From James Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Kingdom of Scotland with Samuel Johnson:

Isle of Skye; September 13, 1773.

Last night's jovial bout disturbed me somewhat, but not long. The room where we lay was a room indeed. Each bed had tartan curtains, and Mr. Johnson's was the very bed in which the duke was to have lain in Armadale, but which he abandoned in his flight.

 

At breakfast we spoke to Miss Flora of her acclamation in Edinburgh, where the prince jested with her, chiding her for helping his enemy. She told him, she said, that she would have done the same thing for him had she found him in distress.

 

It was not the escape that had destroyed Cumberland's reputation, Mr. Johnson opined, but his abandonment of the field, both at the Spey and at Armadale, where the field was but a village wedding. And his appearance before his sailors attired in women's clothing had only added insult to eclipse. " 'Billy the Lily' Cumberland," said he with a chuckle. "I hear that during his retirement in Bath, where he confined his strategizing to the game of whist, wags were given to presenting him with lilies. He would then rant and rain curses down upon all present, until he was at last carried away by a burst blood vessel."

 

"If not for his royal connections he'd have faced court-martial, as did Cope," Kingsburgh suggested, whilst his wife sat demurely refreshing our teacups.

"The war upon the Continent might have been won had Cumberland returned there," I said, "instead of leaving France even stronger for the next conflict. It was in that struggle that young General Wolfe did well enough to save Hanover itself from France's grasp, even though he himself died in the hour of his victory. Just as well he never knew how his victory contributed to our present stalemate."

 

Mr. Johnson shook his head gravely, having always been of the opinion that had the English army been able to return from Germany then Charles would never had retained his separate throne. But, conversely, if England had been able to abandon the Scottish frontier, and its garrisons in Hanover, and those in Ireland as well-which, encouraged by Prince Charles's Catholic Emancipation act, took the opportunity to rise-then perhaps the Continental wars of the last decades could have been won.

 

Still, Mr. Johnson went on to speak of the present political situation, which meets with his approval: how the French ship bringing Prince Charles' father and brother to Scotland most conveniently-by English measures, at the least-sank in a storm, leaving the prince to take up the crown of Scotland as Charles III. How, finding himself with no heirs acceptable to any British person save for his rivals the Hanoverians, he wed the minor Austrian princess who became mother to his daughter, Charlotte, the Princess of Albany, who has recently wed in turn young George III of England.

 

I have heard that Charles himself, disappointed in his hopes of the British throne, now contents himself with drunken rages. Perhaps all his victory at the Spey wrought for Scotland was to spare it the reprisals of a victorious Cumberland-who can say? For now the same economic forces which worked to unite our two countries almost seventy years since are now working to unite them once again. Why, I myself was drawn to London to seek my fortune, as Mr. Johnson never fails to remind me, saying that the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to another country.

My heart was sore to recollect that Kingsburgh had fallen sorely back in his affairs, was under a load of debt, and intended to go to America. I pleased myself in thinking that so fine a fellow and his strapping sons would be well everywhere.

 

The MacDonalds could easily find occupation in the British Highland regiment lately raised by Lord North upon Queen Charlotte's entreaty, eager as she is to find employment for her countrymen. And eager as he is to remove her countrymen, doughty fighters as they are, from the borderlands. Such a regiment, Mr.

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