100-612: Rachel Chiesley (baptised 4 February 1679 – 12 May 1745), usually known as Lady Grange , was the wife of Lord Grange , a Scottish lawyer with Jacobite sympathies. After 25 years of marriage and nine children, the Granges separated acrimoniously. When Lady Grange produced letters that she claimed were evidence of his treasonable plottings against the Hanoverian government in London, her husband had her kidnapped in 1732. She
200-451: A sloop with twenty armed men on board to go to St Kilda at his own expense. It had already set sail by 14 February 1741, but it arrived too late. Lady Grange had been removed from the island, probably in the summer of 1740. After the Battle of Culloden in 1746, it was rumoured that Prince Charles Edward Stuart and some of his senior Jacobite aides had escaped to St Kilda. An expedition
300-468: A stagecoach to London and James Erskine and his friends, afraid her presence there would cause them further trouble, decided it was time to take decisive action. Lady Grange was abducted from her temporary home of lodgings on Niddrys Wynd off the Royal Mile on the night of 22 January 1732 by two Highland lairds, Roderick MacLeod of Berneray and Macdonald of Morar , and several of their men. After
400-435: A ' Σ '. However, calling himself John Sobieski Stuart, the elder brother then produced the lavish Vestiarium Scoticum (Edinburgh, 1842), costing ten guineas, which purported to be a reproduction, with colour illustrations, of a better version of the 1721 manuscript, this one being dated to 1571. This John claimed had passed through the hands of Prince Charles Edward Stuart to his father Thomas, though his father's letter on
500-609: A British warship, HMS Albina , under Commodore O'Haloran. In the second tale, some years later, the grown child arrived in the Western Highlands of Scotland where, although called O'Haloran and thought to be the son of the former captain, he is known as The Red Eagle and addressed as a prince. In the third tale, which takes place in the Peak District of Derbyshire , a traveller meets The Red Eagle who, after various adventures, marries at Berwick , Catharine Bruce,
600-714: A Lieutenant in 1798 and his subsequent history and movements and the extent to which he approved of his sons' later claims, are all far from clear. He had married Catherine Matilda Manning, a daughter of the Rev. Owen Manning the historian of Surrey , at Godalming in 1792. They had three children: (1) John Carter Allen, born at Oystermouth, Glamorgan , 4 August 1795 and baptised there, 5 October 1795; (2) Matilda Allen, born at Oystermouth, Glamorgan, 18 October 1799 and baptised there, 12 January 1800; and (3) Charles Manning Allen, born at Rotherfield Grays, Oxfordshire , 4 July 1802 and baptised there, 3 August 1802. Under their marriage settlement
700-603: A St Kildan who had assisted her quoted the dimensions as being "20 feet by 10 feet" (7 metres by 3 metres), which is roughly the size of the cleit. Hirta is more remote than the Monach Isles, lying 66 kilometres (41 mi) west-northwest of Benbecula in the North Atlantic Ocean and the predominant theme of life on St Kilda was isolation. When Martin Martin visited the islands in 1697,
800-399: A bloody struggle, in which they knocked out several of her teeth, she was blindfolded and taken out of the city in a waiting sedan chair occupied by Alexander Foster of Carsebonny. Going northwards they transferred out of the sedan chair near Multres Hill (now St Andrew Square) and then taken on horseback westward to the house of John Macleod, advocate at Muiravonside, west of Linlithgow for
900-721: A cave either at Idrigill on the Trotternish peninsula or on the Duirinish coast near the stacks known as a "Macleod's Maidens". She was certainly later housed with Rory MacNeil at Trumpan in Waternish. She died there on 12 May 1745, and MacNeil had her "decently interred" the following week in the Trumpan churchyard . Other sources state she died in a humble cottar's cottage at Idrigill in June 1749. For reasons unknown
1000-421: A claim to the title of Erroll ... as being descended from the old Earl Hay in the male line', a worthless statement as the peerage had become extinct in the male line in 1717, but believed by Thomas who added Hay to his name. However, the uncertainty of their descent and the romantic nature of the various claims surrounding them greatly influenced the two brothers. They also added Hay to their names and in 1822
1100-450: A combined area of 357 hectares (880 acres). The islands are low-lying and fertile, and their population in the 18th century may have been about 100. At the time they were owned by Sir Alexander MacDonald of Sleat , and Lady Grange was housed with his tacksman , another Alexander MacDonald, and his wife. When she complained about her condition, she was told by her host that he had no orders to provide her with either clothes, or food other than
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#17327981300971200-561: A former Lieutenant in the Royal Navy , had been born in Italy the only legitimate child of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his wife Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern . They claimed that Thomas had, for fear of kidnapping or assassination, been brought secretly to England on a ship captained by their grandfather, Admiral John Carter Allen (1725–1800), and adopted by him. Thomas was thus, they claimed, 'de jure monarch of England in place of
1300-429: A judge and Member of Parliament and his wealthy friends to organise an illegal kidnapping and life sentence. As for Lady Grange herself, her vituperative outbursts and indulgence in alcohol were clearly important factors in her undoing. Alexander Carlyle described her as "stormy and outrageous", whilst noting that it was in her husband's interests to exaggerate the nature of her violent emotions. Macaulay (2009) takes
1400-482: A night. She was next taken northwards to Wester Polmaise near Falkirk , where she was held until 15 August on the ground floor of an uninhabited tower. She was by then over fifty years old. Upon the 22d of Jan 1732, I lodged in Margaret M'Lean house and a little before twelve at night Mrs M'Lean being on the plot opened the door and there rush'd in to my room some servants of Lovats and his Couson Roderick Macleod he
1500-501: A pair of silver candlesticks to Jane, leaving £2,200 and the residue to John. This disparity caused comment and some have speculated that Thomas was illegitimate, but an income had been guaranteed to him under his marriage settlement in 1792. However, additional research in 2014 showed that John Carter Allen did not marry until 1780 and that his three children were all illegitimate, born in a period in which he held no commission. The three were named 'natural children of John Cator Allen' in
1600-607: A plan for her abduction. In January 1732 she was taken in secret from Edinburgh to the Monach Islands for two years, thence Hirta in St Kilda , where she remained for about ten years. From there, she was taken to Assynt in Sutherland , and finally to Skye . To complete the idea that she was dead her funeral was publicly celebrated, but she survived until May 1745. Meanwhile, in 1734 Grange resigned his offices in
1700-663: A romantic poem called "Epistle from Lady Grange to Edward D— Esq" written by William Erskine in 1798 and a 1905 novel entitled The Lady of Hirta, a Tale of the Isles by W. C. Mackenzie. Edwin Morgan also published a sonnet in 1984 called "Lady Grange on St Kilda". The Straw Chair is a two-act play by Sue Glover , also about the time on St Kilda, first performed at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1988. Burdalane
1800-419: A second funeral was held at nearby Duirinish some time thereafter, where a large crowd gathered to watch the burial of a coffin filled with turf and stones. It is sometimes stated that this was her third funeral , Lord Grange having conducted one in Edinburgh shortly after her kidnapping. However, this story first appears in writing in 1845 and no other evidence of its veracity has emerged. Lady Grange's story
1900-428: A single contemporary female view of the affair has survived, save that of Lady Grange herself. Divorces were complex and divorced mothers were rarely given custody of children. Furthermore, Lord Grange's powerful friends in both the church and the legal profession might have made this a risky endeavour. Something of James Erskine's attitude to these matters may perhaps be gleaned from the fact that for his first speech in
2000-579: A superficially uneventful domestic life. They divided their time between a town house at the foot of Niddry's Wynd off the High Street in Edinburgh and an estate at Preston (now part of Prestonpans in East Lothian ), where Lady Grange was the factor (or supervisor) for a time. Her husband was a successful lawyer, becoming Lord Justice Clerk in 1710, and the marriage produced nine children: In addition, Lady Grange miscarried twice and one of
2100-700: Is a play about these same events by Judith Adams performed in 1996 at the Battersea Arts Centre , London and on BBC Radio 4 . Rachel Chiesley inspired Andrew Drummond 's fantasy novel The Books of the Incarceration of the Lady Grange (2016) and Sue Lawrence 's The Unreliable Death of Lady Grange (2020). Boswell and Johnson discussed the subject in their 1773 tour of the Hebrides . Boswell wrote: "After dinner to-day, we talked of
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#17327981300972200-443: Is a remarkable one and various issues have been raised by Macaulay (2009) as requiring explanation. These include: what drove James Erskine to these extraordinary lengths?; why were so many individuals willing to participate in this illegal and dangerous kidnapping of his wife?; and how was she held for so long without rescue? The first and second of these issues are related. Erskine's brother had already been exiled for his support of
2300-525: Is a writer to the Signet they threw me down upon the floor in a Barbarous manner I cri'd murther murther then they stopp'd my mouth I puled out the cloth and told Rod: Macleod I knew him their hard rude hands bleed and abassed my face all below my eyes they dung out some of my teeth and toere the cloth of my head and toere out some of my hair I wrestled and defend'd -my self with my hands then Rod: order'd to tye down my hands and cover my face most pity- fully there
2400-613: Is likely she was taken through Glen Coe to Loch Ness and then through Glen Garry to Loch Hourn on the west coast. After a short delay she was then put on board ship to Heisker the main isle of the Monach Isles . The difficulty of her position must have quickly become evident. She was in the company of men whose loyalty was to clan chieftains rather than the law, and few of them spoke any English at all. Their native Gaelic would have been incomprehensible to her, although as her years of captivity wore on she slowly learned something of
2500-550: Is little doubt that at times he was in communication with the Jacobites ; but was rather known for his piety and for his sympathy with the Presbyterians . In 1724 he, and David Erskine, Lord Dun purchased the forfeited Earldom of Mar from the government, which they promptly reorganised, and sold off. His wife, Rachel Chiesley , suspected her husband of infidelity, and after some years of unhappiness Grange arranged
2600-544: Is said that Thomas 'spent the last seven years of his life in bed', confined to his room at 22 Henry Street, Pentonville. He was there as 'John Salmon' when the Census was taken in 1851 and he died at that address as Thomas Hay Allen on 14 February 1852. He was buried in that name at St Giles in the Fields, Middlesex, on 23 February 1852, aged 84. His son, Charles, in order to distance himself from him, wrote in 1877 that his father
2700-455: Is uncertain: based on the text of a letter she wrote much later in life, it may have been in 1707 when she was about 28. Erskine was the younger son of Charles Erskine, Earl of Mar and in 1689 his older brother John Erskine , became Earl of Mar on their father's death. These were politically troubled times; the Jacobite cause was still popular in many parts of Scotland, and the younger Earl
2800-613: The Act of Union 1707 . James Erskine, Lord Grange, features as a character in Andrew Drummond 's fantasy novel. The Books of the Incarceration of the Lady Grange (2016). Sobieski Stuarts In the 1820s, two English brothers, John Carter Allen (1795–1872) and Charles Manning Allen (1802–1880) adopted the names John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, moved to Scotland , converted to Catholicism, and about 1839 began to claim that their father, Thomas Allen (1767–1852),
2900-549: The British Museum , wearing Highland dress or military tunics and using pens embellished with gold coronets. John, who called himself 'The Chevalier John Sobieski Stewart', in 1871 described himself as Count d'Albanie, Colonel of Hussars, and said that he was born at Versailles, France. He died without issue at 52 Stanley Street, St George Hanover Square, 13 February 1872, aged 74, and was buried at Eskadale. His widow died at Bath in 1888. John's brother Charles then assumed
3000-687: The Court of Session and Justiciary, and became a Member of Parliament where he was a bitter opponent of Sir Robert Walpole . His objective of being appointed Secretary of State for Scotland was a failure. For a short time after leaving parliament he returned to the Bar . Erskine stood in opposition to the Witchcraft Act 1735 , which – unlike previous laws – did not assume that witches actually existed and made pacts with Satan, but rather assumed that anyone who claimed to be actually practising witchcraft
3100-737: The Fleet Prison . He was released by order of the Court for Relief of Insolvent Debtors on 20 December 1819 but continued to live in fear of his creditors. His reticence and desired anonymity was probably due to his illegitimacy and his relationship with Anne, but it was complicated by the later statements of his two legitimate sons on whom he looked with some displeasure. He had little in common with them and they in turn looked down on Anne as 'of much lower rank in life' than their mother. Thomas and Anne apparently had their last child, Gilbert Hay Allen (1829–1902), in south London in 1829 and in 1839 Thomas
Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange - Misplaced Pages Continue
3200-750: The House of Commons he chose to oppose the repeal of various laws relating to witchcraft . Even in his day this appeared unduly conservative and his perorations were met with laughter, which effectively ended his political career before it had begun. Writing in the mid-19th century the Sobieski Stuarts told the tale from the perspective of the descendants of the Highland aristocrats who had been responsible for Chiesley's kidnap and imprisonment. They emphasise Lady Grange's personal shortcomings, although to modern sensibilities these hardly seem good reasons for
3300-637: The Lord Provost the next day. Two days later he was taken from the Tolbooth to the Mercat Cross on the High Street. His right hand was cut off before he was hanged, and the pistol he had used for the murder was placed around his neck. Rachel Chiesley was baptised on 4 February 1679 and would have been born not long before that date, making her about ten years old at the time of her father's execution. The date of Chiesley's marriage to James Erskine
3400-559: The Royal Mile . He died in London on 20 January 1754, aged 75 years. He married Rachel Chiesley , daughter of John Chiesley, who murdered George Lockhart, Lord Carnwath in 1689. Rachel was thereafter raised by her uncle Robert Chieslie , Lord Provost of Edinburgh . Rachel had inherited a fortune paid in compensation to her uncles Robert and James who each lost a fortune in the Darien scheme , but who were posthumously compensated in
3500-665: The Tales that Prince Charles Edward Stuart 'could have had no possible reason for concealing the birth of an heir'; any idea that he had 'left a legitimate male progeny' was 'the silliest of dreams'. In 1848 John attempted A reply to the Quarterly Review upon the Vestiarium Scoticum (Edinburgh, 1848) and the two brothers then produced Lays of the deer forest: with sketches of olden and modern deer-hunting (2 vols. Edinburgh, 1848), but three of their benefactors,
3600-604: The Vestiarium were completely discredited in a devastating anonymous article 'The heirs of the Stuarts', believed to be by George Skene (1807–1875), Professor of Law at Glasgow University , which appeared in the Quarterly Review , vol. 81 (June–September 1847) 57-85. He concluded about the Vestiarium that 'this pretended MS of the sixteenth century is an absolute fabrication, and of no authority whatever' and about
3700-493: The anglophone world in the early 18th century. No reliable naval charts of the area became available until 1776. Without local assistance and knowledge, finding a captive in this wilderness would have required a significant expeditionary force. Nonetheless, the lack of action taken by Edinburgh society in general and her children in particular to retrieve one of their own is remarkable. The Kirk hierarchy, for example, made no attempt to contact her or convey news of her condition to
3800-519: The 'idea of distinguishing the clans by their tartans is but a fashion of modern date'. On behalf of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries he was shown a transcript of part of the brothers' manuscript but from its language alone 'indignantly declared his conviction that the MS itself must be an absolute fabrication'. Scott remembered seeing one of the brothers wearing the badge of High Constable of Scotland (as
3900-482: The 18th Earl of Erroll and Elizabeth Fitzclarence (a daughter of King William IV ), but they had no issue. Study of correspondence in the Chiddingstone archives has enabled Craig Buchanan to identify Charles Edward Stuart, his daughter Maria, and sister-in-law Georgina as the authors of travel-related articles published in the magazine Once a Week in 1860. Buchanan also suggests that John Sobieski Stuart
4000-661: The British Isles, so that ... if a man were to declare himself the heir to the Yorkist or Tudor dynasty, he would attract but little attention, yet if he claim to be a Stuart he will find hundreds ready to believe him". The brothers' two publications, Vestiarium Scoticum (Edinburgh, 1842) and The Costume of the Clans (Edinburgh, 1845), described by the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper as "shot through with pure fantasy and bare faced forgery", have been sources widely used by
4100-569: The Cross of an Officer of the Legion d'Honneur for Henry Timothy in 1854. Her date of death has not been found. In Scotland the brothers 'conducted themselves as members of a reigning dynasty who wished to preserve their incognito' and their claims 'were accorded a level of credence' (as the Dictionary of National Biography said at the end of the century) by 'men of rank and intelligence, such as
Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange - Misplaced Pages Continue
4200-567: The Earl of Moray, the Marquis of Bute and Thomas Dick-Lauder, died that year and the brothers were now so discredited that Charles took his wife to Prague where their son was in the Austrian army and John followed soon after. John's wife died at Presburg in 1862 and the brothers did not return to England until 1868. In London they then occupied themselves with research, being well-known figures in
4300-559: The Earls of Erroll were), 'which he could have no more right to wear than the Crown'. Dick-Lauder was himself an author of historical romances and had put up a monument to the Lauder family in Edinburgh showing a quite spurious descent, but one 'as he wished it to be'. Publishing anonymously, John penned a number of historical fictions during the early 1830s, including a number of stories which
4400-661: The Hays of Erroll. From 1826 to 1829, John joined his brother Charles at Windy Hill (now Milton Brodie), Alves, Morayshire , under the patronage of the Earl of Moray . The brothers were at Logie House, Edinkillie, Morayshire, from 1829 to 1838, when John used the name Stuart Allan. As John Sobieski Stuart he and his brother, calling themselves 'grandsons to the Pretender', had visited Ireland in May 1836. Lord Lovat then built 'an antique shooting lodge' for them on Eilean Aigas, an islet in
4500-420: The Highland gentry. In addition to Simon Fraser and Alexander Macdonald of Sleat, the Sobieski Stuarts listed Norman MacLeod of Dunvegan —who became known as "The Wicked Man"—amongst the senior accomplices. Erskine himself was a "singular compound of good and bad qualities". In addition to his legal career he was elected to Parliament in 1734 and he survived the vicissitudes of the Jacobite rebellions unscathed. He
4600-561: The Jacobites. Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, a key figure in Lady Grange's abduction was himself executed for his part in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 . No concrete evidence of Erskine's plotting against the crown or government has ever emerged, but any threat of such exposure, whether based in fact or fantasy would certainly have been taken very seriously by all concerned. It was thus relatively easy for Erskine to find accomplices amongst
4700-591: The West in 1724/5, the son of Carter Allen (1700–1734), an attorney in the parish of St Clement Eastcheap in the City of London , who had married Emma Hay or Hays at St Giles, Camberwell, in 1724. These details also were not known until 2014. Contemporaries of John Carter Allen had said at his death in 1800 that the late Lord Hillsborough (who died in 1793 and for whom John Carter Allen's younger brother William Allen (1729–1811) had worked as an office clerk) had said that 'he had
4800-519: The above children is known to have died in 1721. There was evidently an element of discord in the marriage that eventually became public knowledge. In late 1717 or early 1718, Erskine received warnings from a friend that he had enemies in the government. At about the same time one of the children's tutors recorded in his diary that Lady Grange was "imperious with an unreasonable temper". Her outbursts were evidently also capable of frightening her younger daughters and after Lady Grange's kidnapping, no action
4900-472: The bed. She spent her days asleep, drank as much whisky as was available to her, and wandered the shore at night bemoaning her fate. During her sojourn on Hirta she wrote two letters relating her story, which eventually reached Edinburgh. One, dated 20 January 1738, found its way to Thomas Hope of Rankeillor, her lawyer, in December 1740. Some sources state that the first letter had been hidden in some yarn that
5000-625: The birth, youth and marriage of a man known by the Gaelic name of Iolair dhearg or the Red Eagle , said to have been recounted by an aged Jacobite in exile, Dr Beaton. After being called to attend the birth of a son to a young woman in Tuscany in 1773, where portraits of the Old and Young Pretenders were prominent, Beaton claimed to have been sworn to secrecy, but later to have seen a baby taken on board
5100-456: The capital, yet they could easily have done so. Whatever the call of morality and natural justice may have suggested, John Chiesley's daughter evidently did not command a sympathetic audience in her home town. In her account of the affair, Margaret Macaulay explores 18th-century attitudes to women in general as a significant factor and notes that although numerous documents from the hands of Lord Grange's friends and supporters are still extant, not
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#17327981300975200-543: The couple and their future children had a life interest and income from properties in Mare Street and Well Street, Hackney . However, sometime about 1807 Thomas Allen formed a connection with a much younger woman, Ann, who was born in Hackney about 1790, and by whom he had five illegitimate children between 1808 and 1829. Her surname is usually given as Salmon (as she had a niece of that name living with her in 1851) but
5300-521: The couple then moved to live in London. In his letter to Chambers just prior to the marriage John asked for a loan of £100 until his wife's dividends were paid but when his father-in-law eventually died in March 1872 the total estate was sworn at 'under £1,500' and later as 'under £2,000'. Thomas Allen's daughter Matilda had married Henry Timothy Boisquet de la Fleuriere, at St Alphege, Greenwich , in 1818, and their son, Napoleon de la Fleuriere (1823–1881),
5400-409: The daughter of a Derbyshire local landowner. The stories, taken together, were designed in a roundabout way to suggest that the brothers' supposed grandfather was in reality Commodore O'Haloran, and that the child, their father (known as Thomas Allen), was in reality the child of Prince Charles Edward Stuart and Louise of Stolberg, and thus de jure monarch of England. William Donaldson has characterised
5500-662: The death certificates of several of her children show it as Burton. The first child, William (died 1878), who used the surname MacGarrow, claimed to have been born in Glamorganshire in Wales but his baptism and the exact whereabouts of Thomas and Ann at this time have not been determined. It is said that from 1816 to 1829 Thomas was based at Boulogne, 'a safe refuge for English debtors'. He certainly had increasing financial problems and in February 1817 he unsuccessfully appealed to
5600-512: The eldest son, as John Hay Allan, published a Genealogical table of the Hays, from William de Haya, cupbearer to Malcolm IV, 1170, down to 1840, with all the branches (Edinburgh, 1840), though his descent is not shown in the book and the parentage of Emma Hay or Hays has not been found. Although frequently referred to as Captain Allen, Thomas Allen never attained that rank. He retired from the Navy as
5700-553: The extraordinary fact of Lady Grange's being sent to St Kilda, and confined there for several years, without any means of relief. Dr Johnson said, if M'Leod would let it be known that he had such a place for naughty ladies, he might make it a very profitable island." There are portraits of both James Erskine and Rachel Chiesley in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, by William Aikman and Sir John Baptiste de Medina respectively. When
5800-413: The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Erskine , for help with the possible sale of some of the property held in trust under his marriage settlement. A last minute attempt to come to an arrangement about it failed and on 17 January 1818, as the result of an action in the Court of King's Bench against Thomas and his son John (in a plea of debt for £300 and damages by James Barstow), Thomas was imprisoned for debt in
5900-502: The insane" among Members of Parliament, and in turn his political opponents would use it against him; one of his staunchest critics, Robert Walpole , who was then the de facto Prime Minister of the country, allegedly stating that he no longer considered Erskine to be a serious political threat as a result of his embarrassing opposition to the Act. His Edinburgh mansion was on the east side of Niddry Wynd (later replaced by Niddry Street) off
6000-574: The island may have prevented her being found by this expedition. By 1740 Lady Grange was 61 years old. Removed from St Kilda in haste, she was transported to various locations in the Gàidhealtachd including possibly Assynt in the far north west of mainland Scotland and the Outer Hebridean locations of Harris and Uist before arriving at Waternish on Skye in 1742. Local folklore suggests she may have been kept for 18 months in
6100-484: The language. She complained that young members of the local aristocracy visited her as she waited by the shores of Loch Hourn, but that "they came with design to see me, but not to relieve me". The Monach Isles , also known as Heisker, lie 8 kilometres (5 mi) west of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides , an archipelago itself lying off the western coast of Scotland. The main islands are Ceann Ear , Ceann Iar and Shivinish , which are all linked at low tide and have
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#17327981300976200-523: The letter caused a sensation in Edinburgh although James Erskine's friends managed to block attempts by Hope to obtain a warrant to search St Kilda. In the second letter, addressed to Dr Carlyle, minister of Inveresk , Lady Grange writes bitterly of the roles of Lord Lovat and Roderick MacLeod in her capture and bemoans being described by Sir Alexander MacDonald as "the cargo". Hope had known of Lady Grange's removal from Edinburgh but had assumed she would be well cared for. Appalled by her condition, he paid for
6300-433: The middle ages; and the influence of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries upon their present condition (Edinburgh, 1845) which, as noted above, received intense criticism. Using the names John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart the brothers followed this with their Tales of the Century, or sketches of the romances of history between 1745 and 1845 (Edinburgh, 1847) in which they provided three scenes of
6400-403: The more poignant ruins on the island of Hirta in the St Kilda archipelago is the site of Lady Grange's House. The "house" is in fact a large cleit or stone storage hut in the Village meadows that is said to resemble "a giant Christmas pudding". Some authorities believe it was rebuilt on the site of a larger blackhouse where she lived during her incarceration, although in 1838 the grandson of
6500-425: The normal fare he and his wife were used to. She lived in isolation for two years, not even being told the name of the island where she was living, and it took her some time to find out who her landlord was. She was there until June 1734, when John and Norman MacLeod from North Uist arrived to move her on. They told her they were taking her to Orkney , but instead set sail for the Atlantic outliers of St Kilda. One of
6600-416: The only means of making the journey was by open longboat, which could take several days and nights of rowing and sailing across the open ocean and was next to impossible in autumn and winter. In all seasons, waves up to 12 metres (40 ft) high lash the beach of Village Bay, and even on calmer days landing on the slippery rocks can be hazardous. Cut off by distance and weather, the natives knew little of
6700-454: The pair hinted at in their 1847 poetry collection, 'Lays of the Deer Forest', as 'Stuart Tales'. These appeared in the Royal Lady's Magazine between 1831 and 1834, and were published almost simultaneously alongside the 'Tales of the Cavalier,' which were precursors to their much later novel, 'Tales of the Century' (1846), and by a series of 'Tales of the Scottish Border' and 'Legends of the Alhambra,' all published either anonymously, or signed with
6800-440: The rest of the world. Lady Grange's circumstances were correspondingly more uncomfortable and no one on the island spoke English. She described Hirta as "a viled neasty, stinking poor Isle" and insisted that "I was in great miserie in the Husker but I'm ten times worse and worse here". Her lodgings were very primitive. They had an earthen floor, rain ran down the walls, and in winter snow had to be scooped out in handfuls from behind
6900-628: The river Beauly, near Eskadale, Inverness, and there, always wearing the Stuart tartan, they held court from 1838 to 1845, attending the Catholic church at Eskadale and being known as 'the Princes'. The house is described as 'a very elegant mansion of the Elizabethan style' in the New Statistical Account of Scotland (1842). On 18 October 1845, John married at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster , Georgina, eldest surviving daughter of Edward Kendall, J.P., of Austrey, Warwickshire. She had, he told Robert Chambers , 'only ten thousand pounds, unless she survives her two sisters, who equally share with her', but
7000-425: The secret of their royal descent had been revealed to them about 1811, that they had fought for Napoleon at Dresden (in August 1813), Leipzig (October 1813) and Waterloo (June 1815) and had learned Gaelic in London. The youngest, Charles Manning Allen, who we now know was not born until 1802, married at St George, Hanover Square, on 9 October 1822, Anna Gardiner, who had an income from property in Ireland and
7100-404: The street and in church and he and one of their children were forced to hide from her in a tavern for two hours or more on one occasion. She intercepted one of his letters and took it to the authorities alleging it was evidence of treason. She is also said to have stood outside the house in Niddry's Wynd, waving the letter and shouting obscenities on at least two occasions. In January 1732 she booked
7200-458: The subject, addressed to him as Ian and signed 'J. T. Stuart Hay' in 1829, seems likely to be bogus. Considerable interest in clans and tartans continued, and the following year, under the name John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart, John and his brother Charles published The Costume of the Clans: with observations upon the literature, arts, manufactures and commerce of the Highland and Western Isles during
7300-614: The tartan industry in Scotland. The brothers' grandfather, John Carter Allen (1725–1800), an admiral in the British navy, had three children: the above-named Lieutenant Thomas Allen (1767–1852), Jane or Jean Allen (c.1768–1829) who married Thomas Robinson, a widower, at Brighton in 1788, and Admiral John Allen (1771–1853). The three were named in John Carter Allen's will, though he bequeathed only £100 to Thomas and £100 and
7400-430: The tenth Earl of Moray (1771–1848), the fourteenth Lord Lovat (1802–1875), the late Marquis of Bute (1793–1848), Thomas Dick-Lauder (1784–1848), and Robert Chambers (1802–1871)'. However, the delusional John Sobieski Stuart, in spite of his expressed desire to withdraw from the public eye, went so far as to claim, in a letter to Chambers, that he and his brother had 'a body of supporters ready to push their claims to
7500-534: The then reigning sovereign Queen Victoria'. "They succeeded in fabricating around them an aura of bogus royalty which attracted the allegiance of a few romantic Jacobites in Victorian times". Herbert Vaughan called their story "an impudent fabrication" and "an unblushing fraud" but it was as Sir Charles Petrie wrote "proof of the hold which the House of Stuart has never ceased to exercise upon popular imagination in
7600-581: The title of Count of Albany and was active in Catholic circles in London but died from the same address (by then called 52 Alderney Street) on a trip to France on the Steamer Rainbow near Bordeaux , 24 December 1880, and was buried at Eskadale. His son Charles Edward Stuart Allen, the last self-styled Count of Albany, died in Jersey in 1882. He had married Lady Alice Hay (1835–1881), a daughter of
7700-441: The twelfth of sixteen codicils to the will of Elizabeth Arnold, his first wife's mother, dated in 1788 and proved in 1789. She left them twenty guineas each and £1,000 to their father. The identity of their mother(s) has not been found. There was much tension in the family later and at one time the youngest son, John, was heard to say of Thomas, 'he is no brother of mine'. John Carter Allen himself had been baptised at St Dunstan in
7800-444: The uttermost'. In June 1829 the elder brother had shown a manuscript, containing tartan patterns and dated in 1721, to Sir Thomas Dick-Lauder who was much impressed by it, but Sir Walter Scott warned Dick-Lauder that the brothers 'are men of warm imaginations ... of much accomplishment but little probity – that is, in antiquarian matters'. Sir Walter Scott, who died in 1832, had rejected the entire notion of clan tartans, saying that
7900-545: The view that the ultimate cause of her troubles was her reaction to her husband's infidelity. In an attempt to end his relationship with Mrs Lindsay, (who owned a coffee house in Haymarket, Edinburgh ), Rachel threatened to expose him as a Jacobite sympathiser. Perhaps she did not understand the magnitude of this accusation and the danger it posed to her husband and his friends, or how ruthless their instincts of self-preservation were likely to be. Rachel Chiesley's tale inspired
8000-663: The work as an act of "solemn self-projection" into a tradition of political myth-making long-established in Scotland. Although the tales were 'copiously augmented with historical notes', in truth Admiral John Carter Allen did not command any ship in 1773, being on half-pay from 1771 to 1775. A strong attack on both the Vestiarium Scoticum and their Tales of the Century then followed and the brothers' ancestral claims, which had received little acceptance in England, and
8100-465: The writer Margaret Macaulay sought them out she discovered they had been placed together in the same cold store. James Erskine, Lord Grange James Erskine, Lord Grange (1679 – 20 January 1754) was a Scottish advocate , judge and politician. He served as Lord Justice Clerk and a Lord of Justiciary . The son of Charles Erskine, Earl of Mar , by his spouse Lady Mary, eldest daughter of George Maule, 2nd Earl of Panmure , he
8200-591: The youngest were still infants, an outcome described as "unnatural" by the Sobieski Stuarts , two English brothers who claimed descent from Prince Charles Edward Stuart. As the Erskines' marriage trouble increased, Lady Grange's behaviour became increasingly unpredictable. In 1730, the factorship of the Preston estate was removed from her, further increasing her angst. Her discovery of an affair her husband
8300-408: Was a cheater seeking to defraud people. The only figure to offer significant opposition to the Act was Erskine. Erskine not only fervently believed in the existence of witchcraft, but, it has been argued, also held beliefs that were deeply rooted in "Scottish political and religious considerations" and which caused him to reject the Act. His objection to the Act "marked him out as an eccentric verging on
8400-401: Was a philanderer and over-partial to claret , whilst at the same time deeply religious. This last quality would have been instrumental in any decision not to have his wife assassinated, and he did not marry his long-term partner Fanny Lindsay until after he had heard of the first Lady Grange's death. The reason no successful rescue was ever effected lies in the remoteness of the Hebrides from
8500-463: Was also brother of John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar . Educated as an advocate , he was raised to the bench on 18 October 1706. He was nominated a Lord of Justiciary in place of David Home, Lord Crocerig on 6 June the same year, and took the title Lord Grange. On 27 July 1710 he succeeded Adam Cockburn of Ormiston as Lord Justice Clerk . He took no part in the Jacobite rising of 1715 , although there
8600-504: Was baptised at Edinburgh and there recorded in the surname Hay on 20 October 1823. Thomas's eldest son, John Carter Allen, calling himself John Hay Allan, had apparently already been in Scotland for some time and in 1822 he published a volume of poems, Bridal of Caolchairn, and other poems (London, 1822) dedicated to the Duke of Argyll , and revealing a fair knowledge of that county but including several allusions to his claimed descent from
8700-594: Was baptised at St Margaret, Westminster, in 1823. According to Matilda, her husband had been in the French service from 1804 to 1814 and from 1832 to 1853, but had been taken prisoner at Trafalgar and did not return to France until 1830. In 1835 using the name Matilda McFleur she then married at St Mary Abbots, Kensington , one Alexander McCaskery (died 1870), a police serjeant in Fulham , by whom she had at least three children. This seems not to have stopped her from soliciting
8800-443: Was called James and had died in 1839. Some believed that he was buried at Old St Pancras, Middlesex (as stated in the introduction to the 1892 edition of his sons' The Costume of the Clans , xvii, and repeated in the Dictionary of National Biography ) and Beveridge added 'but the stone said to have been placed over his grave cannot now be found'. No detail of the educations of Thomas's two sons has been found though they claimed that
8900-492: Was collected as part of a rent payment and taken to Inverness and thence to Edinburgh. The idea of the letter's concealment in yarn is also mentioned by James Boswell in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). However, Macaulay states that this method for the delivery of the letter(s) has "no basis in reality" and that both letters were smuggled off Hirta by Roderick MacLennan, the island's minister. Whatever its route,
9000-450: Was conducting with coffeehouse owner Fanny Lindsay can only have made matters worse. In April of that year, she threatened suicide and to run naked through the streets of Edinburgh. She may have kept a razor under her pillow and attempted to intimidate her husband by reminding him whose daughter she was. On 27 July, she signed a formal letter of separation from James Erskine but things did not improve. For example, she barracked her husband in
9100-475: Was entertained in the great hall, provided with a meal of venison, and slept on a heather bed covered with deerskins. The existence of St Fillan's Pool on the River Fillan near Tyndrum would have provided useful cover for her captors: it was regularly used as a cure for insanity, which would have helped to explain her presence to the curious. The details of the onward route from there are not clear but it
9200-412: Was ever taken on her behalf by any of her children, the eldest of whom would have been in their early twenties when she was abducted. Macaulay writes that "[t]he calm acceptance by the family of their mother's disappearance would persuade many that it need not be a matter of concern to them either". This restraint may have been influenced by the fact their mother had previously disinherited all of them when
9300-403: Was in hiding at 10 Portland Place North, Clapham Road, Lambeth , as 'Mr Salmond'. In the 1841 census he was entered at that address as 'Thomas MacGaradh', aged 70, and born in Scotland. He ostensibly registered the death of his wife Catherine Matilda at Portland Place North, on 14 February 1841, again calling himself Thomas MacGaradh, but describing her as 'Matilda Manning, widow'. When the census
9400-598: Was incarcerated in various remote locations on the western seaboard of Scotland, including the Monach Isles , Skye and St Kilda . Lady Grange's father was convicted of murder and she is known to have had a violent temper; initially her absence seems to have caused little comment. News of her plight eventually reached her home town of Edinburgh and an unsuccessful rescue attempt was undertaken by her lawyer, Thomas Hope of Rankeillor . She died in captivity, after being in effect imprisoned for over 13 years. Her life has been remembered in poetry, prose and plays. Rachel Chiesley
9500-523: Was launched, and in due course British soldiers were ferried ashore to Hirta. They found a deserted village, as the St Kildans, fearing pirates, had fled to caves to the west. When they were persuaded to come down, the soldiers discovered that the isolated natives knew nothing of the Prince and had never heard of King George II either. Paradoxically, Lady Grange's letters and her resultant evacuation from
9600-409: Was nicknamed "Bobbing John" for his varied manoeuverings. After playing a prominent role in the Jacobite rising of 1715 he was stripped of his title, sent into exile , and never returned to Scotland. The young Lady Grange has been described as a "wild beauty", and it is likely the marriage only took place after she became pregnant . This uncertain background notwithstanding, Lord and Lady Grange led
9700-400: Was no skin left on my face with a cloath and stopp'd my mouth again they had wrestl'd so long with me that it was al that I could breath, then they carry'd me down stairs as a corps. Letter written by Lady Grange on St Kilda, 1738 From there she was taken west by Peter Fraser (a page of Lord Lovat ) and his men through Perthshire. At Balquhidder , according to MacGregor tradition, she
9800-633: Was one of ten children born to John Chiesley of Dalry and Margaret Nicholson. Her parents' marriage was unhappy and Margaret took her husband to court for aliment . She was awarded 1,700 merks by Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath , the Lord President of the Court of Session . Furious with the result, John Chiesley shot Lockhart dead on the High Street of Edinburgh as he walked home from church on Easter Sunday , 31 March 1689. He made no attempt to escape and confessed at his trial, held before
9900-509: Was taken a few months later Anne was living with him at this address as Anne MacGaradh. MacGaradh was, his sons said, a war-cry of the Hay family but it was entirely their creation and it seems likely that they or Anne were responsible for their father's statements. The death of Catherine Matilda in 1841 did, however, eventually allow the purchase by Charles of the family's life interest in the trust properties from his father's bankruptcy assignees. It
10000-479: Was the widow of Major Charles Gardiner (1780–1818), the childless only son of General William Gardiner (1748–1806) former British Minister in Brussels and Warsaw and younger brother of Luke Gardiner, 1st Viscount Mountjoy (1745–1798). The marriage was publicised as that of 'Charles Stuart Hay Allen'. However, the couple moved to Scotland after marriage and their first child, Anna Marie Stuart, born 27 July 1823,
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