed to their husbands. Only widows like Lady Primrose were free to dispose of their money as they chose. Bonds and securities for this sum lay “in the hands of certain Trustees and friends of hers [Flora’s] in England,” the document ran. Among these was Lady Primrose, who had spearheaded the earlier fundraising for Flora and who was to engage, the following year, in correspondence with merchant house Innes and Clerk about “Miss Macdonald’s money.” The new bride must have hoped that her husband would show the financial acumen that had distinguished his father, Kingsburgh, in his role as Sleat factor.
Flora’s various embassies to London, her courting of Lady Primrose and other patrons there, had reaped this remarkable harvest, and her study with writing master Beatt in Edinburgh had rendered her competent in business correspondence. In April 1751 she wrote from her new father-in-law’s home to the London merchants William Innes and Thomas Clerk: “Yours of the 26th March came to [my] hand…. I understand my Lady Primrose hath Lodged in your hands for my behoof [behalf] £627 Sterling, but that her Ladyship had in view, to add more, of which you would acquaint me.” She begged that the sum lodged with the merchant house should be paid in May to John Mackenzie of Delvine, writer to the signet, or senior solicitor, in Edinburgh. Delvine was lawyer for several Highland estates, including that of Lady Margaret’s son James (Sir James since his baronet father’s death). Delvine himself wrote to Innes and Clerk on May 11: “The money is wanted [needed].” It is probable, then, although no documentary evidence survives, that this £627 went to pay the Sleat estates in part or in full for the lease of Flodigarry, a tack on the Sleat estates that fell vacant at Whitsun that year and that the young Kingsburghs were to occupy for a number of years. Although it is unclear what happened to the balance of the £700 stated in Flora’s marriage contract to be lodged in the south, there was more to come.
Delvine wrote from Edinburgh to Innes and Clerk in London in June 1751:
Sir, Agreeable to yours of the 18th of May, I have value on you, of this date, to the order of Messrs Thomas and Adam Fairholm [Edinburgh bankers], for the £800 of Mrs Flora Macdonald’s money, which Lady Primrose lodged in your hands. The discharge my lady proposed…shall be transmitted as soon as in course of post it can return from the Isle of Skye.
The receipt sought for this further sum, however, although duly penned by Flora, went astray. The Edinburgh lawyer apologized profusely, dispatching another to London in November: “Mrs Macdonald’s obligations to good Lady Primrose’s generosity are such that both she and her friends would be to blame if dilatory in anything that may give my lady the least satisfaction.” In total, then, Flora appears to have received and turned over to her husband between £1,427 and £1,500. Even after leasing Flodigarry, purchasing livestock, and making repairs and improvements to the tack, it seems likely that some cash in hand remained.
In 1746, the year the prince made Flora’s acquaintance in that sheiling at midnight, she had had no dowry to offer a suitor. Now, thanks to her quiet determination to take advantage of her fame, she and Allan had a comfortable married home in the far northeast of the Trotternish peninsula on Skye. Above their tack reared the Quiraing, a massive landslip that had created high cliffs, hidden plateaus, and pinnacles of rock. A little farther north lay Duntulm, the ancient seat of the Macdonalds of Sleat, now in ruins. Across the peninsula, on its western coast, lay Monkstadt, home to the widowed Lady Margaret and her children. Farther south on that shore, Allan’s parents’ home, Kingsburgh House, stood on the banks of Loch Snizort. Flora’s stepfather and mother, meanwhile, were sixty miles distant at Armadale, on the southern coast of the island.
If the farm at Flodigarry should fail, it would be in no way attributable to lack of generosity on the part of Flora’s English patrons. There seemed no reason why she should ever stir far again from Skye. A life as a farmer’s wife and as a mother, too, if God smiled, looked to be her lot all her days.
10
Married Life
April 1751–1770
lora had grown up at close quarters with the Clanranald family and other inhabitants of the Long Island, that low-lying archipelago far out to sea that felt the full force of Atlantic gales on its beaches and watery plains. The Isle of Skye, in shape a large, outstretched hand, had a far greater landmass and a milder climate. Flodigarry, the tack above the shore that now became Flora’s home, lay in the wild northeast. Portree, however, that harbor where Flora had once parted from the prince, lay only thirty miles down the coast; farther south, at low tide, fords connected island and mainland. Lady Margaret and her children, the Laird, Old Mackinnon, and their fellow islanders were of Flora’s own faith. While there was only one church of this denomination in Catholic South Uist and Benbecula—where, about 1755, there were 2,040 “Papists” and 169 “Protestants”—Presbyterian ministers served five parishes on Skye with congregations totaling 6,777.
Flora’s fortunes were now bound up with those of her husband and his family on this latter island. In numerous ways those like she and Allan, who inhabited the Sleat lands in Skye after the ’Forty-five, lived a relatively blessed existence. Other estates of “rebel” chiefs had been forfeited to the crown; the Clanranald lands escaped that fate through a legal loophole. Even so, Hanoverian troops had seized five hundred of Old Clan’s cattle in that turbulent summer of 1746 and burned entire villages elsewhere. The Knight and the Laird on Skye had incurred no such penalties, professing loyalty to the crown and raising government militia. Monkstadt, the Sleat residence, and Dunvegan Castle, the Macleod seat, stood untouched. Secure in their leaseholds for the moment, these chieftains’ tacksmen farmed and reared cattle and horses for sale on the mainland, as they had before the rising.
In the first years of Flora’s and Allan’s married life at Flodigarry, the Sleat family was absent from the Isle of Skye. Lady Margaret had taken her young sons—Sir James, Alexander, and Archibald—south to be educated in Edinburgh. She and Sir James’s tutors—trustees—in Edinburgh had every confidence in Old Kingsburgh’s ability, in the meantime, to manage her eldest son’s inheritance in the north.
For decades, the factor had driven his master’s cattle and horses to market on the mainland and secured good prices for that livestock. He had, however, been weakened by his yearlong captivity in Edinburgh Castle and often now looked to his elder son for assistance in the management of the Sleat lands. Allan acted as his father’s emissary to John Mackenzie of Delvine, the Sleat lawyer in Edinburgh, when once Old Kingsburgh himself would have made the journey.
Flora gave birth at Flodigarry in October 1751 to a son whom she and Allan named Charles. In the Highlands, it was then usual to name the eldest son after his paternal grandfather, if not his father, and the next after his maternal grandfather. Old Kingsburgh and Flora’s deceased father were in due course to have their own namesakes among the family of seven children whom the young Kingsburghs raised at Flodigarry. Their eldest son’s appellation, however, proudly announced his mother’s link to Stuart royalty. Flora was a woman characterized by foresight. She may well have judged that coupling the illustrious forename with her own would, in time to come, be of service. It would remind others of the aid she had once given the royal house of Stuart and encourage them to find a “place” for her son in the great world.
The prince himself, however, whose name Flora’s eldest son bore, proved no benefactor from afar. Five years after he had persuaded Flora to risk all on his behalf, Charles Edward was living a will-o’-the-wisp life on the Continent. Once, in the Western Isles, his masquerade had been a matter of life and death. Now he took pleasure in posing as an abbé, or priest, or assuming an alias. Brandy and whisky had sustained him when he lived on the hill and endured rain, wind, and midges in the summer of 1746. Now, disappointed and increasingly dissolute, he drank still deeper, as his hopes of a Stuart restoration seeped away.
Upon his return to Paris in 1746, Charles Edward, though he had failed in his expedition, had been hailed a “hero” by Frederick the Great among others. Only four years later, however, Voltaire ended a spirited narrative of the ’Forty-five in Le siècle de Louis XIV, or The Age of Louis XIV, in these cool terms: “Thus ended an adventure, which, in times of knight-errantry, might have proved fortunate, but could not be expected to succeed in an age when military discipline, artillery, and, above all, money, in the end, decides everything.”
The celebrated writer was kinder about Flora’s part in the prince’s escape. Voltaire drew on an account that he declared was given to him by “a person who accompanied the prince a considerable time, both in his prosperities and adversities.” If, as seems likely, this was Colonel Felix O’Neill, who was then on the Continent, either he or the eminent author himself took great liberties with the truth: “At break of day they [the prince, O’Neill, and Neil MacEachen] met with a lady on horseback, followed by a young domestic, and ventured to speak to her. This lady was of the family of the Macdonalds, which was strongly attached to the interest of the Stuart line. The Prince, who had seen her in his prosperity, knew her again, and discovered [revealed] himself, when she immediately threw herself at his feet.” The prince, his companions, and Flora were all, according to Voltaire, “drowned in tears,” and “those which Miss Macdonald shed in this extraordinary and affecting interview, were redoubled by the peril in which she saw the prince.” What follows is also often imaginary. Voltaire’s fame throughout Europe, however, ensured that Flora’s story gained an audience far beyond the United Kingdom. While respect for the prince ebbed, the good name of his “Preserver” was only burnished with time.
Flora herself was always to cherish memories of the prince as he had been in the Hebrides—gallant, courtly, and intrepid. She owed Charles Edward a measure of gratitude, having gained a fortune following Lady Primrose’s enthusiasm for her assistance to him. She had, however, suffered as a state prisoner for nearly a year. Moreover, she never received any tangible reward from the House of Stuart. Her cousin Neil appears to have been more successful. When indigent in France in 1764, following the disbandment of a Continental regiment in which he had served, he begged that his “miserable situation” in Saint Omer might be made known to “His Majesty.” Neil had now reverted to the earlier family name of Macdonald. Addressing, in turn, an outgoing and an incoming secretary in James Edward Stuart’s household in Rome, he announced himself as “one of the chief instruments…in making his [the prince’s] escape.” His hopes that the royal father would look “with an eye of pity” on his plight were realized, and he was promised a grant of 300 livres.
When a daughter was born at Flodigarry in the spring of 1754, Flora and Allan honored the former’s patron, Anne, Lady Primrose, as well as his sister, with their choice of her name. The viscountess had by now cut her ties with the prince. Two years earlier the moment had seemed opportune to some Jacobites for a renewed Stuart attack on the throne. Frederick, Prince of Wales, had died unexpectedly in 1751, his father, George II, was aged, and the heir apparent, Frederick’s son, Prince George, was only thirteen. Lady Primrose traveled to the Continent to consult in secret with Charles Edward in 1752. There she found the prince a debauched and drunken host, and at his side Clementina Walkinshaw, whom he had made his mistress in the ’Forty-five and who was soon to bear her love an illegitimate daughter, Charlotte Stuart, later to be known as the Duchess of Albany. Dismayed and affronted, upon her return to London the viscountess withdrew support for this and any future Jacobite project. Her kindness to Flora continued, however, and in due course she would interest herself in the Macdonald children too.
In the summer of 1754, while Flora’s son and daughter were still infants, Sir James, now in his teens, returned with his mother and younger brothers to Skye. Lady Margaret and Old Kingsburgh had work to do, executing a new sett of leases (parceling them out anew) on the island. General Humphrey Bland, the officious commander in chief of forces in Scotland, objected. The widow’s residence on Skye, he wrote to Lord Holdernesse, secretary of state in London, would “tend towards her keeping up the spirit of disaffection amongst the people there, and inspire her son with the high notions of clanship.” Bland was resolved to let the young Sleat baronet know that he was “not king of the isles, as that family vainly imagined themselves but…as liable to the law as the meanest of his tenants.”
Having served the crown in both the ’Forty-five and an earlier rising, Bland was determined to enforce the legislation designed to ensure that chiefs and clansmen alike owed allegiance only to the crown. He also saw rebel plots everywhere. Convinced that Lady Margaret remained a fervent Jacobite, Bland extended his suspicions to Allan’s father. The officer had, he told Holdernesse, “set some engines to work which, I hope, will fix some crimes on her governor and favourite [Old Kingsburgh].” Bland had learned that the Act of Proscription, which called for Highland dress and weapons to be laid aside, was being widely ignored in Skye. He sent, in consequence, a party of soldiers to Skye to arrest Flora’s father-in-law and other Sleat tacksmen who countenanced these crimes.
Although Old Kingsburgh evaded the redcoats, others were seized. When their prosecution was threatened, Bland reported grimly, Lady Margaret “lost all her usual courage” and left the island herself with Sir James. The officer insisted he would have the islanders tried unless she agreed to educate her sons in England; in that case, he would, he stated, “endeavour to get His Majesty’s permission to pardon the offenders.”
Sir James was enrolled at Eton College. His mother softened when he proved a brilliant scholar there. Her life in London proved agreeable. No further thought was given to Sir James’s education, or that of his younger brothers, in Scotland. Within a few years, the young baronet took up a place at Oxford University. Bland was to be disappointed, however, in his hopes that a man of good government principles would replace Kingsburgh as factor on Skye. Indeed, upon attaining his majority in 1756, Sir James rewarded his kinsman who had stewarded the estates so long with an annuity of £50. Lady Margaret in London relied on Old Kingsburgh, as before, but now he acted in a supervisory role. In recognition of the former steward’s advancing years, Armadale was appointed factor for the Sleat peninsula and Allan for the Trotternish peninsula and the baronet’s estates in North Uist.
