Flora macdonald, p.4
Flora Macdonald, page 4
Although the passport does not survive, Flora had by heart a year later the text of the letter that her stepfather wrote to her mother:
I have sent your daughter from this country, lest she should be any way frightened with the troops lying here. She has got one Betty Burke, an Irish girl, who, as she tells me, is a good spinster [spinner]. If her spinning pleases you, you can keep her till she spins all your lint: or, if you have any wool to spin, you may employ her. I have sent Niel MacEachainn [Neil MacEachen] along with your daughter and Betty Burke, to take care of them.
I am, your dutiful husband, Hugh Macdonald
June 22, 1746.
Flora was afterward to state, “If her stepfather (Hugh Macdonald of Armadale) had not granted Miss [herself] a passport, she could not have undertook her journey and voyage.” She was, however, now in possession of papers that would incriminate her and her stepfather and even Neil, should the plot to disguise the prince as “Betty Burke” be uncovered.
Once the passport and letter were stowed about her person, Flora calmly sat down to breakfast with her stepfather and a party of others who included the Benbecula baillie, or constable. Before she could proceed on her way, however, they were to her surprise joined in the guardhouse by her cousin Neil. The previous day he and his companions had skulked near Corradale, but the prince had become “prodigious impatient” as the hours wore on and still no word came from “the lady.” He dispatched Neil in search of her at Nunton, where they imagined she was established. Like Flora before him, for want of a passport Neil was halted by militia at the South Uist ford and detained there till morning. He had now been sent across at low water, to be “examined.”
Confused to find his cousin at the guardhouse, imagining she had already been and gone from Nunton, Neil “called Miss aside, and asked if everything was ready.” Flora replied that it had been “put out of her power to go on…that nothing was as yet done, but that she was going off within half an hour after to consult with the lady [Lady Clan].” Neil, she directed, should return with “all the haste possible” to the prince and immediately set out for Rossinish, a peninsula forming a natural harbor on the east coast of Benbecula, from where it was envisaged they would embark for Skye. Flora told her cousin that she and Lady Clan would, meanwhile, set out from Nunton that same afternoon. They would “carry along with them whatever clothes or provisions was requisite for the voyage.” The royal party would “be sure to find them without fail” at the agreed rendezvous. While Neil departed back across the fords in search of the prince, Flora pressed on the few miles remaining to Nunton, where she intended to draw Lady Clan into the conspiracy.
3
“Great Fears”
June 1746
n the event, although Flora reached Nunton that Sunday afternoon, June 22, 1746, it was not till the following Saturday that she and Lady Clan set out to meet the prince and his companions at Rossinish. Flora, who had grown up at a tack adjacent to the Clanranald seat, was close kin to its master and on easy terms with its mistress. She had already passed time at Nunton on this summer visit to the Long Island. If not from her own observation, she knew from the royal party of Lady Clan’s former assistance to the prince in hiding. She had every reason to anticipate that her hostess would aid her now. Nor was she disappointed. However, in the absence of more impetuous male conspirators, she and Lady Clan were the authors of an alternative scheme to deliver Charles Edward out of danger. They hoped to spirit the prince to land belonging to the Knight on North Uist, which had already been searched by militiamen, where he might lurk until an opportunity arose to make for the mainland.
It was to fascinate many who knew her that Old Clan’s wife played such a bold part in the subterfuge to effect the prince’s escape from the Long Island. She was of a nervous disposition, and the Nunton servants had, upon occasion, to nurse her through periods of lunacy. However, her own sept of the Macleod clan on Bernera, another of the Western Isles, had come out for the prince, and its chief had been among the prince’s stoutest adherents. Like Flora’s cousin Neil, Lady Clan proved herself sagacious and steady in her endeavor to free the Stuart scion of his pursuers.
Flora proposed “that the Prince should go under the care of a gentleman”—Hugh Macdonald of Baleshare—“to the northward.” A tacksman on Sleat lands in North Uist, Baleshare had already acted, earlier in the summer, as secret emissary for the Knight’s wife. He had brought copies of the London Gazette, a valuable source of domestic and foreign intelligence, to the prince in hiding at Corradale. Now Baleshare, close kin to both Old Clan and Armadale, cautiously agreed to Flora’s request that he rendezvous with the prince to discuss his providing a refuge on North Uist.
Meanwhile, the prince, Neil, and O’Neill had arrived at Rossinish after a long march and having had numerous adventures aboard a small yawl belonging to some “country people” whom Flora’s cousin paid for passage to Benbecula. A bothy on the seashore had been appointed as the place of rendezvous with the ladies from Nunton. To reach it, they must tramp that night across boggy moorland, victims of “vehement” rain and of a wind that blew “directly in their teeth.” While the prince trembled with cold, they burrowed periodically into the heather—the only shelter from the elements available—to rest.
After all these travails, when Neil entered the bothy to see if the ladies had come, he found there only “the man who took care of the house [for Old Clan], in bed with his wife.” Neil returned to tell his companions “dismal news,” learned from this individual. Twenty Skye militiamen had landed at Rossinish two days before and were under canvas about a quarter of a mile off. The prince, previously sanguine in the face of danger, became so enraged that he was “like to tear his clothes in pieces, not knowing where to run for safety, the enemy being everywhere.” Neil took the decision to repair to a tacksman’s house some way off.
Departing immediately, “all bespattered with dirt and mud” after their night’s journey, the royal party was at the farm before first light. The prince was keen for Neil to head to Nunton, inform his cousin of their arrival, and “hasten her to come without any longer delay.” Flora’s cousin, however, foresaw the danger the prince would be exposed to if left only with the colonel, “a man who knew not one step of the country, or where to retire to in case of necessity.” In consequence, O’Neill went in his place, taking the Clanranald tacksman, whose house they occupied, as his guide. Neil noted dryly that the Irish officer was “mighty well pleased” with his embassy, “not so much to further the Prince’s affairs, as to be in company with Miss Flora.” O’Neill “professed a great deal of kindness” for the young woman, MacEachen noted, notwithstanding her earlier dismissal of his offer of marriage.
When O’Neill reached Nunton, Flora revealed to him the reason why she and Lady Clan had not yet left for Rossinish. She was sure, she affirmed, that Charles Edward would be safer in North Uist than on the Isle of Skye. O’Neill thereupon dispatched his tacksman guide with a letter to the prince, indicating Baleshare’s willingness to consult. With the missive went also two bottles of wine and a roast hen from the Clanranald cellars and kitchen.
Both the sustenance and the suggestion that Baleshare might prove a protector were welcome to the duo on the coast. That morning they had been forced out into the open after learning that the militiamen, stationed nearby, “were accustomed to come every morning to buy milk.” Neil and the prince spent the day, wrapped in their plaids, sheltering under a rock near the shore. “It is almost inexpressible what torment the prince suffered under that unhappy rock,” Neil recalled later. It “had neither height nor breadth to cover him from the rain, which poured down upon him so thick as if all the windows of heaven had broke open.” To complete the royal fugitive’s tortures, “there lay such a swarm of mitches [midges] upon his face and hands as would have made any other but himself fall into despair.” The attentions of these biting gnats made their victim “utter such hideous cries and complaints as would have rent the rocks with compassion.”
That evening, however, upon their return to the house, they found a good fire blazing, and the prince’s spirits revived. Stripped of his sodden plaid and other clothes, he sat down in only a shirt by the hearth, “as merry and hearty,” according to Neil, “as if he was in the best room at Whitehall.” The arrival of O’Neill’s letter further heartened him, as did the provisions sent from Nunton. Devouring the roast fowl, the prince “took his bonnet, and drunk with it [as a scoop] out of the loch.” He was once more “very canty [lively] and jocose [good-humored].”
Baleshare, however, who joined the royal party later that day, “absolutely refused,” O’Neill was to write, “receiving us [in North Uist].” As “vassal to Sir Alexander MacDonald,” he said, he must decline. Flora later stated, rather, that Baleshare “refused the important trust, from fear of the great dangers attending it.” The North Uist man advised that the prince should revert to the former plan of taking refuge in Skye. He should wait until the Minch was “clear of ships…go off in the afternoon to give him a long night…[and] keep close by the land [coast] of Skye.” Rather than come ashore below Monkstadt, the Knight’s home in the northern Trotternish peninsula on that island, Baleshare advised landing close to the Cuillin, a formidable range of mountains. Old Mackinnon, a laird who owned territory known as Strath in the southeast of Skye, would, he counseled, see the prince safely landed on the mainland.
The prince “had his writing instruments about him” and wrote down the names of some of those whom Baleshare indicated would offer further assistance on Skye, the latter was to relate. The Sleat tacksman then left for home, while the prince sent O’Neill to acquaint Flora with this disappointment. Reminding her of her earlier promise to be his protector, he declared that there was now no option but to pursue the original plan, while he and Neil made preparations for the voyage. According to Flora, the boat to be employed was that, earlier sunk, which the prince had “constantly kept with him” when on the Long Island, in which case the “five men” enlisted “for the Boat’s crew” recovered the vessel.
Flora’s efforts to evade having that “important trust”—the prince’s safe escape—placed in her hands were at an end. She had amply foretold, in the midnight colloquy at Unasary, the danger in which her stepfather’s “scheme” would place her. There was no time now for repining. Now was the time to act.
“The Prince,” Neil later wrote, “seemed very uneasy that night” when neither O’Neill nor the ladies came “according to promise.” He continued, “The truth is, they could not really come sooner, as they were busy night and day to get his dress made for the Prince, and whatever other things he might have occasion for.”
The gown over which the ladies labored at Nunton while Neil and the prince waited was suitable for a maidservant, being of calico with an inconspicuous flower pattern. The sewing of this and other items, however, could not be entrusted to servants at the house, as the dimensions of the garments being made for the colossal “Irish maid” would undoubtedly elicit comment. In consequence, Flora and Lady Clan sewed in secret, fashioning also an apron, a quilted petticoat, and a “mantle [cloak] of dun camlet [wool], made after the Irish fashion.” They took especial pains to produce an elaborate cap besides. The prince’s oval visage was distinctive and had been reproduced over the past year in countless engravings and broadsides. Although now pitted and sunburnt, “Betty Burke’s” singular face might well prove the prince’s undoing, if those with whom “she” came into contact were familiar with those royal images. The hood of the cloak that Flora and Lady Clan sewed could not always be pulled up about the “Irish maid’s” long head, but this close-fitting headdress would obscure much of his face.
On Friday morning, June 27, Neil was informed by two of the selected crew, brothers John and Roderick Macdonald, that the vessel and the rest of their number were at the Rossinish anchorage and ready to depart. Leaving the tacksman’s house, Neil conveyed the prince to these rebels who would guide him to the bothy on the Rossinish shore. He himself posted off to Nunton, where he found the ladies were ready to depart for their rendezvous. Moreover, they had entrusted Mrs. Macdonald of Kirkibost, a Sleat tacksman’s wife who was traveling to Skye, with a message for Lady Margaret Macdonald, that the prince hoped to gain that island in disguise. Though their envoy’s husband was a Skye militia captain, she had no hesitation in lending her support to the coming masquerade.
The group that left Nunton for Rossinish was large, and there was something of a holiday air to the outing, engaged though they were in a dangerous mission. Flora bore a bundle containing the “apparel sufficient for his [the prince’s] disguise, viz., a “flower’d linen gown, a white apron, etc.” Her brother, Milton, and Neil acted as gentleman escorts, as did O’Neill, and carried other baggage. The mistress of Nunton was accompanied by her eldest daughter, and John Maclean, the cook who had dressed meat for the prince at Corradale, was of the party. He was to cook dinner on the shore. Flora later recalled that Lady Clan additionally “provided Provisions for the voyage”—bottles of milk, bread and butter, and a bottle of wine. The militia these last few weeks had made so many demands on the Clanranald hospitality that the pantry and cellar were both denuded.
When in July Flora was held captive on board a naval vessel, she omitted, in her catalog of those on this journey, her cousin Neil, who was by then in hiding, and her brother Milton. She had no wish to direct the anger of the Hanoverian general, to whom she made this confession, toward either. Similarly she did not state that, as Neil later recorded, the party, after walking some way, “had the conveniency of a boat”—apparently supplied by Lady Clan—“to Roshinish [Rossinish],” declining to implicate its skipper.
When the Nunton party neared the anchorage where the boat for Skye was already drawn up, the prince was the first down to the shore to welcome the ladies upon their disembarkation. He had previously been industriously “assisting in the roasting of his dinner”—the “heart, liver, kidneys, etc., of a bullock or sheep”—on a wooden spit. Now, entrusting the further preparation of the meal to the Nunton cook, the prince was at his most courtly. He “handed [escorted] the Lady Clan to the house.” Flora, her brother, and Neil followed, and there they “passed some hours very hearty and merry till supper was served.” All was in readiness for the journey to Skye to begin thereafter under cover of darkness.
Hardly had the meal begun, however, when it was interrupted. One of Old Clan’s herdsmen came with momentous intelligence. General Campbell had arrived on Benbecula. Furthermore, he was landing his men “within three miles of them.” Major General John Campbell of Mamore was a foe of caliber. Heir to the 3rd Duke of Argyll and a long-standing member of Parliament in the government interest, he had been called back from service in Flanders in the autumn of 1745 to oppose the Jacobite army. Deputed to head the search for the prince in the wake of Culloden, he had now entered the waters of the Long Island aboard the Furnace, a naval sloop that, with a cutter and other ancillary vessels, carried regular troops and Argyll militiamen.
On hearing this news, Neil recorded, “all run to their boat in the greatest confusion, everyone carrying with him, whatever part of the baggage came first to his hand, without either regard to sex or quality.” It was agreed that the Clanranald boat and the one bound for Skye should head for the far side of a sea loch where they would be secluded from view. At about five in the morning, the vessels landed there, and the party continued their interrupted supper, their elation at the prospect of the prince’s projected escape from the Western Isles much dimmed.
Within a few hours, a further message from Nunton caused still greater alarm. A servant came to tell Lady Clan that “General Campbell, with a party of his men, were at her house, and wanted that she should be there before twelve of the clock, otherwise…her house should suffer for all.” In addition the royal party learned that Captain John Fergusson had arrived at Nunton the night before and had slept in Lady Clan’s own bed. The roles of naval and military officers had become blurred in the authorities’ efforts in the Highlands to bring rebels to justice. Fergusson had recently landed on the small island of Raasay lying off the mainland east of Skye and ordered the home of its laird, who had been out in the rebellion, burned “to ashes” and another three hundred houses fired. In consequence of this and other atrocities, he was widely regarded in the Hebrides as the “most bent [intent] of any…to take the Prince.”
The party on the lochside did not know that the general and Fergusson suspected nothing and were only pausing at Nunton on their way to seek the prince in the hills on South Uist, where, in common with the Duke of Cumberland and his staff at Fort Augustus, they believed the prince was still to be found. So Campbell’s message caused alarm among those gathered at Rossinish. There was general agreement, however, that there was nothing for it but for Lady Clan to return home. There she must seek to parry any questions regarding her previous whereabouts with evasive answers. She was to do so with courage and wit.
Once Lady Clan and her daughter departed, Flora assumed control of the expedition. Although O’Neill “insisted strongly to leave the country with the Prince,” she was proof against his pleas. Unlike Neil and Flora herself, he “being a stranger,…did not speak the language of the country [Gaelic],” she observed, and “would readily be taken [captured].” The colonel may have spoken Irish, from which Gaelic derived, but the latter tongue was now markedly different from the former. Flora remained adamant, even when the prince himself begged for the officer’s company on the voyage. The passport she possessed was made out, she reminded Charles Edward, only for her, “Betty Burke,” and her cousin Neil.
