Whilst the adherents of Charles in the Highlands and the
northern Lowlands were exerting all their energies to collect reinforcements,
Lord-president Forbes was using all his influence to prevent the chiefs of doubtful
loyalty from committing themselves with the government. To induce them to arm in its
support after the success which had attended the prince's arms, was what he could scarcely
have expected; but by persuasion, and by pointing out in forcible terms the ruin which
would befall them and their families, should the prince fail in his enterprise, he
succeeded in making them at first to waver, and finally to abandon any design they may
have entertained, of joining the prince. Among others who appear to have vacillated
between two opinions, and in their perplexity to have alternatively changed their minds,
was Macleod of Macleod. This chief, influenced probably by the solicitations of his
clansman, who had been sent to him on the mission before alluded to, attended a meeting of
gentlemen of the name of Fraser, convened by Lord Lovat at Beaufort, or Castle Downie, as
that seat of the chief of the Frasers was sometimes called, on Friday the 4th of October,
and was despatched the following day to Skye, having engaged to join the Frasers with his
men at Corriearrick on the 15th; but on advising with his friend Sir Alexander Macdonald,
he resolved to stay at home.
In neutralising the efforts of the disaffected clans, and dissuading others of doubtful
loyalty from joining the ranks of the insurgents, President Forbes had difficulties to
contend with, which few men could have overcome, but which he finally surmounted by that
firmness, zeal, and indomitable perseverance, which distinguished him among all his
political contemporaries. At its commencement, Forbes treated the insurrection very
lightly. Before his departure for the north, he considered the prospect of affairs very
flattering, and that the object of his journey had no appearance of difficulty; but the
alternation in public feeling, consequent on the battle of Preston, changed the scene.
Instead of finding the ready support he anticipated from the professed adherents of the
government, he saw himself, to use his own words, "almost alone, without troops,
without arms, without money or credit; provided with no means to prevent extreme folly,
except pen and ink, a tongue and some reputation; and, if you will except Macleod, whom I
sent for from the Isle of Skye, supported by nobody of common sense or courage". The
successes of the insurgents had, he observes, "blown up the spirit of mutiny to such
a pitch, that nothing was heard of but caballing, and gathering together of men in the
neighbourhood: every petty head of a tribe, who was in any degree tinged with Jacobitism,
or desperate in his circumstances, assembled his kindred, and made use of the most
mutinous, to drag the most peaceable out of their beds, and to force others to list by
threatening destruction to their cattle and other effects; whilst we were unable to give
them any assistance or protection". Exasperated at the president for the exertions he
made to obstruct the designs of the disaffected, a plan was formed for seizing him by some
of the Frasers, a party of whom, amounting to about 200 men, accordingly made an attack
upon the house of Culloden during the night between the 15th and 16th of October; but the
president being upon his guard, they were repulsed. The apprehension of such an important
personage would have been of greater service to the Jacobite cause than the gaining of a
battle.
Confiding in the loyalty and discretion of President Forbes, the ministry had, at the
suggestion of the Earl of Stair, sent down to the president, early in September, twenty
commissions, for raising as many independent companies in the Highlands for the service of
the government. The names of the officers were left blank in the commissions, that the
president might distribute them among such of the well-affected clans as he might think
proper. The plan which his lordship laid down for himself, in disposing of these
commissions, was to distribute them among the clans who adhered to the government in the
former insurrection, without neglecting such other clans, who, though then opposed to the
government, had, on the present occasion, shown an unwillingness to join the Jacobite
standard. To raise the companies, which were fixed at 100 men each, as quickly as
possible, the president resolved to leave the nomination of the officers to the chiefs of
the clans, out of whom they were to be raised. He accordingly despatched letters to the
Earls of Sutherland and Cromarty, Lords Reay and Fortrose, Sir Alexander Macdonald, the
lairds of Macleod and Grant, and other chiefs, requesting each of them to raise a company
out of their respective clans, most of whom accordingly proceeded to enrol their men; but
from the want of money and arms, only two companies were completed before the end of
October, and several months expired before the whole were fully formed and drawn together.
If the majority of the people of Scotland had been favourably disposed to the cause of the
Stuarts, they had now an opportunity of displaying their attachment to the representative
of their ancient monarchs, by declaring for the prince; but Charles soon found that, with
the exception of the Highlands, and a few districts north of the Tay, where catholicity
and non-juring episcopacy still retained a footing, the rest of Scotland was not disposed
to join a contest for legitimacy, which they might imagine would not, if successful,
strengthen the liberties of the nation, and might possibly impair them. The regular line
of hereditary succession had been departed from, and it did not seem wide after a trial of
fifty-seven years, during which period the political frame and texture of society had
undergone a complete revolution, to place the succession on its original footing, by
restoring the son of James II. The Jacobites, however, imbued with ideas of indefeasible
hereditary right, were deaf to every argument founded on expediency or the will of the
nation, and contended that every departure from the direct line of succession was a
usurpation, and contrary to the divine law. No sovereign was, therefore, held by them as
legitimate, while there existed a nearer heir to the crown in the direct line of
succession; but they did not reflect toat, upon this principle, there was scarcely a
legitimate sovereign in Europe. |
