1740.

CONTRAST BETWEEN LOVAT AND LOCHIEL.

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Drummond; Sir James Campbell of Auchinbreck; Lord Lovat; and young Lochiel. The name of Lovat may excite some surprise in those who remember his activity against the insurgents of 1715, but this crafty and selfish old man had been offended at some attempts of the Government to introduce law and order in the Highlands: he thought also his former service ill rewarded, and declared that he had not received enough a word which, with him, always meant a little more than he had! What, then, were his feelings, when in 1736, having excited the suspicions of the Government, he was stripped of the place and pension which he already enjoyed! Incensed, but with caution mastering even his most violent resentments, he plunged, eager, yet still dissembling, into the Jacobite designs.

The mind of Donald Cameron, young Lochiel, was cast in a far different mould: full of courage, hospitality, and honour; a true model of that chivalrous character which poets have feigned, oftener than found, in feudal chiefs. For the cause of the Stuarts had the father fought and bled, and was now living attainted and in exile; for that cause, even when buoyed up by no visions of victory, the son was as ready to devote the last drop of his blood, the last acre of his lands. An erring principle, but surely a most noble fidelity! His energy in war, his courtesy and charity in peace, are recorded even by his political (he could have no private) enemies. One of these, a courtly poet, unable to comprehend either how so excellent a man should be shut out from Paradise, or how any person of Jacobite principles could possibly enter in, ingeniously solves the difficulty by presuming that Lochiel will become "a Whig in Heaven." * Nowhere, I think, do our annals display a more striking contrast than this between Lovat and Lochiel. The one, hoary with age, and standing on the very brink of the grave, yet trembling with eagerness for none but worldly and evanescent objects; willing to sacrifice honour, conscience, country, nay, even, as we shall find hereafter, his own son, victims at

the shrine of his unprincipled ambition! The other in the prime of manhood, with aims as pernicious for the public, but in him most pure and lofty: swayed not by places or pensions, by coronets and ribands, but by his own inward and impelling sense of right: faithful to James, only because he believed, however erroneously, that James was his rightful King - only because he felt that his duty and devotion to the King were a part of his duty and devotion to the Almighty King of Kings!

Having formed their plot, the seven leaders next determined to impart it to their Prince, through a confidential agent, and for this purpose they pitched upon Mac Gregor, otherwise called Drummond, of Bohaldie. He was directed, on his return from Rome, to make some stay at Paris, and was entrusted with a memorial to Cardinal Fleury, giving an account of the design, and containing a list of the Highland Chiefs well affected to the Stuart cause, such as Sir Alexander Macdonald and Mac Leod. To Rome accordingly Bohaldie repaired, and afterwards to Paris, where he was favourably received by the Cardinal, and where he urged his negotiation, conjointly with one Sempill, calling himself Lord Sempill, at this time James's principal manager at the Court of Versailles.

With respect to England, Colonel Brett was, early in 1740, despatched from Paris to confer with the Jacobite leaders in that country. Amongst the foremost of these appears to have been the Duke of Beaufort; a young man of delicate health and retired habits, who indeed survived only till the spring of 1745 — but his brother, and afterwards his heir, Lord Noel Somerset, directed the powerful influence of that family in the Western counties. Sir Watkin Wynn answered for North Wales; in London, Lord Barrymore and Colonel Cecil, at Oxford, Dr. William King, Principal of St. Mary's Hall, were stirring agents. But, perhaps, the most active of the party was Sir John Hinde Cotton, member for the county of Cambridge, a gentleman of old family and large estate: he had sat in Parliament ever since the time of

1740.

MR. SHIPPEN.

31

Queen Anne, was not undistinguished as a speaker, and so zealous a Jacobite that he used to make an annual progress throughout England, to maintain the spirit of his friends.* On the 28th of March Lord Sempill writes, that Colonel Brett has returned from England, and reports "Shippen timid; "Sir John Hinde Cotton doubtful of others, but answers "clearly for himself; Sir Watkin Wynn hearty, and may "certainly be depended on."**

In little more than two months after Colonel Brett's return, Lord Barrymore undertook a Jacobite mission from London to Paris, and was admitted, together with Lord Sempill, to an audience of Cardinal Fleury. The Minister gave them a gracious reception, listened with pleasure to their account of affairs at home, and promised to send a friend of his own to England, in order to obtain still fuller and more authentic information for his Court.*** In a few days more we find Lord Barrymore about to return, and the Marquis de Clermont the person selected by the Cardinal for the secret English mission. It also appears that Sir John Hinde Cotton was to remain in London throughout the summer, as the channel of communication with James's friends; and that Shippen, whom the public voice still proclaimed as the great leader of the Jacobites, was thought by them so weak as to be left out of all their consultations. + Shippen, at this time, was sixty-eight, and his energy, perhaps, much impaired. But, as it seems to me, even his earlier reputation grew much more from his courage, his incorruptibility, his good humoured frankness of purpose, than from any superior eloquence or talent. Horace Walpole, the younger, describes his speeches as spirited in sentiment, but generally uttered in a low tone of voice, with too great rapidity and

* See Coxe's Life of Lord Walpole, p. 276.

** Letter of Lord Sempill, March 28. 1740. Stuart Papers. The Right Hon. C. W. Wynn has kindly communicated to me this, and the following extracts or summaries, which he made at Carlton House from Sempill's Letters of 1740. I could find none of these in their place at Windsor. *** Letter of Lord Sempill, June 6. 1740. Stuart Papers. Letter of Lord Sempill, June 13. 1740. Stuart Papers.

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with his glove held before his mouth * certainly not the portrait of a great orator! It is said that he had some skill in poetry, yet it does not seem that he was known or prized by any eminent men without the House of Commons. His father was rector of Stockport, and his paternal inheritance had been small; he acquired, however, an ample fortune by marriage. His wife was extremely penurious, and as a relation gently expressed it, "with a peculiarity in temper," ** and unwilling to mix in society; she was much noticed by Queen Caroline, but steadily declined all connection with the Court. Shippen, himself, like Pulteney, was not free from the odious taint of avarice: when not attending Parliament, he lived chiefly in a hired house on Richmond Hill; and it is remarkable that neither of these distinguished politicians, though each wealthy, possessed that chief pride and delight of an English gentleman a country seat.***

In September, this year, it appears that the Marquis de Clermont had returned from his secret mission, and that his reports were favourable to the Jacobite designs†; and in December, after the Emperor's death had given new ground and probability of war, Cardinal Fleury was so far wrought upon as to promise positively that if Bohaldie could bring full assurances from those who managed the Clans, the Irish brigade in France should be forthwith transported to Scotland, with the arms and ammunition required. In that case he also undertook to use endeavours with the Government of Spain to send another body of troops from thence, with the Earl Marischal.†† Such a project was indeed already entertained by the Spanish, or at least apprehended by the British Court.+++

* Communicated to Archdeacon Coxe. p. 672.

Memoirs of Walpole, vol. i.

** From her grand-nephew, Judge Willes. Coxe's Walpole, vol. i. p. 673. Shippen survived her several years in full possession of her fortune. *** This fact, as regards Shippen, is stated in Coxe's Walpole, ut supra. As regards Pulteney, I find it in a letter from Pope to Swift, of May 17. 1739. (Swift's Works, vol. xix. p. 291.)

Letter of Lord Sempill, Sept. 5. 1740. Stuart Papers.

Letter of Lord Sempill, December 19. 1740. Stuart Papers. +++ "The troops in Gallicia publicly declared they were to be employed

1740.

THE JACOBITES.

33

Even from this outline it will be perceived how unwearied, how extensive, and how formidable was the Jacobite conspiracy. Yet, at that moment, and for years before, the existence of any such conspiracy was stubbornly denied by the "Patriots," in Opposition; they maintaining that it was a mere chimera and device of Ministers to justify military preparations, a standing army, and the final establishment of despotic power. Daniel Pulteney a brother of William, of the same principles, and prevented only by his early death from attaining similar political distinction used to say that the Pretender would never subdue us, but his name would!* These mock-patriots, so jealous, as they seemed, of British liberties, were undoubtedly in effect perhaps sometimes in intention the best allies and patrons of the Jacobites.

For the Jacobites themselves, their course, though far more direct and manly, was still less reasonable. Considering the mildness and moderation of the reigning family, we may wonder at their irreconcilable resentment; and our surprise will augment, if we reflect on the feeble and bigot character of the Prince whom they were so eager to enthrone. To place at the head of the Church of England one of its most bitter and unchanging adversaries-such was the aim of men who believed or boasted themselves the best, nay, the only real, friends of that Church! Every successive year, as it increased the difficulty of a Revolution as it heightened the necessity to wade at this object through torrents of blood, and that blood our fellow countrymen's added, as I conceive, to the responsibility and moral guilt of the attempt. And while I revere and wish to do justice to the high motives of many Jacobites, I cannot but strongly condemn the false political idolatry of all.

"under the Duke of Ormond, who was then in Spain, in a descent upon "England." (Tindal's Hist. vol. viii. p. 459.) Sir John Norris was sent out with a squadron to defeat this design, and the Duke of Cumberland sailed with him as a volunteer: however, the Spaniards found ample employment for their force in South America.

Lord Bolingbroke to Sir William Wyndham, November 18. 1739. Mahon, History. III.

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