Readers who have followed the adventures of Pickle the Spy may care to know what were the later fortunes of his inseparable companion, Young Glengarry. These fortunes were not answerable to the expectations of the Chief. The death of Henry Pelham, in March 1754, blighted, as we shall learn, the hopes which Glengarry, like Pickle, had founded on the promises of the Prime Minister, and left him a debtor to Government for claims on his lands. That Young Glengarry, on reaching his estates in November 1754, behaved with oppressive dishonesty to his smaller wadsetters, men holding portions of his land in pawn, we learn from the report of Colonel Trapaud, who, for some sixty years, was Governor of Fort Augustus. Early in 1755, we find Glengarry at Inverness, where he signs a tack, or lease, on January 24. A copy of an undated letter from Pickle represents Glengarry as ‘making a grand tour round several parts of the Highlands, and having concourse of people from several clans to wait of him.’ Glengarry himself speaks, in a letter to be quoted, about such a gathering. In 1755, we find General Bland objecting to Glengarry’s journeyings (when Pickle went to London), and on May 18, 1757, Captain John Macdonnell, of General Frazer’s regiment, departing for America, makes Glengarry his ‘factor and attorney,’ also his executor and general legatee.[114] This Captain Macdonnell was the younger Lochgarry, who accompanied Pickle in Edinburgh, in September 1754. ‘I hope, in case of accident, you’ll take care of Young Lochgary,’ writes Pickle.[115] Captain Macdonnell was later Colonel of the 76th, says General Stewart, and a previous owner of my copy of the General’s book notes in the margin that ‘he was wounded on the Heights of Abraham.’ Critics who think that Glengarry was personated by Pickle will observe that Young Lochgarry knew both gentlemen and could not be deceived. He was Pickle’s companion in Edinburgh when Pickle had just lost his father, a Highland chief. In 1757 he makes Glengarry (who had suffered a similar bereavement at the same time as Pickle), his factor and legatee. There is, of course, no reason to suppose that Young Lochgarry had ever heard of such a mysterious personage as Pickle.

We know nothing else of Glengarry’s life from 1755 to 1757, when his manuscript letter book throws a melancholy light on his closing years. There is a draft of a letter of 1757 and several drafts of 1758-1759, in a stitched folio wherein he entered the brouillons of his correspondence, not always in his own hand. On April 28, 1757, he wrote from London, probably from his rooms in Beaufort Buildings, Strand. He writes to his Edinburgh agent, Mr. Orme, W.S., on a variety of business. His action in settling his estates was much impeded by the retention of his charters and family papers by Sir Everard Falkner (or Faulkner), an English officer. ‘I have prevailed,’ he says, ‘upon Mr. Brado, how (who) is a principal man amongst the Jewes, to endeavour to recover my charters from Sir Everard.’ He expects to redeem all the wadsets on his lands, and to compound for a few of the most pressing of his father’s debts. But he must have been disappointed, for on his death, in 1761, more of his estate was in the hands of wadsetters than in his own. He must, however, have secured proof of ‘my propinquity to those of my predecessors left infeft,’ for he was formally inducted into his property before an Inverness jury in 1758. He mentions that, when he left Scotland, ‘the appearance of a famine threatened then the whole north,’ and ‘his friends were buying meal in Buchan.’ A wet summer and autumn always meant dearth in the Highlands. He alludes to some military oppression of one of his retainers: ‘the attempt is so flagrant that it would not pass unpunished amongst the hotentots.’ An unfinished draft appears to be addressed to General Frazer, son of Old Lovat. With him (if it is Frazer) he wants ‘to settle family differences à l’aimable.’ His correspondent is leaving Scotland after recruiting.

In June 1758, Glengarry was in correspondence with persons concerned in the affairs of his sister-in-law, widow of his brother Æneas, accidentally shot at Falkirk, in 1746. Æneas must have married very young: he was not twenty when he died, but he left a son and a daughter. For some unknown reason Glengarry was on ill terms with his brother’s widow, as will appear, and she would not permit her children to visit their uncle. To this business the following letter refers:

Burt says that ‘to have the English’ was the mark, among the Highlanders, of a gentleman’s children. Glengarry’s niece had as yet no English; her education had doubtless been neglected in the distresses consequent on the Rising. Probably, too, her mother was poor, her husband’s portion having been partly paid in cattle. These very cattle may have been among the 20,000 plundered by Cumberland’s men after Culloden, as a volunteer writes in his little book of ‘A Journey with the Army into Scotland’ (1747).

In a letter to Mr. Orme, of unknown date, Glengarry says that his sister-in-law ‘is infamous.’ On the same affair of the nephew he writes again:—

This undated letter is probably of 1758, though early in 1759 Glengarry had another very severe illness, from which it may be doubted if he ever entirely recovered. He writes to Mr. Orme, ‘I am drinking goat-whey and milk, that is my diet.... I shall be soon upon my leggs, and see you soon.’

The following is an important letter, undated in the draft, to the Chief of the Macleods:—

He therefore asks Macleod to ‘go conjunct with me in security for borrowing 400l.’—an invitation which Macleod declined. If Macleod will not help him, ‘I cannot be active in making aplication to be discharged of the claims the Government has against my estate, which I was once made sure of, but that vanished with those then at the helme.’

Such a promise, broken on the change of the hand at the helm, is several times referred to—by Pickle. He writes to the Duke of Newcastle, ‘he bitterly complains that nothing has been done for him, of what was promis’d him in the strongest terms, and which he believes had been strickly performed had your most worthy Brother (Henry Pelham) his great friend and Patron, survived till now.’[116]

Among the many odd coincidences between Pickle and Glengarry, this is not the least curious. Both the spy and the chief entertained great expectations from Government, and both confess that these hopes ‘vanished with those then at the helme,’ obviously, that is, with Henry Pelham’s death.

Glengarry goes on, in his letter to Macleod, ‘but to be explicit on this’ (namely, on his ‘being made sure’ of the abandonment of Government’s claims on his estate) ‘and the confusion my father and the late unluckie troubles left this estate would draw to tow great lenth, I will therefore reffer it till meeting.’ He ends with compliments ‘to Lady Macleod, and the two lovely little Misses.’

It would have been pleasant to hear Glengarry when, over a bottle, he was ‘explicit’ on the reasons for which Henry Pelham promised to abate the demands on his estate. Government knew that Glengarry was in the affair of Loch Arkaig. They arrested his accomplices in 1751, but left him free. Government knew, by their spies, that Glengarry frequented the Earl Marischal in Paris in 1752, and that, in 1753, he was perpetually running over, as a Jacobite agent, to Paris. But they then arrested Glenevis and Fassifern, while they promised to abate their claims on Glengarry’s estate! To explain all this to Macleod ‘over a magnum,’ as Glengarry elsewhere convivially remarks, could not be an easy task. His letter, in the draft, is undated, but on the same page is a letter to his solicitor, Mr. Orme, W.S., dated ‘Greenfield, 21 June, 1758.’ In this letter he speaks of that just cited as having been sent ‘by this very post.’ Macleod was in Edinburgh, but left before Glengarry’s appeal could reach him. Now, without the 400l. the Chief could not go to town. He therefore wrote again to Macleod, repeating his supplication, and being ‘explicit’ indeed as to his former patron in the Government, though not as to the reasons for his patronage.

‘An absolute discharge of the heavie claim the Government has against me I was once promised, but those that was then at the helme are no more.’

The only person of those ‘then at the helme’ who was now, in 1758, ‘no more’ was precisely Henry Pelham. He died in March 1754. Pickle was his ‘man.’ Pickle had received promises from him which were never fulfilled. So, oddly enough, had Glengarry! We know what Pickle’s services to Henry Pelham had been; we can guess at those of Glengarry. But after Henry Pelham’s death—in fact, at the very time of his death—Prince Charles’s party broke up for ever in England, and the Earl Marischal quarrelled irreconcilably with the Prince. The services of Pickle were therefore no longer needed. Pelham’s engagements with him were not kept, and the promise to Glengarry, by a coincidence, was also broken by the faithless English Government.

People who maintain that Glengarry was not Pickle may be asked to produce a theory which will account for the singular series of coincidences in the fortunes of the Chief and the spy. Even in this new coincidence alone, it will be interesting to see how they explain the circumstance that Glengarry, like Pickle, found his expectations blasted, and the promises made to him unfulfilled, in consequence of the death of Pickle’s employer, the brother of the Duke of Newcastle. What possible claim could a professed Jacobite agent, known for such to Government, as young Glengarry was, have on the good offices of the First Lord of the Treasury? It has been fondly suggested that Pickle was an unknown miscreant, personating Glengarry. That will be shown to be physically impossible; but, granting the hypothesis, why was Glengarry, no less than Pickle, favoured by Henry Pelham? No other person can be meant by the phrase ‘those at the helme,’ now ‘no more.’ Newcastle, indeed, was out of office in 1756, if ‘no more’ is explained as ‘out of office.’ But when Glengarry wrote to Macleod in 1758 Newcastle was again at the Treasury.

Macleod would not back Glengarry’s bill for 400l. His agents advised him against this measure. In February 1760 Pickle, who was anxious to go to London, asked the Duke of Newcastle to send him a bill, payable at sight, ‘for whatever little sum is judged proper for the present.’ The Duke’s answer, with the bill payable at sight for the little sum to defray Pickle’s travelling expenses, is to be directed by his Grace

Apparently, then, Pickle had some means of getting at Glengarry’s correspondence. The two gentlemen spell ‘Fort Augustus’ in the same singular way. On September 11, 1758, Glengarry wrote to Mr. Orme’s subordinate:—

‘Will you dow me the favour to order me the “Calledonian Mercury” regullarly every post to the care of Mr. William Fraser, merchant at forAugustus?’

The almost unvarying uniformity in bad spelling which marks Pickle and Glengarry will be commented on later.

The last years of Glengarry were disturbed by the legal results of an early piece of domestic slyness. His father, old Glengarry, commonly described as a weak, indolent man, married, first, a lady named Mackenzie, of the Hilton family. As his eldest son was not of age in January 1745 the marriage may have been in 1723 or 1724. After bearing a second son, Æneas, and apparently a daughter, Isobel, Lady Glengarry died (1727). In a deed of 1728 we find Old Glengarry already remarried to a daughter of Gordon of Glenbucket, who in 1724 was nearly murdered by evicted Macphersons. The stepmother of Young Glengarry was a managing woman, and ‘factrix’ of her husband’s estates. Now, in 1738 Old Glengarry pawned or ‘wadsetted’ his lands of Cullachy to his kinsman Lochgarry. The wadsetter paid 2,000 merks in money and gave bills for the rest. But in January 1745, when Alastair was in Scotland on furlough from his French regiment, Old Glengarry formally ‘disponed’ his estates to his eldest son. Doubtless this was done with an eye to the chances of a rising; in any case, the transaction was kept a secret from Glengarry’s wife and factrix.

Hence arose trouble, for the pawned estate of Cullachy had been redeemed. Lochgarry had been paid his 2,000 merks, or they were set off against another debt, but his bills were not returned to him. They lay in Lady Glengarry’s custody, and she could not be asked for them without revealing the secret transference of the whole property to Young Glengarry in 1745. He therefore gave Lochgarry a written promise that the bills should never be used against him. But Lochgarry being attainted, after 1745, and exiled, his possessions were forfeited to the Crown. Government therefore demanded, in 1758, that Glengarry should redeem from them Lochgarry’s wadset of Cullachy. He pleaded that it was already redeemed before 1745, but of this he could bring no evidence. He writes to his Agent on August 2, 1758, that he is not certain of the year of the wadset (really 1738), as he was not then in the kingdom; he was in France. ‘Lochgarry being more in debt to the familly than the [amount of the] mortgage, he delivered up his contract of wadsett, which I thought was all the seremony necessary; and the signature being tore from it was laid, according to custom, among the family papers, which were carried off, and are now in Sir Everard Falconer’s custody.’ He knows little of estate affairs, ‘as I was always abroad.’ His rental of 1744 was burned with the house of his factor, Donald McDonell, Younger of Scotus.

After the Rebellion, he did not meddle in matters of the property, till his father’s death (1754). ‘The tenants could hardly pay what would subsist him.’

‘Every tenant took possession of what farme he pleased.’ In 1746 ‘Mrs. Mc.Donell of Lochgary being destitute of all suport, having a numerous family of young children, came from Badenoch, took possession of Cullachy, and there lived untill she followed her Husband abroad.’

‘The lands of Cullachie was only set till lately from year to year, the tenants were frequently removed, I know of no written rentall, it is not customary ... Discharges were not formerly required, nor were they necssary.’

Glengarry explains all this to his Agent on January 6, 1759:—

‘When I got disposition to my Father’s estate I was then under age, at this time Lady Glengarry, how [who] then had so much to Say with her husband, the Disposition Grant was concealed from her, and as the Bill granted by Lochgarry was in her Custody, had they demanded it would have Discovered the Scheme in my favours, I granted my Obligatory to Lochgery that these Bills should never make against him.’

The sense can be puzzled out of the anacoloutha.

On February 3, 1759, he repeats his story:—

‘I will only observe that the reason of the bills not being cancelled or retired by Lockgerry, was that they were then in Lady Glengarry’s custody, and that the disposition of my Father’s estate in my favour was keept secret from her, which would have been discovered had Lochgerry demanded his bills, and this occasioned my giving him my obligation they should never make against him.’

The whole affair is a specimen of the informal manner in which Highland business was done. The frequency of ‘removals’ of tenants also throws doubt on the theory that Evictions were a novelty introduced by the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates. The anarchy after Culloden is shown by the squatting of tenants on whatever farms they chose to select. The Judges could not be induced to accept Glengarry’s account of the redemption of Cullachy, as he had no documentary evidence, and Cullachy appears, after the Chiefs death, among his mortgaged lands.[117]

The latest of the drafts in Glengarry’s Letter Book are of December 1758, January 1759. He appears much aggrieved by Colonel Trapaud, Governor of Fort Augustus, for the following cause: his ground-steward had been claimed, unjustly it seems, as a deserter from the army. A party of soldiers then acted in the manner described in the following draft, which has no date or address:—

‘The party in the dead of night was posted round my hutt, of which I was ignorant untill my servants were stopped from going from door to door. Alarmed at this, I suspected some straglers were come to break open some valts in the old Castle, which was formerly Done.’

The indignant chief drafts the following remonstrance to Colonel Trapaud:—

Trapaud’s behaviour, Glengarry writes, is ‘picking,’ and Pickle also spells pique ‘pick.’ The worst of it is that Glengarry ‘is lick to lose the use of his eyes,’ for at the time of this assault in his ‘hutt’ he was exceedingly ill. ‘I am now writting,’ he says to Colonel Lambert (January 6, 1759) ‘in this confus’d stile with only the fowrth part of one eye open, beeing near losing my life with a plague of a distemper, which, when recovered, seised my eyes.’ On January 15, 1759, he tells Captain Forbes that he can hardly see. On February 24, 1759, he expresses a civil surprise at Macleod’s refusal to back his bill for 400l. On February 3, he was still ‘hardly able to crall,’ but intended to go south; his sister Bell was going to Edinburgh. Macleod’s persistent refusal probably made the journey to London impossible, where Glengarry expected ‘to be off or on with the Government claim against my estate.’

There are no later drafts in the Letter Book, but Pickle, at all events, had the use of his eyes when he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle on February 19, 1760,[118] offering to raise a regiment. Glengarry, six weeks later, urged the same proposal through the Duke of Atholl.

On April 21, 1761, Glengarry made his will. He recommends his sister and sole executrix to seal up his cabinet, which is not to be opened ‘till the friends of the family meet.’ The Macdonnells of Greenfield, Leek, and Cullachy are then ‘to see all the political and useless letters among my papers burnt and destroyed, as the preservation of them can answer no purpose.’

Mr. Fraser Mackintosh, who publishes these extracts, adds, ‘why Glengarry who lived several months after the execution of his will, did not himself destroy the papers above alluded to, can be conjectured by people for themselves—all that need be said here is that their destruction was a pity, and the reason given unsatisfactory.’[119] His affairs ‘were found to be in a deplorable state.’ It may be conjectured that Glengarry clung to his papers, which must have been compromising enough. If his malady again affected his eyes, he might be unable to select the documents which it was wiser to destroy. Nor could he well endure to entrust ‘my sister Bell’ with the task of selection. She must not know her brother’s guilt. That secret must have oozed out, for it has left traces in tradition.[120]

Thus closed miserably a singular career. Impoverished, dying in a ‘hutt,’ beside the ruins of his feudal castle, distrusted, not even permitted to see his young nephew and heir, Glengarry reaped the harvest sown by his mysterious attendant, Pickle.