Of all the companions of Pickle, the most inseparable was Glengarry. Now, since the appearance of ‘Pickle the Spy,’ the author has been denounced before the Gaelic Society! Amidst ‘applause’ a Celtic gentleman, the news-sheets say, accused me of bringing a charge of an odious nature, without any proofs. Of course, if I have no proofs, nobody who thinks so need argue against what I, myself, regard as a chain of irrefragable circumstantial evidence. Nor am I aware that any arguments, beyond clamour, have been advanced, in favour of Glengarry’s innocence, except those which I shall presently examine. But first I must meet the charge of wresting facts to suit my ‘prepossessions.’

I had no prepossessions: how should I? If I knew so much as that there was any young Glengarry, before I read the Pickle letters, it was the limit of my information. These documents were pointed out to me, several years ago, by Sir E. Maunde Thompson, when I was in search of a manuscript to print for the Roxburghe Club. I began to read them, where they are to be found, scattered through five or six volumes of the Pelham Papers, in the British Museum. They are not all in sequence in one volume, nor in chronological order. On a first hasty examination, nothing appeared to indicate their author. I therefore had transcripts made of the Pickle Letters, and, after reading them, arranged them chronologically, being helped, where dates failed, by their allusions to public events: such as the death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the death of Henry Pelham, and so forth.

On a first glance at the originals, I had no hope of detecting the spy called Pickle. He might be a servant, secretary, or retainer of any Jacobite family. But indications as to his identity kept occurring, when once the papers were sorted, and the hunting instinct awoke in the reader, the fever of the chase. Pickle was apparently no ‘paltry vidette,’ for he was in close relations with the Prime Minister, Henry Pelham, and, later, with the Duke of Newcastle. Now a lacquey may, as Sir Charles Hanbury Williams’s dispatches show, report to an Ambassador, but a Prime Minister is less easy of access. Next, Pickle was, or had succeeded in persuading Pelham that he was, a person of the first importance in the Highlands. A critic has replied that, of course, a spy would pretend to be important, and, naturally, would be accepted as such. Ministers are scarcely so gullible. They do not accept a casual stranger’s identity without inquiry.

Presently it appeared, from a letter of the Court Trusty, or Secret Service man, Bruce,[121] who attended Pickle in Edinburgh, that he now, by his father’s death, was head of a great clan. Pickle’s father’s death occurred in September 1754. Now, on examination, it appeared that Old Glengarry, and no other Chief, died on September 1, 1754, in Edinburgh, where we find Pickle, with Young Lochgarry, in mid September. Pickle, writes Bruce, the Court Trusty (signing ‘Cromwell’) is adulated by military society in Edinburgh, where he stays for at least a month. He is to be observed, when he goes North, by the Governor of Fort Augustus, near which lie Glengarry’s lands. The Governor (Trapaud) writes unfavourably of the new Glengarry (December 13, 1754), and Pickle writes that he will, if not permitted the use of arms, prevent officers from shooting over his lands.

Pickle then is, or affects to be, a young Chief, just come, by his father’s death at Edinburgh, in September, into estates near Fort Augustus. He is also, or pretends to be, the chief of the Macdonnells, for he says (April 1754), ‘there could be no rising in Scotland without the Macdonnells: he is sure that he shall have the first notice of anything of the kind; and he is sure that the Young Pretender would do nothing without him.’ Finally (as stated on p. 209), writing to the Duke of Newcastle (Feb. 19, 1760), he speaks of Pickle in the third person, says that he is ready to raise a Highland regiment (which only a Chief could do), and ends, ‘Direction’ (of reply) ‘To Alexander Mackdonnell, of Glengary, by Foraugustus.’ Before I read that line, I had said to a Highland friend, ‘The traitor is a Macdonald.’ ‘Not Clanranald, I hope,’ he answered, and then Pickle’s last letter gave me the clue to Glengarry.

Thus there was, and could be, no ‘prepossession’ on my part. The circumstances all pointed direct to Glengarry, or to a personator of his, and to no one else. Thus it became a ‘working hypothesis’ that Pickle either was, or was personating, Glengarry: a Chief on terms of perfect intimacy with Prince Charles. He was, or affected to be, a Macdonnell, a Chief, with lands near Fort Augustus, to which he succeeded by his father’s death in September 1754, the date of the death of Old Glengarry.

Taking Pickle’s identity, natural or feigned, with Young Glengarry, as a working hypothesis, it became necessary to trace the career of that chief. At every stage, in every detail and date, after 1750, whatever was true of Young Glengarry was found to be true of Pickle. Every gleam of light that revealed the long forgotten incidents of Young Glengarry’s career, after 1750, fell also on the sinister features of Pickle. My hypothesis thus ‘colligated’ all the facts. New facts from MSS. came into view after my book was published; my hypothesis colligated these also. Everything fell into its place: everything coincided in the identification of Pickle with Young Glengarry.

To upset the evidence of a long series of coincidences, all pointing in the same direction, some hypothesis other than the hypothesis that Pickle is Glengarry must be advanced. Only one alternative suggestion has been ventured, as far as I am aware—namely, that Glengarry was personated throughout, for ten years, by some unknown ‘inward’ or close intimate, calling himself ‘Pickle.’ That hypothesis I shall prove to be not only morally but physically impossible, to demand a physical and moral miracle. We are left, then, with the equation, Pickle = Glengarry.[122]

To the a priori objection, that it is morally inconceivable that a Highland Chief, of character hitherto unsuspected, should sink so low, I need hardly reply. Too many Chiefs, from the death of Malcolm MacHeth, had been in the same galère. Young Glengarry, moreover, was suspected by several independent witnesses. We have also read the story of Barisdale, Glengarry’s cousin. A priori improbability there is none. We therefore proceed to examine the career of Young Glengarry, and to show how his comings and goings, his entrances and exits, the changes in his fortunes, his unconsidered private letters, his spelling, and his handwriting, all combine to identify him with the author of the Pickle Correspondence.

About the early years of Alastair Ruadh Macdonnell of Glengarry it is unnecessary to write at great length. Born apparently about 1725, for he was not of age in the beginning of 1745, Young Glengarry had one brother of the full blood, Æneas, accidentally shot at Falkirk in 1746. He had also a sister, Isobel. Before 1728 his mother died. Wodrow says that she was imprisoned by her husband on an islet, and died of hunger (1727). Young Glengarry now received a stepmother, a daughter of Gordon of Glenbucket. He does not seem to have been attached to this lady, who bore two sons to Old Glengarry. According to Murray of Broughton, Young Glengarry ‘was most barbarously used by his father and mother-in-law’ (p. 441). Alastair, at all events, was sent to France as early as 1738, where he was not likely to learn English orthography. His own, though pretty consistent in its blunders, is of the kind which Captain Burt found prevailing in the Highlands.

Alastair’s boyhood was probably unluxurious. Burt tells the following curious anecdote on this head. After 1715, the Castle of Invergarry, which had been adorned by the father of the Glengarry of Shirramuir, was gutted by the English soldiery. It was refurnished and made inhabitable by the agent of a Liverpool Company, who smelted iron in the district. Glengarry, meanwhile, ‘inhabited a miserable hut of turf, as he does to this day’ (1735?). To this manager, a Quaker, a number of gentlemen of the clan paid a visit. After receiving them hospitably, the Quaker observed that they would always be welcome in ‘my house.’

‘God d—n you, Sir, your house! I thought it had been Glengarry’s house.’ They then assaulted the Quaker, who was rescued by his workmen.[123] Alastair was better lodged in France, where, in 1743, he got a Company in the Royal Scots. In 1744 he was with Pickle’s friend, the exiled Earl Marischal, at Dunkirk, meaning to start with the futile French expedition from Gravelines.

How that expedition was ‘muddled away’ we have told in the essay on the Earl Marischal. At this time the Earl in France, and Murray of Broughton in Scotland, gravely distrusted James’s agents in France, Sempil and Balhaldie. Now Balhaldie was a connection of Lochiel, and was aware that Murray held him in suspicion. He, therefore, after the collapse of the expedition of 1744, sent over to Lochiel Young Glengarry, ‘freighted with heavy complaints’ against Murray. Lochiel next, in the spring of 1745, brought Murray and Young Glengarry together. The young Chief told Murray that Balhaldie accused him of bidding the Prince come to Scotland, with or without French assistance, and ‘seat himself on the throne, and leave the King at Rome’ (which was precisely what James desired and Charles repudiated).[124] Glengarry was therefore to warn the party against Murray. Murray told Glengarry the real facts—namely, that Balhaldie was too imaginative, and Glengarry seemed quite satisfied. Indeed, he produced a letter to the same effect as regards Balhaldie from Æneas Macdonald, the banker, and, later, the informer.

Glengarry and Murray presently met at that strange tavern gathering in Edinburgh, where, out of the company, Traquair, Lovat, Glengarry, Murray, Macleod, and Lochiel, Lochiel alone preserved his honour. Glengarry then went to the Highlands with letters for Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat and other gentlemen. In January 1745 Glengarry had induced his father secretly to dispone to him his lands, an action which became a serious trouble to him later. In May 1745 Murray sent him with despatches to the Prince in France, and with reasons why Charles should not come unless accompanied by a French force. Late in 1745 Young Glengarry was taken at sea, and lodged in the Tower.

Charles, meanwhile, was loyal enough to his imprisoned adherent. On November 4, 1746, Charles wrote to d’Argenson, ‘there are three prisoners in London, sir, in whom I take a warm interest. These are Sir Hector Maclean, Glengarry, and my secretary, Mr. Murray of Broughton. All three hold French commissions, the first was born at Calais.... I implore you, sir, to take every means to secure their exchange, and will regard it as a personal obligation.’

These gentlemen, however, were not naturalised French subjects, like Nicholas Wogan, who, after fighting when a boy at Preston in 1715, and after losing an arm at Fontenoy, took part in the campaign of 1745, and later saw Cumberland’s back at Laffeldt fight. Nicholas may have been exchanged, in 1746, as a French prisoner; for Murray and Glengarry this plea was unavailing. The Prince, however, did his best for both men, and ill they rewarded him.[125]

Glengarry told Bishop Forbes the same story in 1752. He was the bearer of a letter from the Chiefs, imploring the Prince not to come over without arms, money, and auxiliary forces.[126] But he could not find Charles, who was incognito, ‘lurking for a spring.’ Towards the end of 1745 Alastair was captured, as we saw, while conveying a piquet of the Royal Scots to join the Prince. He pined in the Tower, he says, for twenty-two months, and was then released. His fortunes were frowning. His father lay in Edinburgh Castle, a written information having been laid against him by a number of the gentlemen of his clan who had been out in the Rising. His lands and cattle had been destroyed and driven away by the English soldiery. Men squatted on what farm they chose, and could only pay rent enough to ‘subsist’ his father. The French Government made demands on him for money advanced to him while in the Tower, and stopped his pay. His grant from the Scots Fund (1,800 livres) was inadequate. The Prince could not procure for him a regiment. In these gloomy circumstances Alastair took a step which nobody can blame in itself. He attempted to reconcile himself to the English Government. The following letter is from a friend sincerely anxious for his success:—[127]

On September 20, 1748, Glengarry wrote from Amiens, telling James that he ‘waited an opportunity of going safely to Britain,’ on his private affairs. In December he asked James to procure for him the colonelcy vacant by the death of Lochiel. Young Lochiel, a boy, had been appointed. James could do nothing, and was too poor to send money. But, on Glengarry’s request, he dispatched ‘a duplicate of your grandfather’s warrant to be a peer’—Lord Macdonnell and Aros. Glengarry often signs ‘Mackdonell,’ without Christian name.[128]

On June 8, 1749, Glengarry explained his circumstances to Cardinal York and to Lismore, James’s agent at Versailles. ‘I shall be obliged to leave this country, if not relieved.’ Presently he went to London, with Leslie, a priest suspected of treachery by the Jacobites.[129] Leslie says, ‘Glengarry did not intend to appear publicly’ in London, ‘but to have advice of some counsellors about an act of the Privy Council against his returning to Great Britain.’ He was so poor that Leslie pledged for him, to Clanranald, a watch of Mrs. Murray’s of Broughton, wife of the notorious traitor. He had already ‘sold his sword and shoe-buckles.’ This must have been the very nadir of his fortunes, and four years later Campbell of Lochnell told Mrs. Archibald Cameron that now, in 1748 or 1749—the lady could not remember which—Glengarry offered his service, ‘in any shape they thought proper,’ to the English Government and Henry Pelham.[130] Without pausing to discuss the value of Mrs. Cameron’s evidence (given on January 25, 1754) we return to what is actually known of Glengarry in 1749. He had left London, probably little the better for his visit. On September 23, 1749, Glengarry wrote to Lismore from Boulogne. He has been in London, by advice of his friends, ‘ces Messieurs croyant que je ne ferai point de difficulté de me conformer aux intentions du Gouvernement, mais étant toujours determine de ne me point égare[r] des principes de mes Ancêtres, ne du devoir que je dois a mon Roy je [de?] me lui tenir, je puis retire [retirais?].’ If not relieved, he must return to England.[131] We know what his protestations of loyalty were worth. We do not know what occurred to Glengarry, in London, at this time.

Starving in July or August 1749, Glengarry appears (according to Æneas Macdonald, the banker) to ‘have plenty of cash’ at the end of the year (December). In October his father had been released from Edinburgh Castle, a point of no evidential importance, as several other gentlemen were also simultaneously set free. His estates were not forfeited, though remonstrances on this head were addressed to the English Government. They exist in the State Papers.

Before Æneas Macdonald met Glengarry in December, and earlier in the winter of 1749, Young Glengarry and Archy Cameron went North, and helped themselves to the Treasure of Cluny, the gold of Loch Arkaig.[132] On January 16, 1750, Glengarry reported his journey to Edgar, and accused Archibald Cameron of taking 6,000 louis d’or, and damping all hearts in the Highlands.[133] Cameron, on his side, appears to have accused Glengarry of obtaining the money by forging a letter from James. James, writing to Charles about Cameron’s charge, leaves a blank for the name (March 17, 1750). But Æneas Macdonald supplies the name of Young Glengarry (October 12, 1751).

That Young Glengarry was concerned in the looting of the treasure in winter, 1749, is certain from his own admission to Charles, corroborated by the confession of Cameron of Glenevis to Colonel Crawfurd, in October 1751. In that confession appears the earliest charge of treachery against Glengarry, who, Cameron vows, must have betrayed him (p. 153). At about the same time (November 30, 1751, February 14, 1752) Holker (of Ogilvie’s French Scots Regiment) and Blair anonymously warned young Edgar against Glengarry. He is a friend of Leslie, ‘an arrant rogue,’ and is ‘known to be in great intimacy with Murray’—of Broughton, the traitor, an acquaintance which is proved by Murray’s own ‘Memorials,’ already cited. Even if we discount Mrs. Cameron’s story, with those of Archy Cameron and Glenevis, as Camerons were at feud with Macdonnells, we have no reason to suspect hostile animus in Young Edgar, Blair and Holker.[134] They remark (February 14, 1752) that ‘Mr. Macdonald of Glengarrie says that he is charged with the affaires of his Majesty,’ in London.

Now, what was, in 1751 the real situation of Young Glengarry? He had left Rome in September 1750. In January 1751 he was in Paris, and wrote to Edgar, asking for money. He was confined to bed by a severe cold.[135] At an uncertain date, probably April 1751, he was residing publicly in London, for he thence announced to Charles his approaching marriage ‘with a lady of a very Honourable and loyall familie in England,’ after which he will repay his share of the Loch Arkaig gold. On this head he has satisfied James. He discloses the embezzlements of Cluny![136] On July 15, 1751, he wrote from London to James, and to Edgar, with political and loyal observations. Yet, in 1751, Glenevis believed, for very good reasons, that Glengarry was already an informer. If the suspicions of Glenevis were correct, Glengarry was an informer in 1751, the date assigned by Pickle to the beginning of his own service is about 1750.

Thus, in 1751, Glengarry was tolerated in London by the English Government, though still professing loyalty to James. As late as October 1754 he had not ‘qualified’ or taken the oaths. He must, therefore, have made his peace with England—otherwise! He had resigned his French commission. Moreover, while his accomplices in the Loch Arkaig affair, the Camerons, were arrested, Glengarry, the ‘unqualified,’ was allowed to go about London, and travel to France and Scotland, though the English Ministry knew that he was at least as guilty as Glenevis and Downan.

The inferences are obvious. Government had a motive for sparing Glengarry. Again, quite apart from the Pickle letters, Glengarry is assuredly betraying one or the other party. To James he poses as an active conspirator. To the English Government he poses as, at least, ‘one peaceable subject,’ for they allow him to live, and love, in London, and to go where he pleases. He was in Edinburgh in April, 1752, and dined with Bishop Forbes. Later, he seems to have gone to Lochaber, which Government knew, from an Informer.

We now come to the Elibank Plot, to kidnap the Royal Family. It flickered from November 1752 to summer, 1753. Glengarry, writing from Arras on April 5, 1753, gives Edgar, James’s secretary, a veiled account of the affair. ‘The day was fixt,’ on, or for, November 10, 1752, but the English shuffled, and did not act. ‘The concert in Novr. was,’ says Glengarry, ‘that I was to remain in London, as I had above four hundred Brave Highlanders ready at my call, and, after matters had broke out there to sett off directly for Scotland, as no raising would be made amongst the Clans without my presence.’[137] He then alludes to ‘my leate illness at Paris,’ which has left him ‘still very weake’—a phrase used at the same time by Pickle.

Now the Pickle letters begin on November 2, 1752, and Pickle speaks of himself, to his English employers, in precisely the same terms as Glengarry uses about himself when writing to Edgar. Pickle says that, among his Jacobite friends, he explains his supplies of English money as remittances from ‘Baron Kenady.’ Now, in Lord Advocate Craigie’s letters of 1745,[138] we read ‘in most things Young Glengarry is advised and directed by Baron Kennedy,’ a Baron of the Scottish Exchequer. Thus, if Pickle is Glengarry, he would naturally represent his chief adviser, Baron Kennedy, as the source of his supplies. He announces (Boulogne, November 2, 1752) ‘you’l soon hear of a hurly burly,’ and he must make a long journey, first to Paris, then South, as he writes on November 4 to Henry Pelham.[139] The hurly burly is the Elibank Plot. ‘I will see my friend’ (Henry Pelham) ‘or that can happen.’ To Pelham he says, ‘I will lay before you in person all I can learn.’ Pelham knew Pickle personally, and could not be deceived as to his identity, as to his being a Chief, as he represented himself. In December 1752 Pickle, in London, informed against Archibald Cameron and Lochgarry, whom Charles had sent to Scotland, also against Fassifern and Glenevegh (Glenevis) as agents for Charles with the Southern Jacobites. Pickle has seen Charles, and, in town, Lord Elibank, who ‘surprised me to the greatest degree by telling me that all was put off for some time.’ He has promised Charles ‘to write nothing to Rome,’ which Glengarry actually did, in April 1753. In later letters to his English employers, Pickle speaks much of a severe illness, at Paris, which ‘nearly tripped up his hiells,’ and left him, like Glengarry at the same date, ‘very weake.’ He had caught a cold, with a relapse at the masked ball of the Lundi Gras, where he met the Prince. ‘They now believe Pickle could have a number of Highlanders even in London to follow him.’ Nothing can be transacted in the Highlands without his knowledge, as his Clan must begin the play.’[140] The scheme is a night attack on the Palace of St. James’s. Pickle has often discussed it with his friend, the Earl Marischal, Frederick’s ambassador to the French Court.[141]

Here, then, are the following points shared in common by Pickle and Glengarry. (1.) Both in November 1752 are engaged in a deep Jacobite Plot. (2.) Both are expected to lead a force of Highlanders, ‘even in London.’ (3.) No rising can take place among the Clans without each of them. (4.) Both are in correspondence with Rome. (5.) Both suffer from a severe illness at the same time, and are left very ‘weake’. (6.) Both are friends of Baron Kennedy. (7.) Both frequently visit the Earl Marischal in Paris.

That Glengarry visited the Earl in 1753 I cannot prove by independent evidence. But I can show, by independent evidence, that he, as well as (by his own statement) Pickle, did so at an approximate date. Glengarry had known the Earl since 1744. Here is another spy’s undated testimony (1752-1754) to Glengarry’s familiarity with the Earl Marischal in Paris, about this date, when Pickle haunts the old exile.[142]

‘Macdonald of Glengarry, goes by the first of these names, lives at a Baigneur’s in the Rue Guenegaud, and keeps one Servant out of Livery, and two in Livery. When he first came to Paris he kept a Carosse de Remise by the month, but now only hires one occasionally to make his visits, which are chiefly to

‘And never fails going to Lord Marshal, whose Coach is often lent him when he has none of his own.

‘N.B.—Tuesday 9th. Janry. Macdonald waited in his own Coach from ten o’clock at night till past eleven, in the Rue Dauphine, when a Person took him up in a Chariot, who, by the description, is believed to be Lord Marshal. It is about that time that the Pretender’s Son is suppos’d to have been in Paris.’

Thus Glengarry undeniably frequented the old Earl Marischal, no less than Pickle did, and the English Government knew it. Yet they did not arrest him, as they arrested Glenevis, Downan, Fassifern, Archy Cameron, and tried to arrest Lochgarry, on all of whom Pickle had informed. Moreover Glengarry, in Paris, is not starving, but has a servant out of livery, and two in livery, keeps or hires a carriage, or uses that of the Earl Marischal.

I respectfully submit that these seven common notes of Pickle and of Glengarry cannot possibly be explained, except on one of two hypotheses. Either Pickle is Glengarry, or he is audaciously personating Glengarry, not only by letter, but bodily. For he promises to visit Henry Pelham ‘in person,’ and Henry Pelham, with the English officials and police, cannot but have known the aspect of Glengarry, a man who, for twenty-two months, was an important state prisoner in the Tower, and had, later, lived openly in London, though, as we shall see, under surveillance.

That point I prove thus: on August 12, 1753, Charles, in hiding at Liège, and elsewhere in the Netherlands, desired, as he notes in a draft, an interview ‘with G.’[143] In August, or September, 1753, Pickle sent in accounts of his interview with Charles, in whose company he had travelled from Ternan to Paris. The Prince asked Pickle to allow arms to be landed on his estate, which Pickle refused, ‘nobody knowing as yet in what manner the forfeited estates would be settled.’[144] Pickle himself is now in England.

Now we know, from a report in the State Papers, that, in 1753, the English Government received intelligence from a spy on Glengarry. ‘Mr. McDonald of Glengarry has been several times in France within these three weeks, and is suspected to be an agent for the Young Pretender, who, it is believed, has been lately in Paris, incog. N.B.—The above-mentioned Mr. McDonald lodges at the second House on the right hand side of the way in Beaufort Buildings, in the Strand, and is a young, fair, full-made man.’[145]

Thus, just when Charles wishes to meet ‘G,’ Glengarry is coming and going from France to England, suspected by a spy to be a Jacobite agent, while Pickle is reporting to the English Government on his own simultaneous journeys and interviews with the Prince. Yet the English Government, though independently informed of Glengarry’s movements, and his familiarity with the Earl Marischal (whom they know to be intriguing for the Jacobites with Prussia), arrest Clanranald, arrest Fassifern, but never touch Glengarry!

This is not the limit of their favours. Far from incommoding Glengarry, Henry Pelham promises that Government will remit all their large claims on his estate. For this, as least, we have Glengarry’s written word, as has been shown already in ‘The Last Days of Glengarry.’[146]

The Celtic believers in Glengarry’s innocence may explain why, when Pelham was arresting Jacobites all over Scotland, in 1753, he not only allowed Glengarry, who had not ‘qualified,’ and against whom he had copious information, to go free, but also ‘promised an absolute discharge of the heavie claims the Government has against me.’ He made similar promises to Pickle, who complains of their non-fulfilment. And, on the hypothesis of Glengarry’s guilt, his motive is now transparent. In addition to payments of ready money, sorely needed, his estates escaped forfeiture, and he was promised remission of the fines. These facts, of course, were unknown before I had access to Glengarry’s MS. Letter Book. My hypothesis colligates the new facts as well as the old, which is the note of a good working hypothesis.

To the seven common points between Pickle and Glengarry, in 1752-53, we now add an eighth: both have been disappointed by Henry Pelham’s promises, broken after his death. Such coincidences cannot be fortuitous, and Glengarry’s friends must explain why he, a known Jacobite agent, was so endeared to Henry Pelham.

At this time, the autumn of 1753, James Mohr Macgregor made his absurd ‘revelations,’ about an Irish plot to invade Scotland. He, his chief, Balhaldie, and a Mr. Trant, were particularly concerned. Government had also news, from Pickle, Count Kaunitz, and other sources, of Frederick’s tampering with the Jacobites, through the Earl Marischal, the friend both of Pickle and of Glengarry. It would have been natural to arrest and examine Glengarry, who, as Government knew, was a familiar friend of the Earl Marischal. In place of doing that—they consulted Pickle! The Duke of Newcastle wrote a paper of Memoranda, proving his agitation, and making a note that Henry Pelham should collogue with ‘the person from whom he sometimes receives information.’[147] That person was Pickle.

Here are Pickle’s answers!

This report damaged poor James Mohr; he was dismissed, and, in a few months, died a destitute exile. General Stewart of Garth claims our sympathy for James, who ‘rejected an employment which he considered dishonourable in itself, and detrimental to the good of his country.’[148] Alas! his employers rejected James!

We now reach the crucial point of the hypothesis that Pickle personated Glengarry. ‘Whoever Pickle was, it was clearly his intention to personate Glengarry,’ says Mr. A. H. Millar.[149] Now on this point, I need scarcely recapitulate what is said at the beginning of this chapter. On September 14, 1754, we find the bereaved Pickle, an orphan now, but also a Chief, by his father’s death, in Edinburgh with Young Lochgarry, who cannot but have known Young Glengarry, his Chief. For this presence of the orphan in Edinburgh, we have not only his written word, but that of Bruce (‘Cromwell’), the ‘Court Trusty’ who accompanied him. We have his testimony to Pickle’s enhanced pride. He it is who tells us how ‘the Army people make up to Pickle, thinking to make something of him,’ how General Bland (unconscious of guile) suspects him, as a friend of Pickle’s; how Pickle is going North, to his estates, and how the Governor of Fort Augustus, hard by, is ‘to try his hand upon Pickle.’[150]

All this Pickle himself confirms, in two letters of one of which only the briefest analysis has hitherto been given.[151] But these dull confirmatory letters may be relegated to an appendix. Briefly, we learn from his letters how Pickle has hurried to Edinburgh, for some reason of his own, on the news of a death which coincides with that of Old Glengarry. Coincidently, too, Pickle’s family affairs are in great disorder. He writes again from Edinburgh (October 10, 1754), and this letter is in his feigned hand.[152] In his second epistle from Edinburgh Pickle confirms all that Bruce, the Court Trusty, has said about his approaching journey North, whence Colonel Trapaud, Governor of Fort Augustus, gives a bad account of Glengarry as swindling his wadsetters.[153] Pickle also confirms Bruce’s account of the jealousy of General Bland.

That Young Glengarry, as well as Pickle, was a week’s distance from town after his father’s death (September 1, 1754) I now confirm by the following letter to himself, where he is supposed to be interested in Old Lochgarry. It is probably from the Major Macdonald who, while he was a prisoner in 1747, persuaded him to conform to the English Government.

Thus, all Pickle’s movements at this solemn hour of Old Glengarry’s decease tally with those of Young Glengarry. Pickle is adulated by the army people, and goes North to his estates near Fort Augustus, whence the Governor reports on—Glengarry.

Can Pickle, then, while Glengarry is in Scotland, after his father’s death, be posing in Edinburgh as himself a young, newly orphaned chief, going to his lands near Fort Augustus; personating Glengarry, in fact—for no other Chief had just lost his father?

Mr. Millar says: ‘Whoever Pickle was, it was clearly his intention to personate Glengarry.... It is hardly possible to imagine that an impostor could have deceived the Edinburgh folks, to whom Glengarry must have been well known,’ and whom, hurrying to his father’s funeral, and to arrange his affairs, he must just have visited, for Old Glengarry died in Edinburgh. I venture to call such an impersonation a physical impossibility, prolonged, as it was, for some six weeks. It is physically impossible that, both in London and Edinburgh, many men who knew Young Glengarry should have supposed another person—Pickle—to be that hero. Yet, if the personation was played off, it was not discovered, then or later; for Pickle continued to be the informer, and to be the shadow of Glengarry. As soon as it is admitted that Pickle is feigning to be Glengarry, the case for that Chief’s innocence is given up. The personation, among people who knew Glengarry intimately well, is impossible.

Pickle’s day of usefulness had gone by. On April 24, 1755, an official gave in a report of a conversation with the Chief, ‘the head of a great Clan of his name,’ who wanted money.[155] In April 1756 Pickle again came to London, and dunned the Duke of Newcastle: ‘not the smalest article has been perform’d, of what was expected and at first promised. I am certain my first friend’ (Pelham) ‘mentioned me to the King....’[156] In an undated letter he speaks of being on an ‘utstation’ in the Highlands, and talks of Glengarry in the third person.[157] He tells of Glengarry’s greatness, of Jacobite overtures to him, and repeats his usual fond demands.

In 1758, 1759, we know, from his own letters, that Glengarry was eager to go to London, to make terms about the fines on his estate. But Macleod would not back his bill for 400l. On February 19, 1760, Pickle wrote the last letter to Newcastle extant in the Pelham Papers. He speaks of Pickle in the third person, but he writes in Pickle’s hand. Pickle wants to give information; Pickle wishes to raise a regiment (and so did Glengarry), if he gets ‘the Rank of full Colonel, the nomenation of his Officers, and suitable levie money:’ also ‘a bill payable at sight’ for travelling expenses. He ends, ‘Mack mention of Pickle. His Majesty will remember Mr. Pelham did, upon former affairs of great consequence. Direction—To Alexander Mackdonell of Glengary, by Foraugustus.’[158]

A reply from Newcastle directed to Glengarry would be opened by Glengarry, and then, if Glengarry did not write Pickle’s epistle of February 19, 1760, where is Pickle? Mr. Millar suggests that, ‘if Pickle were a traitor in Glengarry’s family, he must have been in a position to intercept the reply to this letter, or the whole plot would have been exposed.’ This is a romantic hypothesis. There is no trace of any gentleman (such as Pickle was) eternally in attendance on Glengarry. And why did the hypothetical traitor offer to raise a regiment, which only Glengarry could do? There is no conceivable motive for writing such a letter on the part of any one but Glengarry, who was terribly pressed for money, and could raise a regiment. Besides, the physical impossibility of Pickle’s supposed personation has already been demonstrated. Glengarry, who had long been in very bad health, died on December 23, 1761. The nature of his will has been explained.

The internal evidence of identity in the authorship of Pickle’s and Glengarry’s letters remains to be considered. Both write the same shambling style. In an age of bad spelling both have a long list of blunders in common. I give a few:—

Of these, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14 occur, sporadically, in other Scotch writers of the age, as in the Gask Correspondence. Pickle combines them all. But I have not elsewhere met 7, 8, 9, 10, 15. ‘How’ for ‘who’ (11) I have met in Macleod of Raasay’s letters in the ‘Lyon in Mourning,’ and in one letter of 1725, while ‘howse’ for ‘whose’ occurs in a Scotch epistle in the Cumberland MSS. The accumulation of these fifteen mis-spellings is the common note of the orthography of Pickle and of Glengarry. It constitutes a note of identity of authorship.

But, believers in personation may say, ‘Pickle had carefully studied and adroitly copied Glengarry’s orthography, as, ex hypothesi, he wished to pass for that Chief.’

Then why did he not also imitate Glengarry’s handwriting?

Glengarry wrote two hands; one is a sprawling scrawl, sloped much to the right, in his rough drafts of letters, preserved in his Letter Book; the other is merely the same hand written smaller, closer, not so sloped, in his letters, for example, to James and Edgar. The Windsor Letters, the neater and more careful, I could not compare with those of Pickle at the British Museum. But I took Glengarry’s Letter Book, or folio of scrawled drafts, thither, and Mr. Millar (author of the criticism in the Scottish Review) kindly compared the two sets of documents, he having much experience in such studies. I append what is essential in his report, contributed to the Dundee Advertiser of April 28, 1897.