16th of April – Battle of Culloden

Eighteen martyrs of Saragossa, 304. St Turibius, Bishop of Astorga, about 420. St Fructuosus, Archbishop of Braga, 665. St Magnus, of Orkney, martyr, 1104. St Druon, recluse, patron of shepherds, 1186. St Joachim of Sienna, 1305.

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Born. – Sir Hans Sloane, naturalist, 1660, Killileagh; John Law, speculative financier, 1671, Edinburgh. 

Died. – George Louis, Comte de Buffon, naturalist, 1788, Montbard; Muzio Clementi, celebrated pianist, 1832; Henry Fuseli, artist, 1825, Putney Hill; Pietro Dragonetti, eminent musician, 1846, London; Madame Tussaud, artist and exhibitor of wax figures, 1850, London.

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BATTLE OF CULLODEN. – PRINCE CHARLES’S KNIFE-CASE.

On the 16th of April 1746, was fought the battle of Culloden, insignificant in comparison with many other battles, from there being only about eight thousand troops engaged on each side, but important as finally setting at rest the claims of the expatriated line of the house of Stuart to the British throne. The Duke of Cumberland, who commanded the army of the government, used his victory with notable harshness and cruelty; not only causing a needless slaughter among the fugitives, but ordering large numbers of the wounded to be fusilladed on the field: a fact often doubted, but which has been fully proved. He probably acted under an impression that Scotland required a severe lesson to be read to her, the reigning idea in England being that the northern kingdom was in rebellion, whereas the insurgents represented but a small party of the Scottish people, to whom in general the decent of a parcel of the Highland clans with Charles Edward Stuart was as much a surprise as it was to the court of St James’s. The cause of the Stuarts had, indeed, extremely declined in Scotland by the middle of the eighteenth century, and the nation was turning its whole thoughts to improved industry, in peaceful submission to the Brunswick dynasty, when the romantic enterprise of Prince Charles, at the head of a few hundred Camerons and Macdonalds, came upon it very much like a thunder-cloud in a summer sky. The whole affair of the Forty-five was eminently an affair out of time, an affair which took its character from a small number of persons, mainly Charles himself and a few West Highland chieftains, who had pledged themselves to him, and after all went out with great reluctance. 

The wretched wanderings of the Prince for five months, in continual danger of being taken and instantly put to death, form an interesting pendant to the romantic history of the enterprise itself. Thirty thousand pounds was the fee offered for his capture; but, though many scores of persons had it in their power to betray him, no one was found so base as to do it. A curious circumstance connected with his wanderings has only of late been revealed, that, during nearly the whole time, he himself had a large command of money, a sum of about twenty-seven thousand pounds in gold having come for him too late to be of any use in the war, and been concealed in the bed of a burn in the Cameron’s country, whence, from time to time, portions of it were drawn for his use and that of his friends. 

When George IV. paid his visit to Scotland in 1822, Sir Walter Scott was charged by a lady in Edinburgh, with the duty of presenting to him the pocket knife, fork, and spoon which Charles Edward was believed to have used in the course of his marches and wanderings in 1745-6. The lady was, by Sir Walter Scott’s acknowledgment,¹ Mary Lady Clerk, of Penicuik. This relic of Charles, having subsequently passed to the Marquis of Conyngham, and from him to his son Albert, first Lord Londesborough, is now preserved with great care amidst the valuable collection of ancient plate and bijouterie at Grimston Park, Yorkshire. The case is a small one covered with black shagreen; for portability, the knife, fork, and spoon are made to screw upon handles, so that the three articles form six pieces, allowing of close packing, as shewn in our first cut. The second cut exhibits the articles themselves, on a scale of half their original size; one of the handles being placed below, while the rose pattern on the knob of each is shewn at a. they are all engraved with an ornament of thistle leaves, and the spoon and fork marked with the initials C. S., as will be better seen on reversing the engraving. The articles being impressed with a Dutch plate stamp, we may presume that they were manufactured in Holland. 

On reverting to the chronicles of the day,² we find that the king, in contemplation of his visit to Scotland, expressed a wish to possess some relic of the ‘unfortunate Chevalier,” as he called him; and it was in the knowledge of this fact, that Lady Clerk commissioned Sir Walter Scott to present to his Majesty the articles here described. On the king arriving in Leith Road, Sir Walter went out in a boat to present him with a silver cross badge from ‘the ladies of Scotland,’ and he took that opportunity of handing him the gift of Lady Clerk, which the king received with marked gratification. At a ball a few days afterwards, he gave the lady his thanks in person, in terms which shewed his sense of the value of the gift. He was probably by that time aware of an interesting circumstance in her own history connected with the Forty-five. Born Mary Dacres, the daughter of a Cumberland gentleman, she had entered the world at the time when the Prince’s forces were in possession of Carlisle. While her mother was still confined to bed, a Highland party came to the house; but the officer in command, on learning the circumstances, not only restrained his men from giving any molestation, but pinned his own white rosette or cockade upon the infant’s breast, that it might protect the household from any trouble from others. This rosette the lady kept to her dying day, which was not till several years subsequent to the king’s visit. Her ladyship retained till past eighty an erect and alert carriage, which, together with some peculiarities of dressing, made her one of the most noted street figures of her time. With Sir Walter she was on the most intimate terms. The writer is enabled to recall a walk he had one day with this distinguished man, ending at Mr Constable’s warehouse in Princes-street, where Lady Clerk was purchasing some books at a side counter. Sir Walter, passing through to the stairs by which Mr Constable’s room was reached, did not recognise her ladyship, who, catching a sight of him as he was about to ascend, called out, ‘Oh, Sir Walter, are you really going to pass me?’ He immediately turned to make his usual cordial greetings, and apologised with demurely waggish reference to her odd dress, ‘I’m sure, my lady, by this time I might know your back as well as your face.’ 

It is understood in the Conyngham family, that the knife-case came to Lady Clerk ‘through the Primrose family,’ probably referring to the widow of Hugh third Lord Primrose, in whose house in London Miss Flora Macdonald was sheltered after her liberation from a confinement she underwent for her concern in promoting the Prince’s escape. We are led to infer that Lady Primrose had obtained the relic from some person to whom the Chevalier had given it as a souvenir at the end of his wanderings.³

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¹  Note to Croker’s Boswell, 8vo. ed. p. 329. 

²  Edinburgh Observer, quoted in Gentleman’s Magazine, September 1822. 

³  We learn from Boswell that the Prince gave a similar knife-case to Dr Macleod, brother of ‘Rasay,’ who had promoted his escape; and it appears that this relic was lately in the possession of Dr Macleod’s great grandson, Mr Shaw, sheriff-substitute, Lochmaddy.

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Remembering Culloden.

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Previous to the miscalled union of Scotland and England it is evident that England could never conquer Scotland until the Caledonians were subdued; they often made bloody attempts, but were as often defeated; but England had recourse to intrigues, her favourite weapons, and after securing her alliance with Scotland, she found it a very easy task to conquer. What her arms, and her bloody and murderous kings and generals could never achieve, her treacherous intrigues and money did for her. She got Scot to fight against Scot, Caledonian against Caledonian. She then laughed in her sleeve, and exulted like the lion in the fable when he saw two bulls in the same park with him quarrelling and fighting; knowing they would soon become his prey, for she (stretched upon a couch of down) had her soul satisfaction to see the two damned stupid Scottish bulls fighting between death and life until they ultimately conquered and subdued one another in 1746, upon the murderous and unfortunate field of Culloden, when the English insatiable Lion seized upon them both, and Scotland, who, before this, was the pride and protectoress and faithful ally of all the reformed christian nations of the world, and the terror of England; and all other cruel  ambitious nations, her name became now Ichabod, her glory departed, she forfeited her proud position among nations, and ceased forever to be numbered among them or recognized as a nation. England seized her Government, her laws, and in short her all. The duped, affected, and the disaffected, shared alike. No doubt the Duke of Cumberland, the most obnoxious, cowardly monster, that ever disgraced humanity, commissioned his followers to acts of murder, plunder, and violence. Thank God, unprecedented in the histories of nations (excepting England) plunder which some of them do enjoy to this day, Argyle among the noblest of them. In that unfortunate year the Black Act was enacted, which deprived the Caledonians of their national garb, of their arms, and forbade them to wear either under the pains and penalties of heavy fines, long imprisonment, and banishment*. This nefarious act was in force, and strictly watched for thirty-two years, which is equal to a generation. Our poets, the reprovers of evil cowardly deeds, and the recorders of the deeds of valiant men, were silenced, and many of them made a narrow escape from the gallows, for their pensive memoirs of the fallen at Culloden, on the day when Scotland was prostrated, at the foot of her avowed enemy, a day pregnant with degradation, slavery, and the desolation and misery I have to record; all the Gaelic manuscript and history that could be discovered, by hook or by crook, was seized, destroyed, or locked up, among which was the national records, from Fergus the First, to William the First, and none who understood the language were admitted to see them; and after the elapse of thirty-two years of this Reign of Terror very few were found to peruse or understand the language.

There were various motives for these outrageous proceedings, against the Caledonians in particular, and they answered their various designs to the aristocrats heart’s desire. England knew that the most effectual way to subdue the Celts, was to crush their loyalty to their legitimate sovereign, to crush their kindred feeling, habits and customs, and extirpate the patriarchal system of government from among them; but there was another primary cause, viz.: the Celtic history of Scotland recorded the feudal brutality of English invaders in Scotland, which is indeed too horrifying to speak of, hence would need to be suppressed, that England’s barbarity might be obliterated, and that Scotland and Ireland might be saddled with all her sins. Moreover that Scotland might be left defenceless from the attacks of England’s hired historians, to defame her in her government and her chivalry, in her patriotism, her customs, her science, and literature, and to make everything that was great and good, English. [Samuel Johnson is a good example of this type of historian]. It is a notorious fact that so far as the ingenuity of these hired emissaries could go, they were faithful to their employers; and that these noted calumniators of Scotland were chosen from among her own treacherous sons, beginning with Robertson, under the dictation and command of Horace Walpole, the notorious Dupe of Catterton, down to infamous Babington Macaulay. Limits will not permit me to detail the injustice done to Caledonians by these hired literary scourges, yet with all that they have done, there is still extant of the history of our noble race, enough to make these mutilators blush, and more than enough to make their spurious sarcasm and unfounded calumny stink in Scottish and in the world’s nostrils. Five hundred years before the Christian Era, the Celts took possession of Scotland, and down from that period they governed themselves under the Patriarchal system, until the last remnant of it was destroyed upon the unfortunate muir of Culloden; they had their kings and chieftains, who were entrusted with their government, not by hereditary rights, but as they were found competent to discharge their duties. They obeyed and ardently loved and respected their kings and chieftains while they behaved themselves, but no further; never allowed them to interfere with the rights of the land and further than to parcel it out to their followers impartially, and the people parcelled out to them what they considered sufficient to keep them comfortable and respectable. The chieftains or captains were amenable to the king in all their proceedings; when a dispute arose between the people and their chief, that could not be settled otherwise, it was submitted to the king as their umpire; his decision was final. 

– Gloomy Memories, Prologue.

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When Prince Charles Edward rode out from Inverness eastward, to support his party retiring from the fords of Spey before Cumberland’s army, he stopped at the Castle of Kilravock, and was received there with becoming respect. He made himself very agreeable, asked to see the children, kissed each of them, and praised their beauty. Observing a violin, he inquired if the Laird played, begged a tune, and of course was pleased; walked out with the Laird to see his planting operations. “How happy you are, Mr. Rose,” said he, “who can enjoy these peaceful occupations when the country round is so disturbed!” That was on Monday the 14th of April. The following day was the Duke of Cumberland’s birth-day, and he spent it at Kilravock, and lay there that night. He remarked, “You have had my cousin here!” But when the Laird would have apologized for entertaining him, on the ground that he had no means of resistance, the Duke stopped him, and said he had done quite right – that he could not refuse to receive Charles Edward, and receiving him, he must treat him as a Prince. Next day the “cousins” met at Culloden!

– Sketches, pp.462-463.

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Disappointed of the promised aid, Charles secretly voyaged with seven friends to the western coast of Inverness-shire, and, landing there towards the close of July 1745, was soon surrounded by a few hundreds of friendly Camerons and Macdonalds. He raised his standard at Glenfinnan on the 19th of August, and expressed himself as determined, with such as would follow him, to win back a crown, or perish in the attempt. The rebellion came to an end on Culloden Moor, near Inverness (April 16, 1746), the Highland army being broken and dispersed with great slaughter. Prince Charles fled to the west coast, and after several months of fugitive life, during which he endured incredible hardships, escaped back to France. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.398-408.

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CRUELTY OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND AFTER THE BATTLE OF CULLODEN.

Clifford. – Is it possible that the Duke of Cumberland could have authorised such atrocities, as the hanging up innocent servants in the way you describe, Mr. Macpherson? 

Dominie [Macpherson]. – I am afraid that what I have asserted is but too true, sir. 

Author [Lauder]. – I am sorry to say, that I am in possession of a document which but too satisfactorily proves, that he did give most cruel orders. It is an orderly book of the thirty-seventh regiment, which was called Cholmondeley’s  

Regiment; and in that I find, in the general orders, dated “The Camp at Enverness April, 17th, 1746,” the following  

Entry:- “A captain and fifty foot to march directly, and vizt all the cothidges in the naberhod of the field of battal, and to search for rebbels, the officers and men will take notiss, that the pubilick orders of the rebbels yesterday was to give us no quarters.” This, I think, was a pretty broad hint to the men and the officer commanding them, what it was that the Duke expected of them. 

Grant. – Very distinct, indeed. 

Author. – Not to be mistaken, I think. 

Clifford. – Is there anything existing to establish that any such order was given by the Prince, previous to the battle, as that to which the Duke here alludes! 

Author. – Not a vestige of anything that I am aware of. But if such orders had been given by the Prince, that circumstance would have afforded no apology for him to have issued the order I have now repeated to you, after the battle was over, and the enemy so effectually cut to pieces in the field. Nothing, I think, could more mark a sanguinary temper than his thus letting loose a body of men, to visit all the neighbouring cottages, and to put to death, in cold blood, all whom his ignorant and bloodthirsty myrmidons might choose to consider as rebels. The slaughter in this way, of the innocent as well as of the guilty, was said to have been immense.

– Tales of the Highlands, p.322.

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Reminiscences of the ’15 and the ’45 are numerous. One document neatly penned is a promise of the title of Earl to Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat – a coronet in the air which Simon’s head would have been safer without. In the Culloden time, in the flush of his victory, the Duke of Cumberland wrote a letter ascribing all the glory to the constancy and discipline of the men he led. “You know the readiness I always found in the troops to do all that I ordered and in return the love I have for them, and that I make my honour and reputation depend on them.” He wished to God the enemy had been worthy of them! So, in a sense other than Tom Campbell’s, proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain.

– Scots Lore, pp.330-335.

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A vast mob followed his coach, which passed through the Grassmarket, and quitted the city by the West Port, en route to Culloden, and “at mid-night on Saturday the 19th of April Viscount Bury, colonel of the 20th Regiment, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland, reined up his jaded horse at the Castle gate, bearer of a despatch to the Lieutenant-General, announcing the victory; and at two o’clock on the morning of Sunday a salute from the batteries informed the startled and anxious citizens that, quenched in blood on the Muir of Drummossie, the star of the Stuarts had sunk for ever.”

The standard of Charles, which Tullybardine unfurled in Glenfinnan, and thirteen others belonging to chiefs, with several pieces of artillery and a quantity of arms, were brought to the Castle and lodged in the arsenal, where some of the latter still remain; and one field-piece, which was placed on a battery to the westward, was long an object of interest to the people. With a spite that seems childish now, by order of Cumberland those standards, whose insignia were all significant of high descent and old achievement, were carried in procession to the Cross. The common hangman bore that of Charles, thirteen Tronmen, or sweeps, bore the rest, and all were flung into a fire, guarded by the 44th Regiment, while the heralds proclaimed the name of each chief to whom they belonged – Lochiel, Clanranald, Keppoch, Glengarry, and so forth; while the crowd looked on in silence. By this proceeding, so petty in its character, Cumberland failed alike to inflict an injury on the character of the chiefs or their faithful followers, among whom, at that dire time, the bayonet, the gibbet, the torch, and the axe, were everywhere at work; and, when we consider his blighted life and reputation in the long years that followed, it seems that it would have been well had the Young Chevalier, the “bonnie Prince Charlie” of so much idolatry, found his grave on the Moor of Culloden. 

– Old and New Edinburgh, pp.329-334.

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[McQueen] had, in 1745, joined the Highland army at Fort Augustus, and continued in it till after the battle of Culloden. As he narrated the particulars of that ill-advised but brave attempt, I could not refrain from tears. There is a certain association of ideas in my mind upon that subject, by which I am strongly affected. The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe, will stir my blood, and fill me with a mixture of melancholy and respect for courage; with pity for an unfortunate and superstitious regard for antiquity, and thoughtless inclination for war; in short, with a crowd of sensations with which sober rationality has nothing to do.

– Tour to the Hebrides, pp.140-141.

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Many unfortunate Jacobites have suffered most protracted periods of imprisonment within its walls. Among these the Edinburgh Courant records, on the 10th of January, 1743, the demise therein of Macintosh, of Borlum, in his 80th year, after a captivity of fifteen years, for participation in the rising of 1715; and for twelve months, in 1746, there were confined in a small, horrid, and unhealthy chamber above the portcullis, used for many a year as “the black hole” of the garrison, the Duchess of Perth and Viscountess Strathallan, with her daughters, the Ladies Mary and Amelia, who were brought in by an escort of twenty dragoons, under a ruffianly quartermaster, who treated them with every indignity, even to tearing the wedding-ring from Lady Strathallan’s finger, and stripping her daughters of their clothes. During the long year these noble ladies were in that noisome den above the gate, they were without female attendance, and under the almost hourly surveillance of the sergeants of the guard. The husband of the countess was slain at the head of his men on the field of Culloden, where the Jacobite clans were overcome by neither skill nor valour, but the sheer force of numbers and starvation.

– Old and New Edinburgh, pp.66-79.

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The fear of invasion of the South of England being now removed, the Duke of Cumberland hastened to Scotland and took command of the army. The Highlanders had retreated into their own country where the last tragedy of this deplorable insurrection was about to be played. On the 16th April 1746 was fought the decisive battle of Culloden. The army of Prince Charles consisted of about five thousand men. The Duke of Cumberland had nine thousand troops under his command, with all the most approved appliances of war. For the first time the Highland army had been opposed by a capable General; with such overwhelming numbers victory was assured, and that Charles should have risked his all on such an unequal contest can only be accounted for by madness or despair. By this ill-considered action one thousand brave men lay dead on the field, for the victorious army, especially the cavalry, who had played such a poor part in former encounters, took a mean revenge upon the vanquished foe and slew the wounded without mercy. They made diligent search among the neighbouring huts into which the wounded had crawled, and took the helpless wretches and shot them in cold blood. There are none so cruel as cowards, the extremity of their past terrors gives a particular zest to the ferocity with which they treat their victims when they fall into their power.  

It is said the Duke of Cumberland was a brave man; if so, he acted with the malice of a coward. His military executions in the Highlands covered his name with infamy and shocked the moral sense of the whole Christian world. Man, woman, and child fell before his relentless arms, and we have to go back to the wars of the Jews before we find a parallel to his detestable crimes. Whatever may have been the opinion of his conduct in Scotland, Cumberland became the hero of the hour in London. Handel prostituted his genius by ostentatiously composing ‘See the Conquering Hero comes’ in honour of the Duke. The association of this air will ever appear a foul blot on a noble work. We confess when we have heard it thoughtlessly played in our concert halls or political meetings that we have felt a thrill of horror, and when our imagination conjured up the sad scenes of Culloden the unbidden tear has dimmed our eyes. These are but the sentiments of loyalty to our race; yet if the head should ever rebuke the heart for its emotions, may the grave then be the fitting resting-place for such a callous brain.  

There is nothing which shows a meaner spirit than the taking of revenge upon the vanquished. In the regular warfare between nations, to slay your prisoners is considered so great an offence that the country which practised it would be ostracised by civilisation. In the war which was waged by Prince Charles there was nothing which removed it morally from the ordinary rights of belligerents. The dynasty which sat on the throne was a violation of the settled order of succession, and the mistaken enthusiasts who risked their all for what they believed to be the lawful rights of their Prince might well have expected the ordinary usage of civilised war. This was all the more their due, as in their hour of triumph there is no recorded military execution or abuse of power. The Government of the day had, however, been too sorely frightened to forego the savage triumph of the scaffold. The execution of Kilmarnock and Balmerino and the aged Lord Lovat was an ignoble revenge. The fate of the two former will claim from every generous heart the tribute of a tear, and if we cannot lament the fate of the wily Lovat, we may at least wonder that the Government thought it worth their while to abridge the life of so aged a man. 

– How Scotland Lost Her Parliament, Chapter V.

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On this Day in Other Sources.

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On St Magnus Day [16th of April], this year [1273], died the great Chamberlain of Scotland, Richard [de] Inverkeithing, Bishop of Dunkeld, a worthy prelate, and a very faithful counsellor; his corpse was interred in the cathedral church at Dunkeld, and his heart was sent to the choir of St. Columba’s church in [Inchcolm]. To him succeeded in the see his own dean, Robert de Stuteville, the King’s cousin. 

– Historical Works, pp.57-77.

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On the 16th [April] the Queen, personally, appeared in Parliament, when the committee of articles was chosen. There seems to have been a previous concert, that this convention should, from its proceedings, be deemed a heeling Parliament, as Murray, and his faction, considering the part they were acting, had a strong interest to conciliate. Of four and twenty acts, which were then passed, the greatest number consisted of repeals of forfeitures, or confirmations of rights; showing in their enactments, the wretched manners of a wretched age. Accusations, by placards, were prohibited, in future, with an allusion to the late charges against Bothwell. One act, on the subject of religion, during a religious age, is memorable. The same Queen, who is charged, by Robertson, with attempting to suppress the reformed discipline, with the aid of the bishops, passed a law; renouncing all foreign jurisdiction, in ecclesiastical affairs; giving toleration to all her subjects to worship God, in their own way; and engaging to give some additional privileges: By the first clause, the papal jurisdiction was renounced, by the second, a toleration was established; and by the third, some other points were promised, which might have led to a liturgy, which was the only thing wanting, to form a complete reformation, in a parliamentary mode. Yet, are there writers, so besotted with prejudice, as to say, that nothing was done, in the Parliament of April 1567, concerning religion. 

– Life of Mary, pp.155-184.

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Apr. 16 [1572]. – From the day here noted to the 8th of June, the war between the queen’s party in Edinburgh and the king’s beyond the city was conducted on the principle of No quarter. All who were taken on either side were presently put to death. The common belief was, that this frightful system originated with Morton, who conceived that by such severity the war would sooner cease. In the end, both parties, ‘wearied of execution daily made, were content to cease from such rigour, and use fair wars, as in former times.’ – Spot. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.45-55.

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Apr. [1579.] – John Stewart, Earl of Athole, was one of the more respectable of the Scottish nobility of this age. To Queen Mary – whom he had entertained at a hunt in Glen Tilt in 1564 – he proved a faithful friend, till her fatal marriage with Bothwell, when, although a Catholic, he joined those who crowned her son as king. During the regencies, he lived in dignified retirement, till called upon to make an effort to rescue the young king from the thraldom in which he was held by Morton. A temporary fall of Morton in 1577 left Athole chancellor of the kingdom. 

He now came to Stirling, to assist in accommodating some quarrels of the friends of the Mar family regarding the custody of the young king and the government of Stirling Castle. ‘Matters being seemingly adjusted, the old Countess of Mar, or the Earl of Morton, in her name, invited the chancellor to an entertainment. While they were drinking hard, somebody conveyed a deadly poison into the chancellor’s glass.’ April 16th, ‘the chancellor passed forth of Stirling to Kincardine, very sick and ill at ease, and upon the 24th day deceased there.’ His friends, thinking he had got foul play, sent to Edinburgh for surgeons to open the body; and though these men of skill declared upon oath that they found no trace of poison or mark of violence done to the deceased, the widow and eldest son entered a protest that this should not prejudge the criminal process which they intended before the Justice-general. ‘Some blamed the old Countess of Mar for it; others suspected the Earl of Morton at the bottom of it.’ Both suspicions were probably groundless; it may even be doubted if the earl was poisoned at all. When under sentence of death some years after, Morton solemnly denied the crime imputed to him, and said in no circumstances would he have injured a hair of Athole’s head. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.56-80.

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Mary began now to correspond with her son, as often as her wardens would allow her. On the 16th of April [1582], she wrote him, in French; expressing her affection; and desiring his attention to Elizabeth. The object of the Scotish Queen seems to have been, to confirm to him a legitimate right to the crown, as she had hitherto considered it, to be, merely, supposititious. She seems, to have found means, through France, of engaging Lennox, and Arran, the two favourites of the youthful King, to concur, in this project, to which they saw no strong objection, whatever Elizabeth may have felt. King James certainly wrote to his mother, soon after; expressing his duty, and desiring to hear further from her; though it may have been intercepted. 

– Life of Mary, pp.274-281.

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Apr. 16 [1685]. – The equestrian statue of Charles II., which had cost £1000, though only formed of lead, was set up in the Parliament Close, Edinburgh. ‘The vulgar people, who had never seen the like before, were much amazed at it. Some compared it to Nebuchadnezzar’s image, which all fell down and worshipped, and others foolishly to the pale horse in the Revelations, and he that sat thereon was Death.’ – Foun. 

– Domestic Annals, pp.338-341.

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There were in ancient times several unimportant rencounters and skirmishes in this parish. The only memorable battle was that of the 16^th of April, 1746, – the important and decisive battle of CULLODEN:..

– Gazetteer of Scotland, Inverness, pp.24-35.

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It is intended there shall be two lines of mills; but one of them, the east line, has only been yet completed. It was finished on the 16th of April, 1827; and the inhabitants of Greenock had the satisfaction of seeing, through their united exertions, and the skill and genius of Mr. Thom, a stream, which for ages had flowed in a different course, brought murmuring along its new bed, until it poured into the Clyde from the Deling burn. The water for supplying the domestic purposes of the inhabitants, is collected into reservoirs, set apart for the purpose; and a separate acqueduct has been made to carry the water to the filters, which are situated above the town, and where a basin has also been formed, from which an abundant supply of pure water can be given to the inhabitants. 

– Select Views, pp.103-114.

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Glasgow Evening Post, Saturday 16th April 1870, p.2.

CURIOUS DEATH OF A DOG.

   Last night a terrier dog was killed in Main Street, Anderston, under rather singular circumstances. One of Mr Menzies’ horses had got loose from the stables in North Street, and ran off in the direction of Main Street, where it came into collision with one of the Partick omnibuses. A little terrier dog happened to be in the centre of the street at the time of the accident, the shock of which caused the runaway horse to come on its beam ends, and fall directly above the dog, which, to use a common, although not classical expression, was knocked as flat as a pancake, and picked up quite dead. The force of the collision damaged the omnibus, and seriously injured Mr Menzies’ horse. 

Another of our Artist‘s impressions of the scene of this incident.

– Curious Deaths.