But as 1752 wore on, it became abundantly clear that it was one thing to devise a complex and intellectually satisfying intrigue on paper; it was quite another to carry it out according to the plan. When it came to serious business, it transpired that there was no such Irish force as had been hinted at. Another part of the plot called for 8,000 swords to be delivered to Ogilvy’s regiment at Dunkirk. These would then be put ashore at the Firth of Forth.70 But such an enterprise required the co-operation of both France and Russia. Now not only would Frederick not give his assent to this until he had finally decided with France what their real policy towards England was to be; even more importantly, the prince still refused to work with France.
The refusal to work with the French was only one of several self-destructive acts by the prince during 1752 that eventually precipitated the Elibank plot into débâcle. Another was his abrupt dismissal of Mittie junior. Apparently the reason for this was that the prince’s anti-French sentiments had now hardened into phobia. Since the Elibank plot was supposed to be a purely English Protestant affair, Charles decided that none but Englishmen and women should be involved in it,71 ignoring the fact that Mittie was already in the scheme up to his neck.
With characteristic self-laceration, the prince timed his hot-tempered sacking of Mittie for the very month when Lady Primrose was on the Continent to finalise the English end of the plot.72 Goring and the prince’s other advisers were aghast. Lady Primrose had always worked through Mittie, and now she was to be told that the man to whom she had confided all her secrets, and who knew enough to send the entire English Jacobite party to the gallows, had been dismissed from the prince’s service!73
Even more amazingly, in the very month of Lady Primrose’s visit to Paris (May 1752), the prince decided to resume relations with Clementina Walkinshaw, his mistress from the days of early 1746. Since the English Jacobites suspected her of being a Hanoverian spy, they were dismayed when the prince refused to listen to their entreaties to send her away.74 Security for the entire operation now seemed jeopardised.
The English Jacobites became confirmed in their suspicions when obvious intelligence leaks made it clear that there was a spy in their midst. The ‘mole’ was not Clementina but Pelham’s agent ‘Pickle’.75 Yet the coincidence that Pickle’s information started to become really effective immediately after Clementina joined the prince was just too great for the English Jacobites to form any other conclusion: in their view, Charles Edward was harbouring a spy and blindly refusing to do anything about this obvious fact.
It was Pickle himself who occasioned the fourth, and in some ways worst, of the prince’s self-destructive actions in 1752. As early as May, the faithful John Holker had identified Young Glengarry as ‘Pickle’ and informed the prince accordingly.76 Charles Edward simply refused to believe the evidence. As far as he was concerned, Glengarry had passed the only test that mattered: he had been to Rome but breathed not a word to James about the Elibank plot. There was no need to halt the planning. The scheme would proceed. The time to strike was at the end of October or beginning of November, when George II returned from Windsor to St James’s Palace. A firm date of 10 November 1752 was agreed for the operation.77
The frenzied pace of activity can be appreciated from the many meetings in Ghent between the prince and English agents, and with MacNamara, Mittie’s replacement, in Brussels.78 Goring, increasingly Marischal’s creature, was aware of all this, mentally shaking his head over the lack of clarity in the arrangements.79
Someone else who had passed the prince’s ‘ordeal by James’ was the marquise de Mézières.80 Following Lady Primrose’s excursion to the Continent, la Mézières went to England to co-ordinate the final stages of the plot.81 English suspicions were immediately aroused when she entered the country without an official passport.82 The Pelhams already knew from Pickle that something momentous was afoot. The arrival of this inveterate but, at seventy, still deadly dangerous female intriguer put them on their mettle.
Hard on her heels came the principal architect of the project, Murray of Elibank. Murray entered England secretly in October 1752, hoping to improve on his previous meagre military reputation as a mere Hanoverian lieutenant by leading the assault on St James’s and the Tower.83 What he found appalled him. The promised diversionary raid evaporated once it was realised that its personnel were phantoms: there were neither Irish ready in Dublin nor Swedes champing at the bit in Gothenburg. Consequently the English Jacobites found themselves dangerously exposed. With a supremely perilous operation imminent, they suddenly realised that they had somehow been manoeuvred into the position all English Jacobites since 1688 had most dreaded: raising the Stuart standard when unsupported by foreign allies. In addition, the prince’s wildly erratic behaviour was now causing deep concern. The much-vaunted conversion to Protestantism had backfired badly. It was felt widely, and correctly, that this was the merest opportunism. It confirmed the worst fears of those who thought Charles Edward had no genuine religious feeling but was an undeclared freethinker.84
The prince’s stubborn refusal to send Clementina Walkinshaw away was a particular bone of contention for Lady Primrose, Dr King and the others. Their morale was badly affected. There were even some who suspected that they were already betrayed and that the Pelhams were lying in wait for them. All things considered, they lacked the stomach for the coming perilous enterprise. The contagion of defeatism infected Murray. He lost his nerve and announced a postponement of the operation;85 10 November 1752 would not, after all, be a red-letter day in the Jacobite calendar. Murray returned to Paris to give Charles Edward the bad news.
Ironically, the prince had already decided that the English Jacobites could not be left out on a limb. The question was where their support should come from. It is possible that the prince could have got a diversionary expedition launched from Paris, if only on an ‘unofficial’ basis using ‘volunteers’. He had the powerful support of the duc de Richelieu, the comte d’Argenson and the financier Paris de Monmartel.86 The regiments of the Irish brigade, especially Ogilvy’s and Clare’s, were mentioned as likely participants in any such diversion. But still the prince burned with unquenchable indignation against France. Until Louis XV and his ministers had apologised to him for the humiliating arrest in December 1748, he would have no dealings with them. Since the Irish, Swedes and Prussians had all turned out to be phantoms, that left just one possibility: the Highlands. This was precisely the direction the latest envoy from the clans (Ranald MacDonald, brother of Kinlochmoidart) was urging on him during their conversations in Paris.87
Accordingly, in the late summer of 1752 the prince obtained a congé for Dr Archibald Cameron and Lochgarry, releasing them from their regimental duties with Lochiel’s at Douai. Then he summoned them to meet him at Menin, near Lille.88 He ordered the two veterans of the ’45 to go to Scotland immediately and prepare for a rising which would be timed to break out just before the London coup. Cameron and Lochgarry were to assure the Highlanders that both Marischal and his brother marshal Keith were ready to sail for Scotland at a moment’s notice and that Prussia would send help.89
The prince has sometimes been accused of sending his two emissaries into the jaws of death on the basis of a blatant lie. The truth is more complex. At best the prince can be faulted for ‘expedient exaggeration’. Frederick of Prussia had not finally made up his mind about the Jacobites. And although Marischal later complained bitterly about the misrepresentation of his position, he had only himself to blame. He was asked whether, in the event of a coup in London, the Highlanders should march to help the prince. Marischal jesuitically answered yes, meaning, as he later explained, that in such a hypothetical case, which was the merest fantasy, he would have said yes to the landing in England of 10,000 Janissaries or 6,000 Spahis.90
Marischal’s donnish humour did nothing to help the cause. Cameron and Lochgarry went to Scotland convinced that they had the powerful support of the Keith brothers and, through them, of Frederick the Great
. The English Jacobites’ spirits revived. If there was a simultaneous rising in the Highlands, their coup would not be an isolated phenomenon. Even the Irish project was resuscitated. Although the existence of the mythical 14,000 Celts had still not been established, it was proposed to send 11,000 of them to north Wales and the other 3,000 to Campbelltown in Argyllshire, where they would be joined by the clans.91
In Scotland Lochgarry and Archie Cameron met Fassifern at Crieff.92 Fassifern was to be the channel to Cluny MacPherson, still skulking in his cage on Ben Alder. Then they proceeded to Lochaber. They found morale among the clans high. Of particular encouragement was the news that the prince had converted to Protestantism and that help from the Keiths and the Prussians was on its way. Cluny promised that he could lay his hands on 5,000 ‘stand’ of arms in the glens.93 All seemed set fair.
Then the blow fell. Pickle’s accurate information enabled Henry Pelham to close the trap. In March 1753 Archie Cameron was captured near Inversnaid by a redcoat patrol, acting on information from the highest sources.94 Lochgarry narrowly escaped being taken with Cameron.95 The prisoner was taken to Edinburgh, then on to London, and cross-examined closely and repeatedly. Stalling valiantly, Dr Cameron gave nothing away. He claimed to be ignorant of the prince’s 1751 visit to Berlin, to know nothing of Lord George Murray’s whereabouts, and not to have seen Marischal since 1716.96
In April he was condemned to death on the original attainder for having been out in the ’45.97 The sentence provoked a general outcry and was universally condemned for its barbarity.98 But Pelham preferred a reputation for draconian severity to trying Cameron on fresh charges, as this would have meant blowing the cover of his priceless source Pickle.
For it was Pickle more than anyone who had dealt the coup de grâce to the Elibank plot. In a remarkably short space of time Pickle wormed his way to the very centre of the conspiracy. Shortly after Charles Edward gave his instructions to Cameron and Lochgarry at Menin for the rising in Scotland, Pickle, still posing as a loyal Jacobite, ran him to earth in Veurne (then Furnes).99 Charles Edward, never thinking that a clan chief could be a traitor, revealed the plot in detail, and Murray of Elibank’s leading role in it. It is clear that the decision to postpone the coup on 10 November 1752 was a lucky one for the English Jacobites. Armed with Pickle’s intelligence, the Pelhams were just waiting for them to reveal themselves. Even when foiled of their principal prey on that occasion, they learned enough from Pickle to be able to trap Dr Cameron in the Highlands.
The arrest and execution of Archie Cameron put an end to all thoughts of a coup in London, no doubt to the relief of many English ‘bottle Jacobites’. But the ferment aroused in the Highlands could not so easily be dampened down. In May 1753 Colin Campbell of Glenure, a powerful Whig magnate, was shot dead from behind a bush by Allan Breck Stewart of the Appin Stewarts.100 Although narrowly interpreted at the time as a warning to non-Jacobites of the consequences of taking over the forfeited estates, the assassination can also be seen as an act of desperation by people frustrated almost to madness by the failure of the prince’s great scheme for a Second Coming.
By a supreme irony, at the very time the extended Elibank conspiracy was faltering, Frederick the Great suddenly decided to take it seriously. It was Marischal who made the suggestion. Lukewarm and even privately hostile to the conspiracy so far, because it seemed to conflict with Prussian interests (which with Marischal always took precedence over those of the Stuarts), the Earl now saw a chance to use the Jacobites as a lever. Frederick was locked in dispute with England over a number of issues: debts in Silesia, ill-treatment of his merchant navy, the election of the ‘king of the Romans’. Since Frederick could get no satisfaction through normal diplomacy, Marischal suggested playing the Jacobite card. He further proposed sending Dawkins, the explorer of Palmyra, to Berlin to firm up the scheme.101
Frederick asked for further details of the Elibank plot. It is clear from Marischal’s letters to the king that he was very well informed. It is also clear that even in March 1753 Dr King and the earl of Westmoreland were still strongly committed to the conspiracy. Marischal’s comment on the prince, however, is almost predictable:
The Prince knows less of the affair than Dawkins does. The Prince’s position, coupled with an intrepidity which never lets him have any doubts when he wants something, causes others to form projects for him, which he is always ready to execute.102
Although thinking the plot crude, Frederick agreed to stir the pot. He advised the Jacobites to try to suborn the army and navy. In June 1753 he saw Dawkins in Berlin.103 While continuing to think the plans for a coup crackbrained, he encouraged the conspirators to continue. He wrote complacently to his envoy in London that he had a trick up his sleeve which the London government would never guess.104
But the king of Prussia had left it too late. The execution of Archie Cameron in June was the last chapter in the ill-fated saga. Frederick was left to ponder other avenues for getting his way with England. Students of his methods were not surprised, however, to find him three years later a firm ally of England after the notorious ‘renversement des alliances’. It was a poor judge who put his trust in this particular prince, as Charles Edward had been shrewd enough to see.
The failure of the Elibank plot meant the end of the Jacobite movement as a credible political force. The prince’s own public career effectively came to an end the following year after his violent breach with Marischal, Goring and the English Jacobites.
How to account for such a sensational débâcle? The weakness of the Elibank plot was a significant pointer to the desperate straits the Jacobite party found itself in by the early 1750s. But a plot that was unlikely to succeed was converted into one that was certain to fail by a number of different factors.
The Prussian attitude is especially revealing. Recent scholarly work has indicated that religious motives in the eighteenth century have been unduly neglected. In 1743–4 it was Frederick who was especially alarmed by the French attempts to restore the Catholic Stuarts. In Frederick’s actions during 1751–3 we surely see an echo of this Protestant solidarity. At all points the natural interests of Prussia indicated an alliance with the Jacobites. Quite apart from Frederick’s own maritime and financial quarrels with the English, London had drawn closer to the Empire since Aix-la-Chapelle. The ancient British ally, Holland, was Prussia’s trading rival. Prussian designs eastwards were blocked by the formidable power of Russia. In return Prussia guaranteed the independence of Sweden against the Czarina. Frederick’s only stable allies were Denmark and Sweden. The rapprochement with France was unreliable. The Austrians could, if they chose, always win over France by ceding her the Austrian Netherlands. In such a precarious international context, Prussian support for the Jacobites made a lot of sense.105
But still Frederick was reluctant. He could, it is true, have solved the problem at a stroke by occupying Hanover; this, however, would have involved him in a general European war. It is significant that he discarded this option even in 1753, when British intransigence seemed to leave him no way out of a diplomatic impasse. We are left, then, with a certain puzzle as to why he was reluctant to support Charles Edward, unless religious considerations were more important than is generally conceded. If this is true, irony piles on irony. Not only was Charles Edward actually a secret Protestant, so that Frederick’s fears were groundless. But it would also be the ironical quintessence if religious scruples, for which the prince had such profound contempt, had actually contributed to his downfall.
However, even if the Elibank plot had still been alive in 1753 when Frederick finally decided to play the Jacobite card, the actual use of Prussian troops in England still seems inconceivable. The plain truth is that the Elibank plot could not have succeeded without foreign aid. The Stuarts’ only truly reliable ally was France, yet Charles Edward adamantly refused to work with Versailles.
Lord Marischal must take a share of the blame for the fiasco. He never made it clear to the English Jacob
ite party that he was first and foremost a Prussian minister, and only secondarily a supporter of the House of Stuart. If Charles Edward was proving intractable, it was for Marischal, as the admired elder statesman, to use his influence and talk him round. Yet Marischal spent much of his time avoiding the prince and devising reasons why he could not meet him face to face. His skill as a politician is shown by the fact that not a scintilla of the mutual recrimination which burst out among the English Jacobites over the failure of the conspiracy was directed at him. He successfully managed to turn all the spleen of King, Dawkins and Westmoreland against the prince.
This should not be taken to imply that the prince was blameless. Pickle was not the only internal saboteur at work during the Elibank period. The prince’s self-destructive urges were at full strength during this crucial time. His treatment of Goring was inept, his dismissal of Mittie junior senseless, his refusal to bow to English Jacobite pressure over Clementina Walkinshaw reprehensible. His resistance to sending her away would have been heroic and praiseworthy if he had loved her. He did not. It was the challenge to his will, and that alone, that he resented.
Finally, his understandable though excessive animus against France removed any chance that the Elibank plot could have had an international dimension. If he had been willing to work with the French, the Frederick/Marischal polarity could have been reversed. Instead of the manipulated, the prince could have become the manipulator. Pro-Jacobite pressure from Versailles on its Prussian ally would in turn have put pressure on Marischal and, through him, the English Jacobite party. As it was, both Charles Edward and Marischal pursued their own impossibilities. The prince had to satisfy the English Jacobites that they had reliable foreign allies while cutting himself off from the one power that fitted that bill. Marischal would truly consent to lead the English Jacobites only if he, not Charles Edward, were given supreme power, and then only if Frederick gave him carte blanche.
Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Page 54
