Chapter 10 - Page 2

to a private man, and the porter to be whipped.' {232b}

The adventures of James after his escape are narrated by a writer in 'Blackwood's Magazine' for December 1817. This writer was probably a Macgregor, and possessed some of James's familiar epistles. Overcoming a fond desire to see once more his native hills and his dear ones (fourteen in all), James, on leaving Edinburgh Castle, bent his course towards the Border. In a dark night, on a Cumberland moor, he met the famed Billy Marshall, the gipsy. Mr. Marshall, apologising for the poverty of his temporary abode, remarked that he would be better housed 'when some ill-will which he had got in Galloway for setting fire to a stackyard would blow over.' Three days later Billy despatched James in a fishing boat from Whitehaven, whence he reached the Isle of Man. He then made for Ireland, and my next information about James occurs in a letter of Balhaldie, dated August 10, 1753, to the King over the Water. {232c} Balhaldie's letter to Rome, partly in cypher, runs thus, and is creditable to James's invention:

'James Drummond Macgregor, Rob Roy's son, came here some days agoe, and informed me that, having made his escape from Scotland by Ireland, he was addressed to some namesakes of his there, who acquainted him that the clan Macgregor were very numerous in that country, under different names, the greatest bodies of them living together in little towns and villages opposite to the Scottish coast.' They had left Scotland some one hundred and fifty years before, when their clan was proscribed. James 'never saw men more zealously loyal and clanish, better looked, or seemingly more intrepid and hardy. . . . No Macgregors in the Scotch highlands are more willing or ready to joyn their clan in your Majesty's service than they were, and for that end to transport 3,000 of their name and followers to the coast of Argileshyre.' They will only require twenty-four hours 'to transport themselves in whirries of their own, even in face of the enemy's fleet, of which they are not affrayed.'

The King, in answer (September 11, 1753), expressed a tempered pleasure in Mr. Macgregor's information, which, he said, might interest the Prince. On September 6, 1753, Lord Strathallan, writing to Edgar from Boulogne, vouches only for James's courage. 'As to anything else, I would be sorry to answer for him, as he had but an indifferent character as to real honesty.' On September 20, James Mohr, in Paris, wrote to the Prince, anxious to know where he was, and to communicate important news from Ireland. Probably James got no reply, for on October 18, 1753, Lord Holdernesse wrote from Whitehall to Lord Albemarle, English ambassador in Paris, a letter marked 'Very secret,' acknowledging a note of Lord Albemarle's. Mr. Macgregor had visited Lord Albemarle on October 8th and 10th, with offers of information. Lord Holdernesse, therefore, sends a safe- conduct for Macgregor's return. {234} We now give