house at Richmond, where he lived in great state, and was surrounded by the whole body of the Tories, of which he was supposed to be the head. He seemed to have set up the standard against his sovereign. And he assured the pretender, he would hold his station as long as possible; and that when he could maintain it no longer, he would retire to the North or West of England (where he had many friends, among whom he had distributed a number of reduced officers), and in one of those quarters begin an insurrection. He had even settled a relay of horses, in order to proceed with greater expedition when the dangerous moment should arrive. But the duke, though personally brave, was destitute of that vigour of spirit, which is necessary for the execution of such an undertaking. When informed that a party of the guards had orders to surround his house and seize his person, he lost all presence of mind, and hastily made his escape to France; without leaving any instructions for his friends, who were waiting for an order to take up arms, and were eager to act under his command'.

The unexpected flight of Ormond gave a fatal wound to the cause of the pretender. It not only disconcerted the plans of his English adherents, but confirmed the court of Versailles in the resolution of yielding him no open assistance. If a man, on whose credit the highest hopes of the Jacobites rested, was under the necessity of abandoning his country, without being able to strike a blow, the French ministry very reasonably concluded, that the Tories could not be so powerful, or so ripe for an insurrection, as they had been represented.

Sept. 1. The death of Louis, which happened soon after, further N.S. embarrassed the pretender's affairs. "No prince," says the duke of Berwick, "was ever so little known as this monarch. He has been represented as a man not only cruel and false, but difficult of access. I have frequently had the honour of audiences from him, and have been very familiarly admitted to his presence and I can affirm, that his pride was only in appearance. He was born with an air of majesty, which struck every one so much, that nobody could approach him without being seized with awe and respect; but as soon as you spoke to him, he softened his countenance, and put you quite at ease. He was the most polite man in his kingdom: and his answers were accompanied with so many obliging expressions, that, if he granted your request, the obligation was doubled by the manner

1 Duke of Berwick, vol. ii.

of conferring it; and, if he refused, you could not complain." It was that air of majesty, mentioned by the duke, which so disconcerted the old officer, who came to ask a favour of Louis, that he could only say, in a faltering voice, "I hope your majesty will believe I do not thus tremble before your enemies!" The character of this prince I have already had occasion to draw, and to exhibit in various lights.

The duke of Orleans, who was appointed, by the parliament of Paris, regent during the minority of Louis XV., in contradiction to the will of the deceased monarch, affected privately to espouse the interests of the house of Stuart; but the exhausted state of France, and the difficulty of maintaining his own authority against the other princes of the blood, induced him publicly to cultivate a good understanding with the court of Great Britain, and even to take, though with seeming reluctance, all the steps pointed out by the earl of Stair, for defeating the designs of the Jacobites. Of those measures, the most important was the stopping of some ships laden with arms and ammunition; an irreparable loss to the pretender, as he could neither procure money, nor permission to purchase a fresh quantity of such articles in any other country'.

Notwithstanding these discouragements, the indigent representative of the unfortunate family of Stuart did not relinquish his hopes of a crown: nor did his partisans, either in England or Scotland, abate of their ardour in his cause. But ardour, unless governed by prudence, is a wild energy, that often brings ruin on the party it was intended to serve. It required all the cool experience of the duke of Berwick, and the great talents of lord Bolingbroke, to moderate the zeal of the English and Scottish Jacobites. The Highlanders were eager to take arms: they had entered into a regular concert for that purpose; they knew their force; and confident of success, they entreated the pretender to place himself at their head, or at least to permit them to rise in vindication of his just rights. Some account must here be given of this singular race of men.

The Highlanders are the reputed descendants of the original Celtic inhabitants of North Britain, and value themselves on having had the rare fortune of never being subjected to the laws of any conqueror. From the victorious arms of the Romans they took refuge in their rugged mountains, and there continued to enjoy their independence, while that ambitious people re

1 Duke of Berwick, vol. ii.

mained masters of the southern parts of this island. Nor has the sword of Dane, of Saxon, or of Norman, ever reduced them to submission.

But although independent, the Highlanders were by no means free. Divided into a variety of clans or tribes, under chiefs who exercised an arbitrary jurisdiction over them, the body of the people were in a great measure slaves to the will of petty tyrants. And from that law of will, which it was the common interest and the pride of all the heads of clans to support, there lay no appeal; for, although the Highland chiefs acknowledged the sovereignty of the king of Scotland, and held themselves bound to assist him in his wars, they admitted not his control in their private concerns, in their treatment of their own vassals, or in their disputes with hostile clans. His mediation was all he could presume to offer. Nor was that often obtruded upon them the Scottish monarchs in general deeming themselves happy, if they could prevent these barbarous and predatory tribes from pillaging the more opulent and industrious inhabitants of the Low-Lands'.

The remote situation of the Highlanders, and their ignorance of any language but that of their rude ancestors, commonly known by the name of Erse, contributed to prolong their barbarity and slavery. They had no means of making known their grievances to the throne, and few opportunities of becoming acquainted with the benefits of civil government, and the arts or accommodations of civil life.

The servitude of the Highland vassals, however, was alleviated by certain circumstances connected with their condition. All the people of the different clans bore the name of their hereditary chief, and were supposed to be allied to him by the ties of blood. This admitted claim of a common relation, which, in small clans, was a strong curb upon the oppressive spirit of domination, and in all led to a freedom of intercourse highly flattering to human pride, communicated to the vassal Highlanders, with the most implicit submission to their chiefs, a sentiment of conscious dignity, and a sense of natural equality, not to be found among the subjects of other petty despots or feudal lords. This idea of personal importance, and the com

In palliation of these cruel inroads, it has been said, that the Highlanders having been driven from the Low Country by invasion, have, from time immemorial, thought themselves "entitled to make reprisals upon the property of their invaders!" (Dalrymple's Mem. of Great Britain.) The same plea has been urged by the American savages as an apology for pillaging the European settlements, and with more plausibility, as the era of invasion is not immemorial.

plaisance of the Highland chiefs, were heightened by the perpetual wars among the clans; in which every individual had frequent opportunities of displaying his prowess, and of manifesting his attachment to the head of his family. The ties of blood were strengthened by those of interest, of gratitude, and mutual esteem.

Those wars, and the active life of the Highlanders in times of peace, when they were entirely employed in hunting or herding their cattle (the labours of husbandry among them being few), habituated them to the use of arms, and hardened them to the endurance of toil, without greatly wasting their bodily strength or destroying their agility. Their ancient military weapons, in conjunction with a target or buckler, were a broad-sword, for cutting or thrusting at a distance, and a dirk or dagger, for stabbing in close fight. To these, when they became acquainted with the use of fire-arms, they added a musquet, which was laid aside in battle after the first discharge. They occasionally carried also a pair of pistols, that were fired as soon as the musquet was discharged, and thrown in the face of the enemy, as a prelude to the havoc of the broad-sword; which was instantly brandished by every arm, gleaming like the coruscations of lightning, to infuse terror into the heart and conquer the eye of the foe, and which fell on the head or on the target of an antagonist, with the shock of thunder. Want of perseverance and of union, however, generally rendered the efforts of the clans, as a body, abortive, notwithstanding their prowess in combat, and exposed them to the disgrace of being routed by an inferior number of regular troops.

The dress of the Highlanders was well suited to their arms, to their moist mountainous country, and to their mode of life. Instead of breeches they wore a light woollen garment, called the kilt, which came as low as the knee; a thick cloth jacket; a worsted plaid, six yards in length and two in breadth, wrapped loosely round the body; the upper fold of which rested on the left shoulder, leaving the right arm at full liberty. In battle they commonly threw away the plaid, that they might be enabled to make their movements with more celerity, and their strokes with greater force. They fought not in ranks, but in knots or separate bands, condensed and firm.

Such were the people who, under their numerous chieftains, had formed a regular confederacy, and were zealous for the restoration of the family of Stuart to the throne of Great Britain. Strongly prepossessed in favour of the hereditary

descent of the crown, they could form no conception of a parliamentary right to alter the order of succession from political considerations. It contradicted all their ideas of kingship, and even of clanship. They therefore thought themselves bound, by a sacred indispensable obligation, to re-instate in his lineal inheritance the excluded prince, or to perish in the bold attempt.

The pretender's southern friends were no less liberal in their professions of zeal in his cause. They pressed him to land in the West of England; where his person would be as safe, they affirmed, as in Scotland, and where he would find all other things more favourable to his views, although they had yet taken no decisive measures for a general insurrection: though they still continued to represent arms and foreign troops as necessary to such a step, and were told that he was not only incapable of furnishing them with either, but assured that he could not bring with him so many men as would be able to protect him against the peace-officers'.

To compose the spirit of the Highlanders, who seemed to fear nothing so much, as that the business of restoring their king would be taken out of their hands, and the honour appropriated by others, they were informed, that the pretender desired to have the rising of his friends in England and Scotland so adjusted, that they might in strict concert assist each other; and that it was very much to be wished all hostilities in Scotland could be suspended, until the English were ready to take arms. A memorial, drawn up by the duke of Berwick, had been already sent, by lord Bolingbroke, to the Jacobites in England, representing the unreasonableness of desiring the pretender to land among them, before they were in a condition to support him. They were now requested to consider seriously whether they were yet in such a condition; and were assured, that, as soon as an intimation to that purpose should be given, and the time and place of his landing fixed, the pretender was ready to put himself at their head. They named, as a landing place, the neighbourhood of Plymouth, and said they hoped the western counties were in a good posture to receive the king; but they offered no conjecture with respect to the force they could bring into the field, or the dependence that might be placed on the persons who had engaged to rise.

This, as lord Bolingbroke justly observes, was not the answer

1 Bolingbroke's Letter to Sir William Wyndham.