The Road to Culloden Moor

by Diana Preston

  The same terrors emerged at the christening of the Bishop of Carlisle’s grandchild. Some Highlanders stumbled in on the ceremony and the family servants pleaded with them not to harm the baby. It was dealt with in a masterly way by Captain Macdonald. Hiding his astonishment at the idea that they would hurt a new-born infant he gravely gave them a white cockade to put in the baby’s cap to protect her. The cockade was preserved with almost religious care and produced for the inspection of George IV when he visited Edinburgh seventy-six years later and met the old lady whose christening it had been.

  Henry Fielding did not dwell on allegations of child-eating in the True Patriot but he invented other salacious tales to shock his readers, asserting that ‘Our Accounts from Carlisle take Notice of the many detestable and shocking Villanies of the Highlanders during their Possession of that City, for not content with stripping several Families of all their valuable Effects, they scrupled not to make free with the Persons of several young Ladies there ….’ He goes on with relish to describe how one poor man, having been stripped of everything, had the ‘Misery to see his three Daughters treated in such a manner that he could not bear to relate it.’ What, Fielding asked, did not this wicked Crew deserve?

  The London Gazette picked up the refrain of wicked Highlanders looting and pillaging and spoiling. There was widespread disgust at the idea of these ‘wild petticoat men’ — ‘the Southron [Englishmen] could see nothing but disgust, and express nothing but indignation, at having his domestic comfort invaded by a troop of persons whose manners were repugnant to him, and who so seriously injured his fortune.’ But the reality was different. Charles and his chiefs were scrupulous about stopping looting and kept ‘the most exact discipline in his army, paying for every individual thing they got’. They were largely successful in keeping order. A curate described with satisfaction how on finding that attempts had been made to force the door of the wine-vault belonging to his patron, Dr Waugh, he ‘clap’d two more padlocks on the outside and was satisfied that all was safe within’. These measures would hardly have been adequate in the face of wholesale pillaging.

  Murray of Broughton was quick to refute the ‘false and Scurrilous accusation’ that the Jacobites levied exorbitant sums from the towns they passed through. He wrote angrily that ‘let it suffice here for once for all to say that the moneys said to have been levied at the different places, as well as here at Carlisle, are without foundation, save the public moneys due and such as shall be here mentioned, which at this place did not in whole amount to above £60 pound, and not much above one hundred in most of the other places ….’

  The unfortunate garrison at Carlisle came in for vitriol from all sides. The Whig papers expressed universal contempt for the fact that Carlisle had given in ‘merely through Fear’. In London the centrepiece of the table at the christening of George II’s baby grandson was ‘the citadel of Carlisle in sugar … and the company, (which included Frederick Prince of Wales), besieged it with sugar plums’. The Jacobites were similarly scathing. Murray of Broughton noted that the defenders could have baffled all the Chevalier’s efforts. A song described their feelings nicely:

  O Pattinson! ohon! ohon!

  Thou wonder of a mayor!

  Thou blest thy lot thou wert no Scot,

  And bluster’d like a player.

  What hast thou done with sword or gun,

  To baffle the Pretender?

  Of mouldy cheese and bacon grease,

  Thou art more fit defender!

  Charles lodged in the house of a Mr Highmore, but there was no Highland hospitality here. True to his principles he paid twenty guineas rent but his lawyer landlord gave him not so much as a lump of coal or a candle. This domestic parsimony was symptomatic of the lack of enthusiasm for his cause. There had been no sign of the spontaneous rising Charles had so confidently expected on setting foot on English soil, merely ‘sour faces’ as the white cockades had flashed through hamlets and villages. Charles had expected his mere presence to be enough and had not been unduly concerned that his various attempts to communicate with the Jacobite leaders of England and Wales had so far failed.

  He pinned all his hopes on the fact that in 1743-4 Lord Barrymore, Sir John Hynde Cotton and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, the secret leaders of the Jacobite faction south of the border, had pledged themselves to bring levies to support Marshall Saxe’s French invasion force. Charles still expected them to raise forces even though he was without that vital foreign support. His hopes were not entirely misplaced. On hearing of Charles’s landing the three plotters had sent urgent messages to the French Court, arguing ‘loudly and vehemently for a body of troops to be landed near London as the most effectual means to support the prince’. But that, as the Scots had suspected all along, was as far as their zeal went. Nothing would induce them to move without that support.

  On closer inspection they were not the stuff of heroes. Like so many of those on whom Charles was relying, they were men whose heyday was past. Lord Barrymore was seventy-eight. He had been arrested as a spy during the 1743-4 invasion scare but released after a telling address to his inquisitors: ‘I have, my lords, a very good estate in Ireland, and on that, I believe fifteen hundred acres of very bad land; now by God I would not risk the loss of the poorest acre of them to defend the title of any king in Europe …’ Charles wrote to him just before the fall of Carlisle with the stern words that ‘now is the time or never’ and asked him to rally supporters to join him in Cheshire. The letter was delivered by mistake to Barrymore’s son, a Hanoverian, and never reached him, but it might well have made no difference if it had.

  Cotton was fifty-seven years old at the time of the ’45 and was certainly not the stuff of heroes. He was ‘one of the tallest, biggest, fattest men I have ever seen …’ and supposed to be able to ‘drink as much wine as any man in England ….’ Sir Watkin Williams Wynn was in his early fifties and the most powerful landowner in Wales. However, his caution was as great as his wealth and he was determined not to make a move without French help. If, however, Charles would come to him in Wales he would certainly join him, he said. Charles had no intention of going to Wales.

  What he wanted was to press further into England and as quickly as possible. Any delay would only benefit his enemies. It was obvious that they had been woefully unprepared to meet the Jacobite threat but they were now working feverishly to build up their forces. As well as despatching Marshal Wade northwards, the Government had recalled its troops from Flanders and they had been disembarking every day in the Thames. By the end of September seven British battalions and six thousand Dutch had landed to reinforce Wade. A second army under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir John Ligonier was sent north to intercept Charles, and the Duke of Cumberland had arrived back from Flanders to be appointed Captain-General of the land forces. He was to take over from Ligonier, concentrating his forces around Stafford.

  As Fielding had been urging, England was waking up. So were the pro-Government factions in Scotland. Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling were raising volunteers to fight with the Government and Gardiner’s and Hamilton’s Dragoons were back in Edinburgh. Lord Loudon had returned to Scotland after his ignominious flight in the wake of Preston Pans. Since mid-October he had been in command at Inverness, drilling the levies that Duncan Forbes had been diligently raising.

  In this situation, with no sign of the English Jacobites, no sign of the French, and the growing military strength of his enemies, Charles must have known it would be difficult to bend his Council to his will. Many of the Scots had never wanted to come south of the border and they were not deceived by the ease of the capture of Carlisle. It had fallen but in the same way as a rotten plum at the first shake of the tree. If it was a victory where were the promised scenes of jubilation at the return of a lawful prince come to release his people from the yoke of oppression? Instead, they had found a people whose chief preoccupation was trade, whose chief interest was in political stability and whose chief fear was of them, the
supposed liberators.

  Charles’s task was complicated further because he had fallen out badly with Lord George Murray. Charles had allowed the Duke of Perth to negotiate the surrender of Carlisle and this had not gone down well with Lord George Murray who resigned his commission. He wrote a letter to Charles bristling with resentment and announced that henceforth he would simply serve as a volunteer. The problem had arisen because Murray had refused to take command at the siege of Carlisle on the grounds that he knew nothing about siege warfare. Perth on the other hand had flung himself enthusiastically into the business of digging trenches, working side by side in his shirt sleeves with his men in the thick snow. It was a dilemma for Charles who had never liked Lord George but was only too aware of his influence over the clans. Murray may have been conceited but he was highly competent as a soldier in an army where military expertise was limited. He ‘thought himself the fittest man in the army to be at the head of it; and he was not the only person that thought so. Had it been left to the gentlemen of the army to choose a general, Lord George would have carried it by vast odds against the Duke of Perth.’

  So Charles was finding himself isolated. His judgement was also questioned for allowing Perth, as a Catholic, to receive the surrender of the Protestant city. This could only fuel popular hysteria about Charles being the puppet of the Pope. The Whig press was full of lurid reminders of the burnings of Protestants at Smithfield in Mary Tudor’s reign, and gruesome speculation about what the Inquisition would do once they had their blood-stained hands around England’s throat.

  The Duke of Perth, ‘much beloved and esteemed’, had the sense to see that he held the key to the problem. He maintained, probably quite truthfully, that ‘he never had any thing in view but the Prince’s interest, and would cheerfully sacrifice anything to it’. Consequently he insisted on being allowed to give up his command and was put in charge of the rearguard and the baggage. This left the field clear for Lord George Murray. Charles was forced to ask him to withdraw his resignation, but this spat left a bitter after-taste. When Charles put his plans to the Council for continuing into England he found the Scots ranged against him. He needed a rabbit to pull out of the hat, and he had one — the Marquis d’Eguilles who was accompanying the Jacobite army as an observer. Asked to reveal his instructions from Louis, the Frenchman made it clear that Louis wanted to know the strength of English Jacobite support for Charles before fully committing France. This could only be achieved by marching on. Lord George had to agree but he was reluctant. All his instincts were for returning to Scotland and consolidating their position there. Charles, by contrast, was buoyed up, firmly believing in his destiny. He had hitherto had ‘a wonderful run of success. He had great hopes of a French army landing, and of an insurrection in his favour’.

  There were good reasons for agreeing to Charles’s plans apart from his innate optimism and the blandishments of d’Eguilles. As Murray of Broughton explained: ‘To have laid there any longer would have been both idle and dangerous; idle, having no prospect of a junction from his friends in those parts, and from the disposition that at that time seem’d to be formed by the Enemy, he must have been cooped up in that Corner by the Duke’s army from the South. Mr Wade at Newcastle, and the 2 Regiments with the foot detached to Scotland on his left, so to prevent a junction of the D. and Mr Wade’s armies, his only proper method was to march forward, that in case he came to action he might only have one army to deal with ….’ It was decided to make for London on the Lancashire road but first the army needed to be reviewed.

  This review revealed that the force was now reduced to some four thousand four hundred men. Two or three hundred were to be left behind to garrison Carlisle and about as many had deserted since the army had marched from Edinburgh. The smallness of the force was a worry, so was the question of how to cater for it. Loss of the tents on the way to the border meant that the men would have to be billeted each night in a town. It was bitterly cold now and not even the hardy Highlanders in their plaids would find it easy to survive in the open. To help with this it was agreed to advance in two columns. Lord George led the first with Elcho and his Lifeguards. Charles was to follow a day behind with the main army and the plan was to rendezvous at Preston.

  Charles was glad to be on the move again, regaining the momentum of his quest. He reached Penrith on 21 November, where he lodged at the George and Dragon Inn, and made the long haul to Kendal on the 23 rd. As before he led his men, marching at their head, and consciously picturesque. He was dressed in a light plaid with a blue sash and a blue bonnet on his head, decorated with a white rose. The bagpipes and drums played that stirring and much-used cavalier anthem ‘The King shall enjoy his own again’. The clansmen carried banners bearing reassuring slogans about ‘Liberty and Property, Church and King’, but these failed to impress ‘the cold spectators who beheld them with a corresponding enthusiasm’. It was physically exhausting in the snow and ice but Charles could not be persuaded to ride except when fording rivers. He was so worn out by the twenty-seven-mile slog to Kendal that he had to catch hold of the shoulder belt of one of his soldiers to stay upright. But he had a magnetic effect on some. One of the few Lancashire recruits, John Daniels, described how he felt when he first saw Charles ‘the brave Prince marching on foot at their head like a Cyrus or a Trojan hero, drawing admiration and love from all those who beheld him, raising their long-dejected hearts and solacing their minds with the happy prospect of another Golden Age. Struck with this charming sight, and seeming invitation “leave your nets and follow me” I felt a paternal ardour pervade my veins …

  Nevertheless, to Government supporters, this was no more than a rabble. Some were admittedly ‘well mounted and accoutred with the Spoil of our Country … but for the most Part they were a very despicable Mob … had it not been for the Arms they carried, it might well be thought there was a Famine in Scotland, and that they came to England to beg, but they soon undeceiv’d us letting us know they were sturdy Beggars, committing all Manner of Rapine as they ran along the Country.’

  On 26 November the maligned army reached Preston — a place with an evil reputation in Highland minds. It had seen a Scottish defeat in 1648. It was also where ‘the hopes of their party had been blighted in 1715, and their banners steeped in blood. The walls of Preston recalled to many of the volunteers of Lancashire the prison in which their fathers had died of fever, or starvation, or of broken hearts.’ Many of those who had joined Charles were indeed the sons of those who had suffered in the ’15. As a newspaper of the time observed nastily, ‘Hanging is hereditary in some families.’ Lord George was anxious not to let his men give in to this ‘fright’. He hastily marched them through the town to the south side of the Ribble to debunk superstitious fears that a Jacobite army would never get beyond Preston.

  But there was a growing spectre hanging over the little army. At every town where they stopped James was proclaimed King, but recruits remained few and far between. Some gentlemen did enlist — a Catholic Francis Townley from an old Lancashire Jacobite family and two Welshmen called Morgan and Vaughan. But only ‘some few common people’ joined them in Preston and not the large numbers that had confidently been expected. The sad truth was that, whatever their sentiments, people had too much to lose to want to follow Charles in his precarious quest.

  Preston was a prosperous place doing very nicely out of trade in linen, yarn and cloth. Its streets were handsome, its balls and assemblies genteel and elegant. Its inns offered ‘all kind of good Eatables, proper Attendance, civil Usage, and a moderate Charge; and where you may have all Things done after an elegant grand Manner, if required’. Such placid prosperity was not likely to produce revolutionaries and visionaries — especially if the risks looked high. The True Patriot’s warning that the Rebellion was ‘putting an Entire Stop to all Trade’ may have struck an ominous chord.

  The army marched gamely on to Wigan but the picture stayed the same. ‘The road betwixt Preston and Wigan was crowded with people
standing at their doors to see the army go by, and they generally all that days march profes’d to wish the Prince’s army Success, but if arms was offer’d to them and they were desir’d to Go along with the army they all declined, and Said they did not Understand fighting.’

  On 29 November the Jacobites entered Manchester where surely, Charles reasoned, their fortunes would look up. After all, this was the heart of the traditionally Jacobite north-west and O’Sullivan was expecting at least fifteen hundred new recruits. In fact a bold attempt was already underway to rally support for the cause. Chevalier Johnstone described how one of his sergeants ‘named Dickson, whom I had enlisted from among the prisoners of war at Gladsmuir [Preston Pans], a young Scotsman, as brave and intrepid as a lion … came to ask my permision to get a day’s march ahead of the army, by setting out immediately for Manchester … in order to make sure of some recruits before the arrival of the army ….’ Johnstone agreed and the sergeant set out with his mistress and a drummer. On his arrival in Manchester he immediately began to beat up for recruits for ‘the yellow-haired laddie’. The populace was curious then angry. At first, believing the Jacobite army to be hard on the heels of the intrepid recruiter, they simply stood and gawped. Once they realised the force would not arrive till evening they mobbed Dickson, intent on capturing him dead or alive.