This affair of the treasure caused endless calamities, especially involving Cameron of Glenevis, a place within two or three miles of Fort William. The relationship of this family to the head of the clan, Lochiel, stands thus: Archibald Cameron of Dungallon, who died in 1719, was the husband of Isabel Cameron of Lochiel. By her he left two sons and three daughters, of whom Jean married Dr. Archibald Cameron of Lochiel, the last Jacobite martyr; while Mary married Alexander Cameron of Glen Nevis.[89] Glenevis, or Glen Nevis, was not out in the Rising of 1745, but he was imprisoned in 1746, and released in 1747.[90]
The house of the Camerons of Glenevis, according to Mr. Mackenzie’s ‘History of the Camerons,’ was of very ancient standing. It was ‘generally at feud with Lochiel, and this feeling of antagonism came down even to modern times. Indeed, it has been maintained that the Glenevis family were originally not Camerons at all, but Macdonalds, who settled there under the Macdonalds of the Isles, before the Camerons had any hold on the district.’ They are also spoken of as Macsorlies. However this genealogical point may be settled, there was no love lost between Glenevis and Young Glengarry.
The Glenevis family, though not overtly engaged for the Cause, suffered from the brutalities of the victors. In spite of Glenevis’s abstinence from the Rising, his family was persecuted. Mrs. Archibald Cameron communicated to Bishop Forbes a lamentable story of how her sister, Glenevis’s wife, was stripped by Cumberland’s men, under Caroline Scott, and only permitted to keep a single petticoat. Her little son’s gold buttons and gold lace were cut off his coat, and the child was wounded by the knife.[91] This story, which has contemporary evidence from the lips of Lady Glenevis’s sister, Mrs. Archibald Cameron, has received the usual picturesque embroidery of Highland tradition. Dr. Stewart (‘Nether Lochaber’) got the tale from some ladies named Macdonald, in this fashion: the infuriated soldiery, finding none of the plate and jewels which Lady Glenevis had buried, observed a bulky object under her plaid. Slashing with swords at the plaid, to discover the supposed treasure, they wounded the lady’s baby, a child of a few months old. Mrs. Cameron’s less romantic version, if either, is correct.[92] The brothers of Glenevis were Allan, who fell at Culloden—felix opportunitate mortis; Angus of Dunan or Downan, in Rannoch; and that unhappy Samuel, called Crookshanks, whom Dr. Cameron, before his execution, denounced as ‘the basest of spies.’ He was in French service, but was drummed out, after Dr. Cameron’s death.
In October 1751, Colonel Crawfurd, commanding at Fort William, received from head-quarters information about Glenevis’s and Angus’s share in the treasure. Fassifern, Lochiel’s brother and representative, was also denounced. The Colonel took to the duties of policeman with a will, and the following letter from him describes his arrest of the accused:—
From Lieut.-Col. Crawfurd to Churchill
Cumberland Papers.
Fort William: Oct. 12, 1751.
... ‘When I received the Packet from the Express, I without hesitation affected a surprise and concern at receiving the news of our Cloaths being stranded, and pretended to consult him about the nearest way through the Hills to Aberdeen, near which Place I saw the misfortune had happened; this answerd extremely well in blinding our good Neighbours in the Town of Maryburgh,[93] who are for the greatest part ready enough to give Intelligence to the Country, of any Movements made by the Garrison. I then employed Captn. Jones to execute the warrant upon Fassifarn, and that he might be at no loss in not knowing the Man or the Country, I sent Mr. Gardiner along with him, whose zeal and readiness to assist you are no strangers to. They pretended to go in the German Boat on a fishing scheme, and turning up Lochiel, they soon got to his house, and secured him and every Thing of Paper Kind, bringing all to the Garrison.
‘As soon as they were set out for Fassifarn I pretended to take a walk out of the Garrison, to see if I coud make a purchase of Hay for my Horses, and taking Mr. Douglas, the Sheriff substitute, out with me,[94] by way of shewing me the Road and Country, I allowed only two more officers to accompany me, that we might give no suspicion of our Intentions, which would have been soon discovered had I allowed more or sent a Party.
‘However, notwithstanding these precautions, we were told at going to the House, that Glen Nevis was walk’d out with his Brother in Law, Dungallon, and still persisting that we shoud be glad to see Glen Nevis, to talk with him about his Hay, I prevailed on his wife to send a messenger for him into the Fields, which having done I took care, that no other Intelligence should go from the House, and then proceeded to search for his Papers: but I soon perceived that a Consciousness of Guilt, had made him secrete almost every Paper, and the hearing that Dungallon[95] had come to his House in the Middle of the preceeding Night, confirmed me in my suspicions that we should see no more of Glen Eves or Dungallon. I then ordered the Parties who were in readiness to go round the Hill, and come down upon the Head of the Glen, making a strict search, but it was to no purpose. You’ll please to observe that Dungallon, by way of blinding Douglas, had wrote him on the Wednesday, that it woud be some Days before he coud be in this part of the Country, and yet that very night, near the middle of it, did he come to Glen Eves’ house, and for what Intention may be easily guessed.
‘It is however some satisfaction that notwithstanding the pains they have been at, to conceal their treasonable practices, yet by their remissness I have found some Old Letters among Cloaths, which will greatly help to put their transactions in a proper light, and part of wch I have now enclosed for your perusal. [The letters enclosed are not in the Cumberland Papers.] The Letter I have marked No. 1. is a Letter from Glen Evis to his brother Angus Cameron, in the beginning of which you’ll see that Fassifarn and he are not in concert, and that Fassifarn complains of them both, as I imagine for having got too great a share of the money, and Glen Eves’ hint to Angus is, not to look upon Fassifarn as his friend.
‘In No. 2. You see Angus in his proper Colours appointing the Congress with Cluny (in December 1749); and it would not be amiss that the Name of the Place, Catlaick, should be well observed on that worthy Gentleman’s Account. You see that Loch Gary was in the Country, and on what accounts; likewise the errand of young Glengary. Whether the “Crookshanks” there aludes to Cluny as a Cant word for his having a wry Neck, or to a Brother of Glen Evis [Samuel, the spy] who is an officer in the French Service, and has crooked legs, I am not certain, but I believe it is to the Latter.
‘You will likewise observe by this letter that a correction is to be made in the key of your Intercepted Letter, that Angus is Brother to Glen Eves and not to Fassifarn. I daresay you are no stranger to the part that Angus has Acted from the beginning in relation to the great Money Affair, and that no one excepting Cluny knows more of it. I am fully persuaded that Mrs. Chalmers (Mrs. Archibald Cameron) is charged with orders upon his Bank stock, however unwilling he may be to part with it—’
On October 14, Glenevis tired of hiding, and surrendered himself to Crawfurd. No harm was found in Fassifern’s papers, which had been seized, and he, with Angus MacIan, a brother (or half-brother) of Lochgarry, was admitted to bail.
On October 22, Colonel Crawfurd wrote an account of Glenevis’s examination to Churchill, who forwarded it to the Duke of Newcastle. Now we must ask how Government, which in 1749-50 knew only the anonymous account of the treasure already quoted, was, in 1751, informed that Lochgarry, Young Glengarry, Cameron of Glenevis, and his brother Angus, had meddled with the spoil in December 1749? Readers of ‘Pickle the Spy’ will remember that Pickle (that is, ex hypothesi, Young Glengarry) dates his services as a paid informer from 1750-51. Young Glengarry, then, may have been himself the source of the intelligence about the plunder, and that, as we shall see, was the strong opinion of Glenevis.
In any case this is the earliest hint of suspicion against the honour of Young Glengarry which we have encountered. The eternal feud of Macdonnells and Camerons may have suggested the notion of Glengarry’s treachery to the mind of Glenevis; Cluny being out of the question, and he not knowing any one out of prison, except Young Glengarry, who had the necessary information. Glenevis’s brother, Angus, and Angus MacIan were in prison with himself, and Lochgarry was with his regiment in France.
Crawfurd says of Glenevis, and his suspicions:
‘He seems to think that all the Intelligence procured against him has been by means of Young Glengary: this you may believe I am at no great pains to desuade him from, as the greater Enmity gives the better chance of your coming at truth. He does not deny but that his brother, (Angus) Lochgary, Young Glengary, Angus Mc.Ian and he went into Badenoch in the winter 1749, after the Troops were gone from thence, with a view of meeting Clunie, but that while Lochgary, and young Glengary had their Interview at a sheiling opposite to Dalwhinnie, he was desired by Clunie to keep at the House of Dalwhinnie till sent for; and that neither Angus nor he coud be allowd to speak with him, tho he sent repeated messages by Clunie’s Piper, and a young Brother of Clunie’s. That he lay in the same Room with Young Glengary at Dalwhinnie, and early in the morning, the young Brother of Clunie brought Glengary a Bag which might contain two or three Hundred guineas, and counted them out to him, and that he understood Glengary got, in the whole, by that expedition about Two Thousand;[96] he farther says that the money remitted abroad by Cluny was carried away by his Brother in Law Mc.Pherson of Brechachie to Major Kennedy in the North of England....’ (So Gask also says.)
On October 31, Crawfurd again writes to Churchill. He had recommended on October 21, that Angus Cameron ‘should be allowed the quiet enjoyment of his treasure.’ He now remarks that Glenevis has been admitted to bail. ‘He says, in the Scotch phrase, that it is hard, to have both the skaith and the scorn’—that is, to be molested, though he has not got much of the French gold. ‘He blames his brother Angus for having acted a weak and foolish part in quitting (parting) with so great a share of the money that had fallen into his hands, which, he says, did not exceed £2,500, tho’ most people call it £3,000, and of which he knew his brother had paid £1,000 for the use of Lochiel soon after his going to France’ (1746). Next we find a repetition of Glenevis’s charges against Young Glengarry, as his betrayer. The accusation, too, that Young Glengarry forged King James’s name (alluded to by James in a letter to the Prince, March 17, 1750, as a story reported by Archy Cameron) is urged by Glenevis.
‘He (Glenevis) still continues full of resentment against Young Glengary, believing that he is the Author of all the information against him and his Brother Angus, not being able to account for our knowledge of the Badenoch meeting in any other way. He confirms what I wrote of the young Gentleman in my last, only that the £2,000 was not of Clunie’s money, but of what was left by the Secretary Murray in the hands of Mr. Mc.Douel his brother in Law, and that his credentials for receiving the money was from the old Pretender, but that he was sure they were forged.’ They certainly were forged.
One thing is to be observed about Glenevis’s doubts of Young Glengarry. In this year, 1751, and onwards, that hero was allowed by Government to live in London, in Beaufort Buildings, Strand, whence he communicated with Charles and James, as a strenuous Jacobite agent. His letters are printed by Browne from the Stuart MSS. Yet Government, if only from Glenevis’s evidence just given, knew that Glengarry was at least as guilty as Glenevis and his brother of the only crime charged against them on this occasion—namely, dealing with French gold that had been landed for the use of Prince Charles. Where the treason to King George came in, unless they were using the money for Jacobite purposes, or depriving his Majesty of spoils of war, or of treasure trove, does not appear. Yet the Camerons, Glenevis, Dunan, Fassifern, were all kept in durance at Port William, while Young Glengarry, implicated in their vague offence, was permitted to live, and even to make love, in London. To this point we return later (p. 207). Government had their own reasons for sparing Glengarry, while punishing his accomplices. These accomplices, again, averred that Glengarry had ‘peached’ upon them, as doubtless he had. The Camerons were released, but before very long, they and Fassifern were all imprisoned again in Edinburgh Castle, on a charge of treasonable dealings with the attainted. This was part of a plan of Government’s for ‘uprooting’ Fassifern, who represented the exiled Young Lochiel in the eyes of the Clan. The action of Government makes another chapter in the history of the sufferings after Culloden. Meanwhile the casks of louis d’or had done their task, and sown among the Clans the dragon’s teeth of distrust and of calumny. We cannot tell where the remainder of the gold went, though Cluny probably took what was left over to France, in 1754, as Charles commanded him to do, getting no more for his trouble, perhaps, than did poor Duncan Cameron in Strontian—‘not a shilling.’ As for Glenevis and his brother, they seem to have finally been fobbed off with the skaith and the scorn, and with very little else but the company of Colonel Crawfurd, so anxious to talk about their hay crop.
Such is an example of Highland life after Culloden. There are midnight meetings at lonely sheilings, there is digging and delving by hands that knew the claymore better than the spade. Letters are opened in the post office, secret murmurs fly about carrying charges of indefinite guilt, reported by unknown spies. No man can put confidence in another: each neighbour may have been bullied or bribed into babbling, and, when the laird sees the English colonel saunter along the avenue, Highland hospitality struggles in his heart with a natural inclination to drop out of a back window, and steal up the glen into the hills. A gentleman is apt to be less often on his estates than in Fort William prison or in Edinburgh Castle. No wonder that many joined the new Highland regiments when they were raised, and preferred King George’s pay to domiciliary visits from King George’s colonels!