Pursuit of Princes (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 5)

by Julia Brannan

  I also mention in Chapter Three the Highland hut constructed for the Duke of Cumberland by his loyal Highland regiments. This is true, and to his credit he did live in it, to the delight of his men, although he must have found it extremely primitive and uncomfortable.

  In Chapter Five I talk about the cattle auctions at Fort Augustus. These really did take place, and cattle dealers came from all over the lowlands of Scotland and England to take advantage of the ridiculously low prices they were being sold for. This was a deliberate attempt to starve the Highlanders by depriving them of their only means of sustenance through notoriously harsh winters, which had considerable success. The starving women and children did beg at the gates, and ask to be allowed to lick up the blood of the slaughtered animals. The men were forbidden to give them any food or money at all.

  Chapter Six deals in part with the escape of John Betts, John (Jack) Holker and Peter Moss. As I wrote in the historical note to The Storm Breaks, they were real people. Nothing more is known of John Betts than that he was an Ensign in the Manchester Regiment, was captured at Carlisle, imprisoned in Newgate Gaol along with the rest of his regiment, and subsequently escaped, along with John Holker and Peter Moss. I’ve appropriated him and given him a history as Beth’s stable boy, and a future, although he disappears from history after his escape. John Holker, however (who also features in Books One and Four) was apparently sheltered for six weeks by a stallholder before making his way to France and becoming a lieutenant in the Irish Brigade. He went on to have a very distinguished career in France.

  In Chapter Eight, John and Sarah attend the execution of the Manchester Rebels. Again, I’ve drawn this directly from history, even down to the weather and the unease of the crowd at the men having no Christian priest to minister to them on the scaffold. Thomas Deacon did throw his hat to the crowd, and it would be nice to think that it was returned to his father, Bishop Deacon. Thomas’s head was placed on a spike on the Market Cross in Manchester, and his father was later fined for raising his hat to his son’s head as he passed by and saw it.

  The Duke of Cumberland was indeed feted all over the country as the hero of Culloden, and when he returned to London in July, St James’s Palace was besieged by people hoping to catch sight of him, and the city erupted in celebration.

  However, as early as May questions were being raised as to why none of the prisoners taken at Culloden were listed as wounded, and if it was true that no quarter had been given, even to the injured. Numerous stories started to circulate that all the wounded rebels had been summarily slaughtered, and reports coming back to London from Scotland of continued acts of brutality following the battle, led to a newspaper reporting at the end of May that when the duke returned to London he was to be made a Freeman of the Guild of Butchers. The name stuck, and the Duke of Cumberland has gone down in history as Butcher Cumberland. Historians have disputed whether he deserved the nickname or not. I have examined the evidence on both sides and come to my own personal conclusion that his treatment of the Highlanders did warrant the appellation.

  In Chapters Eight, Nine and Eleven I discuss Newgate Prison. Daniel Defoe, who had briefly been incarcerated there, described it in his novel Moll Flanders as, ‘That horrid place…an emblem of hell itself’, which aptly summed up the eighteenth century view of it. Even by the standards of the day, Newgate was a dreadful place.

  The first reference to Newgate being used as a prison was in 1188, but the prison Beth is in had been rebuilt after the great fire of London in 1666. It was said to be one of the most expensive places to lodge in London, as the warders extorted every penny they possibly could from their prisoners. Some of the charges have been documented, but they would vary according to the wealth of the inmate. They were charged 2s6d on entry to the prison if they wished to be removed from the reception cell (a dungeon through which an open sewer ran), a further 2s6d to have manacles removed, and then a variable fee for everything else from reasonable food to coal, candles, receiving visitors etc. Prisoners who were unable to pay were treated abominably. They were also charged a fee to leave the prison – even if they’d been found not guilty of the crime they’d been arrested for. If they couldn’t pay the fee they remained in prison.

  The keepers paid good money for the position, as they stood to make a fortune from the extortion. There is an interesting document in the National Archives in London, in which the rebel prisoners lodged an official complaint against the warder (Richard Jones) in September 1747, regarding the conditions they were kept in and the extortionate amount of money he demanded even to allow a surgeon or apothecary to visit. Mr Jones of course strenuously denied the allegations.

  After Culloden the prisons really were full to overflowing, which led to even worse conditions than normal, not only at Newgate and other land-based prisons, but also on the transport hulks, ships which were docked at Tilbury and other ports for the purpose of receiving the overflow of prisoners. These were widely condemned as hell-holes, with prisoners being kept in the most unbelievable conditions and dying like flies (as Caroline mentions in Chapter Fourteen - they really did run pleasure cruises out to the hulks).

  In an attempt to reduce the overcrowding, a lotting system of rebel prisoners was brought in, in which the common prisoners would draw lots in groups of twenty. One man would draw the short straw and be tried for his life, the others, if they agreed to plead guilty would receive ‘His Majesty’s Pleasure’, most of them being transported as indentured servants to plantations in America or the Caribbean; others were forced to enlist in the army, or remained in prison until they either died or were eventually released.

  Gaol fever (typhus) was justly feared by everyone. It was carried by fleas and lice, and spread like wildfire amongst the prisoners, due to the insanitary conditions. It was largely ignored by officials until 1750, when forty-three officials at the nearby Old Bailey died of it, including the Lord Mayor. It was thought to be spread by foetid air, and a windmill was installed on the roof to provide ventilation. Seven of the eleven workers died of typhus while installing it.

  In Chapter Nine I give a description of Prince Charles as he comes down the hill to see Alex. This is lifted in its entirety from a description of him when he was on the run in Scotland, from April until September 1746. He certainly seems to have thrived on the excitement and danger of being hunted and passed from one loyal clansman to the next, many of whom risked their lives to keep him safe.

  However, anyone who has been to Scotland on holiday and experienced the dreaded midge will be amused to know that they drove Charles insane as well, biting him very badly as he lurked in the heather on overcast days. Some things never change!

  I won’t go into detail about his adventures with Flora MacDonald, when he was disguised as her maidservant ‘Betty Burke’, as this story is widely known. It is however true that Kingsburgh’s wife, upon seeing him pacing up and down the hallway of her home in his long dress, described him as ‘an odd muckle trollop’ and was somewhat afraid of the appearance of this strange woman.

  Charles was indeed sheltered for several days in July 1746 by the Seven Men of Glenmoriston (in fact eight men), a group of freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on your point of view, who vowed to continue the fight, and had some remarkable adventures worthy of a novel in their own right.

  John Murray of Broughton was arrested, and later did turn king’s evidence, giving information against Lord Lovat and naming a number of the English Jacobite leaders as well as the Welsh leader, Sir Watkin Williams Wynne. He was universally hated and vilified for this, by Prince Charles and others, and understandably so, but in his defence, he was sick and exhausted, very worried for his wife who was heavily pregnant, and disillusioned with many of the chiefs, who had let him down badly when he was desperately trying to rally them to continue the fight after Culloden by means of guerrilla warfare. He did remain devoted to the Stuart cause to his death, in spite of being ostracised by the Jacobites and deserted by his wife. And he certainly
did not tell everything he knew – he did not reveal the whereabouts of Lochiel, or of Prince Charles, and it is feasible that he would not have betrayed Beth or Alex either. He seems to have mainly given information about chiefs and leaders who promised support for the Stuart restoration but failed to deliver on those promises.

  In Chapter Thirteen I point out that Earl Albemarle ordered Inversnaid barracks to be reoccupied with the express intention of keeping the Loch Lomond MacGregors in check. This did happen, but I admit to having taken liberties with the date this was done in order to allow Alex and his clan to spend some time unmolested at home, and to carry out various raids once the redcoats started to relax their vigilance. In the book it is reoccupied over the winter of 1746/7, but this in fact happened sometime in the summer of 1746.

  I also realise that many of you will not know what a link man was. Link men (or more often boys), were frequently to be found hanging around theatres and other places of entertainment. They would carry a lighted torch and offer to lead people home at night, when there was little if any street illumination. They were very poor, usually dressed in rags, and not always honest – sometimes instead of taking a customer home, the link boy would conduct him down an ill-lit alley to be robbed by a gang of thieves, for a share in the proceedings.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Julia has been a voracious reader since childhood, using books to escape the miseries of a turbulent adolescence. After leaving university with a degree in English Language and Literature, she spent her twenties trying to be a sensible and responsible person, even going so far as to work for the Civil Service for six years.

  Then she gave up trying to conform, resigned her well-paid but boring job and resolved to spend the rest of her life living as she wanted to, not as others would like her to. She has since had a variety of jobs, including, telesales, Post Office clerk, primary school teacher, and painter and gilder.

  In her spare time and between jobs, she is still a voracious reader, and enjoys keeping fit, exploring the beautiful Welsh countryside around her home, and travelling the world. Life hasn’t always been good, but it has rarely been boring.

  A few years ago she decided that rather than just escape into other people’s books, she would quite like to create some of her own and so combined her passion for history and literature to write the Jacobite Chronicles.

  People seem to enjoy reading them as much as she enjoys writing them, so now, apart from a tiny amount of transcribing and editing work, she is a full-time writer. She has recently plunged into the contemporary genre too, but her first love will always be historical fiction.

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  Also by Julia Brannan

  The Jacobite Chronicles

  Book One: Mask of Duplicity

  Book Two: The Mask Revealed

  Book Three: The Gathering Storm

  Book Four: The Storm Breaks

  Book Six: Tides of Fortune (early 2018)

  Contemporary Fiction

  A Seventy-Five Percent Solution

  The Bigger Picture (late 2017)