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Updated: June 7, 2025
The mother of the laird sat in the midst of her daughters, mourning for him, and looking from the window of the tower, as though, in every form that appeared in the distance, she expected to see him, or at least to gather tidings regarding him, when information was brought to her that he was the prisoner of Murray of Elibank.
The sun upon the Weirdlaw hill, In Ettrick's vale is sinking sweet. There is a fire of autumn colour in the tufted woods that embosom Fernilea. "Bother the setting sun," we say, and the Maid of Neidpath, and the "Flowers of the Forest," and the memories of Scott at Ashiesteil, and of Muckle Mou'd Meg, at Elibank.
'Your most obedient and most humble Servt., The following undated 'Information' appears to have been written by Pickle on his return from France, early in December. It is amazing to find that, if we can believe a spy, Lord Elibank himself was in the plot.
The Stuart Papers, we have said, contain no hints as to the Elibank plot of November 1752, unless Goring's scruples were aroused by it. James's Palace, and seize the King. Pickle's letters to his English employers show that the design was abandoned, much to his chagrin. As Glengarry, he expresses the same regret in a letter to Edgar. We now offer Pickle's letters.
Then we display Pickle in action, we select from his letters, we show him deep in the Scottish, English, and continental intrigues. He spoils the Elibank Plot, he reveals the hostile policy of Frederick the Great, he leads on to the arrest of Archibald Cameron, he sows disunion, he traduces and betrays.
Such was Sir Gideon Murray of Elibank; and, although the young laird of Harden conceived that he had come upon him as "a thief in the night" and some of my readers, from the transaction recorded, may be somewhat apt to take the scriptural quotation in a literal sense yet I would say, as old Satchel sings of the Borderers of those days, they were men "Somewhat unruly, and very ill to tame.
Meg made a bad exchange when she left Elibank with the salmon pool at its foot for bleak Harden, frowning over the narrow "den" where Harden kept the plundered cattle. There is no fishing in the tiny Harden burn, that joins the brawling Borthwick Water. The burns of the Lowlands are now almost barren of trout. The spawning fish, flabby and useless, are killed in winter.
He was as good as his word, and threw some pleasing motives into the northern scale. But, indeed, Mr Johnson loved all that he heard from one whom he tells us, in his Lives of the Poets, Gray found 'a poet, a philosopher, and a good man'. My Lord Elibank did not answer my letter to his lordship for some time. The reason will appear, when we come to the Isle of Sky.
To Mrs Thrale in particular, whose enchantment over him seldom failed, I was much obliged. It was, 'I'll give thee a wind. 'Thou art kind. To attract him, we had invitations from the chiefs Macdonald and Macleod; and, for additional aid, I wrote to Lord Elibank, Dr William Robertson, and Dr Beattie.
His chief French friends were ladies Madame de Vasse, Madame de Talmond, and others. Montesquieu, living in their society, and sending wine from his estate to the Jacobite Lord Elibank; rejoicing, too, in an Irish Jacobite housekeeper, 'Mlle. Betti, was well disposed, like Voltaire, in an indifferent well-bred way.
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