1 A Fugitive Prince 1745-1746 The Western Isles, or Outer Hebrides, are remote and wind-lashed maritime lands. A strand of rough diamonds, they lie off the west coast of mainland Scotland in the Atlantic Ocean and on the outer edge of Europe. The ground, at the mercy of the ebb and flow of the ocean and washed by driving rain much of the year, can appear more water than land. Lewis and Harris, North Uist, Benbecula and South Uist, Eriskay and Barra are some of these islands'' names. In the mid-eighteenth century, during the reign of George II, they were known locally and collectively as "the Long Island" and were the private fiefdoms of Macdonald, Macleod, and other clan chiefs. White beaches and fertile shores dominate the low-lying western coastline of sprawling South Uist and of diminutive Benbecula, to the immediate north. On the farther side of a spine of hill, glen, and moor, the precipitous eastern coastline is rich in rocky inlets and coves, providing safe anchorage for vessels. In the mid-1740s a Macdonald chieftain generally known as "Old Clan" but properly Ranald Macdonald, XVII Captain of Clanranald, held feudal sway here and lived in peace with two powerful neighbors on the Isle of Skye, Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat and Norman Macleod of Macleod.

These last two chiefs were more often known locally as "the Knight"--though Sir Alexander was a baronet--and "the Laird." The former was chief of the Macdonalds of Sleat, and the latter chief of all Clan Macleod. Wars with their ancestors and with other clan heads on the mainland had once occupied Old Clan''s forebears. Moreover, an earlier Clanranald chief had died in battle in 1715 on the Scottish mainland, while endeavoring to restore the so-called Pretender, an exiled Stuart prince, to the British throne and displace the ruling House of Hanover. For thirty years thereafter, however, the Long Island was tranquil. Inhabitants of the Clanranald lands confined their attention to raising black cattle, a hardy native breed, for sale in Highland markets and growing such crops on their "tacks," or farms, as would withstand the harsh climate. Centuries before, Scottish kings had conferred lands in this Atlantic archipelago upon forebears of Old Clan, the Knight, and the Laird. In the clan system that had since evolved in the Highlands, "tacksmen," or gentlemen farmers, from collateral branches of the main Clanranald line, held their land on long leases from their kinsman chief.

In turn, they provided smallholders--known as "the common sort"--with exiguous acres in exchange for an amalgam of labor, rent, and produce. Bovine disease and drought, rather than the might of other clans or government troops, were now feared by these islanders, richer or poorer. In summer the tacksmen grazed their livestock inland, in the glens that abounded there and above a maze of freshwater lochs. In winter they pastured their cattle on low ground, close to their farms. The wealthier among them had stone houses and dined on roast meat and drank French wine and brandy, as did Old Clan and his wife and family at Nunton, his seat on Benbecula. Herdsmen occupying dwellings that were sometimes little more than huts made a diet of bread, oats, cheese, and barley more palatable by the addition of whisky. In the summer of 1746, notwithstanding these decades of peace, the atmosphere on South Uist and Benbecula was febrile. Militia raised on behalf of the crown by the Knight and the Laird from their lands on Skye and on the Long Island guarded the fords in the shallows between South Uist and Benbecula.

The Minch, a channel some thirty nautical miles wide between the Long Island and Skye, was "pestered with the English navy," as a South Uist native later remembered with feeling. The vessels in question, he observed, had been "sent there a purpose to hinder the prince or any of his party to make their escape." The royal personage in question is known to history as Bonnie Prince Charlie. Then a fugitive with a price on his head, to his pursuers he was "the Young Pretender." The limelight had shifted from his father, James Edward Stuart, a prince dubbed "the Pretender" at the time of his bid to seize the British throne thirty years earlier and now often referred to as "the Old Pretender." In the wake of a failed attempt on the British throne, Prince Charles had since late April been "skulking"--moving about stealthily--in a variety of refuges on the Long Island, among them Corradale, a secluded glen in South Uist on Clanranald land. The chief of those territories and his brother, Alexander Macdonald of Boisdale, supplied bread and brandy, shirts and local information; and the latter took charge of plans to secure the prince''s escape to the Continent. Although the Knight was steadfast in his support for the government, his wife, Lady Margaret Macdonald, sent secretly to Charles Edward in his Corradale retreat copies of the London Gazette containing valuable domestic and foreign intelligence.

Many others, including several militia officers on South Uist and Benbecula, came to know and keep secret his identity over the course of these weeks. When fifteen Royal Navy ships hovered off the coast in mid-June, however, and a party of regular (commissioned) officers, landing on South Uist with orders to hunt down the Young Pretender, took Boisdale prisoner, real danger threatened. At this point, when all seemed lost, Hugh Macdonald of Armadale sent a private message to the loch, where the royal party was "lurking [concealed]." This Skye tacksman was an officer in one of the government militias raised the previous autumn by the Knight. "Armadale," as he was known, declared himself, "though an enemy in appearance, yet . a sure friend in his heart" and made a novel and daring suggestion for the prince''s deliverance: "As it seemed now impossible for him to conceal himself any longer in the country," the officer volunteered "to send his stepdaughter, Miss Florence [Flora] Macdonald," then on South Uist, "to Sleat" in Skye, where he and her mother lived. If His Royal Highness would "dress in women''s clothes, that he might pass for her [Flora''s] servant maid" on the voyage, Armadale advised, the disguised prince was sure "to be protected by Lady Margaret Macdonald" on that island across the Minch. The Knight''s second wife had been bred to favor the exiled Stuarts by her mother, a Scottish countess.

Finally, the Skye militia officer proposed that Neil MacEachen of Howbeg, a cousin of Flora''s then with Charles Edward, be appointed to take care of both mistress and "maid" on the journey. This scheme of Armadale''s "pleased the prince mightily," and he was "very impatient to see it put into execution." It was envisaged that, in place of Boisdale, secret adherents to the Stuart cause on Skye would further plan to land and conceal him on the mainland, until a passage to the Continent might be effected. Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart had come from the Continent the previous summer to threaten the Hanoverian dynasty, now established on the British throne some thirty years. Long before, in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, James II of England and Wales and VII of Scotland, Charles Edward''s grandfather, had been deposed and exiled to France, after he turned Catholic, with his second wife and infant son. Since then James II''s daughters and son-in-law--William and Mary, then Anne, all Protestant monarchs--had reigned, until 1714, when the last had died childless. The then Elector of Hanover, as the queen''s nearest Protestant relation, next succeeded to the British throne as George I, and his son, George II, now ruled in the United Kingdom. These Hanoverian monarchs from Germany did not please all in Scotland, whether Protestant or Catholic.

Other than during the Cromwellian years, Stuart monarchs had reigned there since 1371 and in England and Ireland since 1603. Although the exiled James II had died in 1701, periodic attempts were made after 1714, with the aid of France, to restore the "rightful" Stuart line to the British throne in the shape of his son, James Edward Stuart. All had failed. Most recently, a French invasion force sent across the English Channel in early 1744 had been driven back homeward by storms, and Louis XV thereafter declined to offer aid to his fellow Catholic prince. He continued, however, to recognize the Stuart exile as James VIII of Scotland and III of England. Pope Benedict XIV and the papal court in Rome, where James Edward had now long resided and brought up his sons, Charles Edward and Henry Benedict, followed suit. Styled "the Chevalier" by his supporters and "the Pretender" by the Hanoverian government, the Stuart princes'' father was, in the 1740s, pious, sickly, and old before his time. Nevertheless, he and his adherents, termed Jacobites, "Jacobus" being the Latin for James, still dreamed of his restoration to the British throne and centered their hopes in James''s elder son as agent for that change.

Charles Edward was an ambitious young man in vigorous health. Covert encouragement from the Scottish Highlands led him to leave his paternal home in Rome for Paris and there in the summer of 1745 plan a daring attempt on the Hanoverian throne. The outcome of this venture, which has come to be known as the ''Forty-five, was to visit upon Georgian Scotland and England civil war and government retribution that lasted into the following year. When the Stuart heir slipped out of France, however, and landed in July 1745 in Clanranald country on the west coast of Scotland, he had with him only seven companions, four of whom had no previous military experience. The prince''s unheralded arrival in Scotland took both Highland chiefs and the Hanoverian government by surprise. The country people in Arisai.