Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (52 page)

The start of Flora MacDonald’s errand of mercy did not augur well for its future success. She and her servant were stopped at a ford by a militia patrol and detained until morning for questioning by the senior officer. Since she knew this was her stepfather, Flora kept her head and waited patiently for his arrival.
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When Hugh MacDonald came to the ford, he immediately released his stepdaughter and made out the necessary passports, one for MacEachain, the other for a maidservant called Betty Burke. Flora then continued her journey and reached Lady Clanranald’s. There she explained her mission. The two women set about preparing ‘Betty Burke’s’ clothes.
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The delay at the ford meant that the message Flora had promised to send the prince did not arrive. Charles Edward grew anxious. At eight o’clock on the evening of 22 June he sent MacEachain to find
out
what was going on.
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MacEachain was also detained at the ford and then released at MacDonald of Armadale’s orders.

As he lay concealed under a rock, the prince’s anxieties mounted. Finally MacEachain made contact with Flora. It was arranged that she would meet the prince at Rossinish.
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MacEachain returned to the hideout. A mightily relieved Charles Edward broke cover and came running to meet him.
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The prince had not, as he feared, been betrayed. But now he faced the prospect of getting to Rossinish across closely-guarded country, with a price of £30,000 on his head. A small fishing boat in Loch Skipport took the prince and his two companions back to Ouia. Finding no one there, they spent an uncomfortable night, then persuaded the fishermen to row them at first light across to the nearest point of Benbecula.
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Once landed, the prince and O’Neill fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Neal MacEachain took a walk and found that they had been landed on a tidal island; there was an arm of the sea between them and the rest of Benbecula.
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In some alarm he went back to rouse the prince and give him the bad news. This provoked all Charles’s latent paranoia. He raged at the boatmen who, he claimed, had deliberately marooned him on a desert island to die of starvation.
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MacEachain calmed him down and offered to swim across and bring back a boat. At this moment they spotted a rock protruding from the middle of the water, indicating that it was possibly shallow there. Just as MacEachain began to take off his clothes ready for the swim, with rain pelting down on him, the tide began visibly to ebb. In less than three quarters of an hour it was possible for them to walk across to the main part of Benbecula without even wetting the soles of their shoes. It is indicative of Charles Edward’s state of mind that MacEachain describes him as being as pleased about his escape from the tidal island as if he had got clean away to France.
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They waited until nightfall before pressing on to Rossinish, taking temporary shelter in a hut, pushed to the extremes of hunger and tiredness.
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They got some milk and cheese from some of Clanranald’s tenants by telling them that they were Irish refugees from Culloden. The hut was singularly uncomfortable, so low and narrow that once again the prince had to creep into it on his belly.
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Once night came down, they started along the trail to Rossinish. The rain and wind were driving in their teeth, and they could see no more than three yards ahead. Charles himself lost his footing at almost every other step in some ditch or mire. He was forever losing
his
shoes in the boggy ground; the luckless MacEachain then had to fish them out.
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Their ordeal was not ended when they reached the rendezvous point around midnight. There was no sign of Flora and Lady Clanranald, but the countryside was stiff with militiamen. Again the prince raged at his bad luck. A cow-herd took pity on the dirty, bespattered figures and lodged them in his bothy a mile or so away. The prince sent O’Neill on to Nunton to find out what had happened to his two would-be female deliverers.
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At dawn they were rousted out by the cow-herd’s wife with news that the militiamen were coming to the bothy to buy milk. The day that followed was one of the worst in the prince’s life. All that morning he lay in the partial shelter of a rock, while the rain teemed on him and the midges gnawed at him. The prince emitted hideous cries of agony: ‘it is almost inexpressible what torment the Prince suffered under that unhappy rock which had neither height nor breadth to cover him from the rain which poured down on him so thick,’ MacEachain related.
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At the end of a long morning, the cow-herd’s child brought word that the militiamen had moved on. The prince returned to the bothy. A roaring peat fire was made up. The prince was stripped of his clothes, which were hung up to dry. His spirits revived as he sat down by the fire in his undershirt, ‘as merry and hearty as if he was in the best room at Whitehall’.
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The pitiful meal he now sat down to showed the prince in typical form: irascible, feeling victimised one minute, humorous and compassionate the next. The cow-herd’s wife set before him something she described as cream but was in fact scalding milk. In his voracious eagerness, the prince burnt his hand on the hot liquid. Charles jumped up angrily, berating the woman for a vile witch who had burned him deliberately. MacEachain, still unused to the violence of the prince’s mood swings, offered to paddle the woman with an oar that was lying handy. At this the compassion in Charles Edward at once surfaced, and he forbade MacEachain to do any such thing.
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While the prince slept on the floor in his plaid, a message arrived from O’Neill: rendezvous at Flora MacDonald’s house in North Uist.
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This plan was changed almost as soon as it was suggested because of the reluctance of her kinsman Baleshair.
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Impatiently the prince summoned O’Neill to him. He promised to come next day with Flora and Lady Clanranald.

On the morning of 27 June two MacDonalds arrived with a boat.
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The
prince set out for Rossinish. That afternoon he finally met up with the two Jacobite ladies, escorted by O’Neill.
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In the bothy where he had stayed on his first night in the Long Island, the prince and the two young MacDonalds cooked hearts, liver and kidneys for their guests (also present were Lady Clanranald’s daughter Peggy and Flora’s brother Milton MacDonald).
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Half-way through supper the alarming news came in that General Campbell had landed not far from Nunton with a force of 1,500 men. With him were Captains Scott and Fergusson. The supper party fled to the boats in great confusion. Crossing Loch Uskavagh, they finished their meal at sunrise in another bothy.
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At 8 a.m. Lady Clanranald went home to face the wrath of General Campbell.
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Shortly afterwards she and her husband were arrested for harbouring ‘the Pretender’s son’.
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In the bothy on Loch Uskavagh, O’Neill – whose conduct had not been entirely pleasing to the prince – finally got his marching orders.
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Flora’s passport specified one manservant only. Since MacEachain knew Gaelic and O’Neill did not, the Irishman was the obvious choice to be dropped from the party.
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Charles Edward went through the motions of pleading O’Neill’s case, but Flora, who had apparently been the object of some effusive Irish gallantry, was adamant. O’Neill departed with the intention of rejoining the prince in Skye. In circumstances not entirely easy to follow, he fell into the hands of the brutal Fergusson. Lucky to escape a flogging at the barbarous captain’s hands, O’Neill was taken prisoner to Edinburgh Castle.
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The party that departed for the legendary passage ‘over the sea to Skye’ thus consisted of the prince, Flora MacDonald and Neal MacEachain.
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The prince donned his ‘Betty Burke’ disguise before they pushed off into the Minch. Stripping to his breeches, he put on a light-coloured quilted petticoat, a calico gown and a mantle of dull camlet, together with suitable shoes and stockings and a whig and cap to cover his entire head and face.
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He wanted to carry a pistol under his petticoat, but Flora objected. If he was searched, such a weapon would give him away. To which the prince replied in high spirits: ‘Indeed, Miss, if we shall happen with any that will go so narrowly to work in searching me as what you mean, they will certainly discover me at any rate.’
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There were last-minute alarums. While waiting for dark on this rainy evening, they were forced to put out their fire and dive into the heather when four patrol boats came into the loch. But no landing parties came ashore. At last, as the sun set, they put to sea.
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To begin with they had to row on a windless sea. The prince sang
songs
to the rowers to buoy up their spirits. Among this repertoire were ‘The 29th of May’ and, inevitably, ‘The king shall enjoy his own again’.
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Charles cradled the head of the sleeping Flora and protected her from being trodden on when one of the sailors clambered over her in the dark to trim the sail.
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Around midnight a westerly gale sprang up. There was heavy rain, followed by a thick mist that robbed them of the sight of land.
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As the mist dissipated in the early morning sunshine, they found themselves off the point of Vaternish in north-western Skye. They pulled into a cleft in the cliff-wall to eat a breakfast of bread and butter, washed down with fresh water dripping from an overhanging rock.
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They were unaware that this part of the island was infested with troops and militiamen. As they pulled round the point of Vaternish after the hour’s meal break, a pair of sentries called on them to come ashore. The crew heaved strongly on the oars. The troops fired a volley. Other Macleods, as many as fifteen, came running. They too fired at the disappearing boat. Altogether the prince counted between twenty and thirty shots.
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This brush with the Macleods alarmed Flora MacDonald greatly. She was aware now, if not before, of what a grim business this manhunt was. Seeing her despondency, the prince spoke words of comfort: ‘Don’t be afraid, Miss, we won’t be taken yet. You see it is low water, and before they can launch their boats over that rough shore, we will get in below those high rocks and they will lose sight of us.’ The prince proved a good prophet. This was exactly what happened.
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After this episode they rowed across the bay of Loch Snizort to the longer peninsula of Trotternish. It was about 2 p.m. when they came ashore at a beach north of Kilbride.
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Immediately Flora and MacEachain set off for Lady Margaret MacDonald’s home at nearby Monkstadt, leaving the prince with the boatmen on the shore.
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Flora’s arrival at Monkstadt threw Lady MacDonald into consternation. She was a convinced Jacobite herself, but could not compromise her husband Sir Alexander MacDonald, presently at Fort Augustus with Cumberland. In her house at that very moment was a Macleod lieutenant of militia. The prince was inches away from capture. If he was apprehended, it would be said that Lady Margaret had betrayed him. How to square the circle?

She sent for her faithful associate Captain Roy MacDonald and explained the situation to him.
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With her factor MacDonald of Kingburgh they held a hasty consultation in the garden while Flora MacDonald kept the Macleod lieutenant talking inside the house.
The
three MacDonalds in the garden decided that the only feasible escape route was across country to Portree; meanwhile the prince should be lodged at Kingsburgh’s house that night.
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MacEachain set off for the beach to tell the prince that Kingsburgh was coming to take him to his house. Kingsburgh appeared on the beach shortly afterwards with a bottle of wine and some bread. After refreshing himself with the bread and wine, the prince set out with Kingsburgh to walk the seven miles to his house.
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On the road they were overtaken by a mounted party, consisting of Flora MacDonald and another MacDonald lady with her maid and manservant. This was the moment when ‘Betty Burke’ came closest to discovery. As a female impersonator, the prince left a lot to be desired. The way he moved, his long-striding walk, his very tallness of stature and the general gaucherie of the way he arranged his skirts would have given him away, had not the universal prejudice against the Irish worked in his favour. The prevalent notion that Irishwomen were tatterdemalion, hoydenish hobbledehoys predisposed the Scots to be satisfied with the outrageous story that this was an ill-bred female peasant from the bogs.
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The MacDonald maid contented herself with a few derogatory comments on ‘Betty Burke’s’ lack of feminine refinements before riding on.

Farther along the road, the prince and Kingsburgh ran into a crowd of people returning from Sunday services at the meeting-house. These god-fearing folk were also appalled at the ungenteel amount of leg ‘Betty’ displayed when lifting her petticoats to step across a stream. Eventually the tension became too much for MacEachain. ‘For God’s sake, sir,’ he hissed at the prince, ‘take care what you are doing, for you will certainly discover yourself!’
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On arrival at his house, Kingsburgh revealed to his wife that the ‘odd muckle trallup’ he had brought home was the prince.
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At first his wife was shocked and dismayed. Then her concern shifted to the more mundane consideration of whether she had proper food to set before a prince, and whether she was worthy to sit at the same table as him.
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The prince’s informality and charm soon put her at ease. After a supper of roasted eggs and bread and butter, the prince called for brandy: ‘for I have learned in my skulking to take a hearty dram.’
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After draining a bumper with a panache that would not have disgraced the most hardened toper, Charles took out a cracked pipe and asked for tobacco. Kingsburgh provided him with a clay pipe and a pouch of tobacco. The prince sat smoking and drinking with great cheerfulness and merriment. Kingsburgh reported that his attitude
was
not like that of a man in danger but more that of an amateur thespian who had put on women’s clothes for a diversion.
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That the prince was feeling cheerful again is clearly shown by his answer to a query from Kingsburgh. The MacDonald factor asked what he would have done if he (the factor) had not been at Monkstadt that day. Charles Edward replied: ‘Why, sir, you could not avoid being at Monkstadt this day, for Providence ordered you to be there on my account.’
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