Publications of the Scottish History Society

The Lyon in Mourning is a collection of Journals, Narratives, and Memoranda relating to the life of Prince Charles Edward Stuart at and subsequent to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. The formation of this collection was to a great extent the life-work of the Rev. Robert Forbes, M.A., Bishop of Ross and Caithness.

He was the son of Charles Forbes, a schoolmaster in the parish of Rayne, Aberdeenshire, and of Marjory Wright, and was born there in 1708, his baptism being recorded in the parochial register as having taken place on 4th May of that year. He must have been a studious youth, as he was sent to Marischal College, Aberdeen, in or about 1722, at the early age of fourteen, and graduated there as Master of Arts in 1726. He then proceeded to qualify himself for orders in the Scottish Episcopal Church, and coming to Edinburgh in June 1735, he was there ordained priest by Bishop Freebairn. In December of that year he became assistant to the Rev. William Law at Leith, and soon afterwards, at the request of the congregation, was appointed his colleague. At Leith, it may be said, he lived and laboured for the remainder of his life.

Like most of the Episcopalians of that day, he was an ardent Jacobite, indeed one of the most ardent, and but for a timely interposition of the hated Hanoverian' government would not improbably have shared the fate of some of his brethren whose end he chronicles. In that case there would have been no Lyon in Mourning, and it is but fair to say that (though

The Lyon can never be considered, and does not pretend to be, an impartial relation of the events with which it deals, our literature of the Rebellion of 1745 would have been greatly the poorer by its absence. Nay, it may even be said that, but for the continuous energy and single-eyed purpose of Bishop Forbes in this work, much of what is now known on this subject would never have come to light.

On hearing of the advent of Prince Charles Edward in the West Highlands, Mr. Forbes, with two Episcopalian clergymen and some other gentlemen, started off with the intention of sharing his fortunes, but all were arrested on suspicion at St. Ninians, near Stirling, and imprisoned. He notes the fact in the Baptismal Register of his congregation, as follows: 'A great interruption has happened by my misfortune of being taken prisoner at St. Ninian's, in company with the Rev. Messrs. Thomas Drummond and John Willox, Mr. Stewart Carmichael and Mr. Robert Clark, and James Mackay and James Carmichael, servants, upon Saturday, the seventh day of September 1745, and confined in Stirling Castle till Februar y 4th, 1746, and in Edinburgh Castle till May 29th of said year. We were seven in number, taken upon the seventh day of the week, the seventh day of the month, and the seventh month of the year, reckoning from March.'1 An incident of the roping of these prisoners at their removal from Stirling to Edinburgh is narrated by the author.

After his release from imprisonment Mr. Forbes appears to have been invited to reside in the house of one of the most wealthy members of his congregation, Dame Magdalene Scott,

1 Journals, etc., of Bishop Forbes, by the Rev. J. B. Craven, 1886, p. 12. This register is still extant, and one of its counterparts, the register of marriages performed by the Bishop, is printed in the Scottish Antiquary, vol. viii. pp. 125129. See also p. 169. One of the baptisms was that of John Skinner, author of 'Tullochgorum,' who on 8th June 1740 went to Mr. Forbes in his room, and was re-baptized, declaring that he was not satisfied with the sprinkling of a layman, a Presbyterian teacher, he had received in his infancy.'

2 See ff. 916, 987.

Lady Bruce of Kinross, the widow of Sir William Bruce of Kinross, She resided in the Citadel of Leith, and was a strong Jacobite; Mr. Forbes tells how her house was on more than one occasion the special object of the Government's concern, as the Prince himself was supposed to be concealed there.1 For this lady Mr. Forbes cherished the highest esteem, speaking of her as the worthy person, the protection of whose roof I enjoy.' She died in June 1752, aged 82; but before that event took place he had left her house, on the occasion of his marriage to his first wife, Agnes Gairey. This was in 1749,3 and the lady died on 4th April of the following year. He afterwards married, as his second wife, Rachel, second daughter of Ludovick Houston of Johnstone, in Renfrewshire, of whom he makes frequent mention in The Lyon. She was in fullest sympathy with her husband's Jacobite proclivities, and occasionally sent presents to the Prince abroad.

In 1762 Mr. Forbes was chosen and appointed Bishop of Ross and Caithness, and in 1767 he was elected Bishop of Aberdeen by a majority of the local clergy, but the College of Bishops disallowed the election in his case, and another was appointed. How keenly Mr. Forbes felt this action will be seen from his conversation and correspondence with Bishop Gordon of London. He twice visited his diocese in the north, and kept full journals of his progresses. They are similar to a diary of his visit to Moffat, which is inserted in The Lyon, and which was doubtless so inserted because of its concern with certain Jacobite matters; but it is also of interest on other accounts.

In later life, when, from having less to chronicle, he was not so taken up with this work, Bishop Forbes was an

1 See ff. 940, et seq.

• Craven's Journals, etc., p. II.

5 These have been printed, along with a sketch of his life and a history of the Episcopal Church in Ross, in the work by the Rev. J. B. Craven, pp. 139-327. 6 See ff. 1915, et seq.

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