Hiya, I'm Bruce Fummey. Flora Macdonald and the Countess of Nithsdale, two Jacobite women
made famous in two different Jacobite uprisings, both were involved in dramatic escapes, and both
spent time in the Tower of London, but for very different reasons, and they were different women.
One's a household name, the other many folk won't have heard of
until today. Now in my video 'Whatever Happened to Flora Macdonald', I told the story of Flora's later
life, but I asked if folk knew of her daring escapade with Bonnie Prince Charlie. Of course most
folk knew about the celebrity Jacobite, but some didn't and wanted to, so I thought I'd try to keep
everyone interested by comparing Flora's story to that of the less well-known Lady Winifred Maxwell,
and at the end I'll ask you to choose your favourite in the comments section below. If you're
interested in the people, places and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe
button on the bottom right of the screen. In the meantime, let me tell you the story of two escapes.
Their names give you the first difference between these two Jacobite heroines;
Lady Winifred Maxwell, the Countess of Nithsdale, was nobility.
Now Flora wasn't at the bottom of the ladder, but she certainly wasn't nobility.
Her deceased dad was a Highland Taxman, so you could say that she was the daughter of a Sergeant Major,
whilst Lady Winifred was the wife of a General. Now a Highland Taxman's daughter gives you another
difference between these two women, Flora was from the Outer Hebrides, but in spite of the, you know
what people imagine, the, this claymore wielding, tartan-clad Highlanders, Lady Nithsdale was Border nobility.
They really couldn't have been further apart and Lady Winifred was the real deal
Jacobite. Flora, well, maybe we should summarise the story for the folks who don't know it. Come with me.
Flora's stepdad is one-eyed Hugh Macdonald. Now I know that sounds like a pirate, but he's actually
a career soldier, and a Captain in the British Militia raised by Macdonald of Sleat on Skye,
and as the post-Culloden hunt for Bonnie Prince Charlie headed from the inner to the outer islands of the
Hebrides, he was in charge of the hunt. Now he may or may not have mentioned at the interview
the later boast, that he was one of the first to greet the Prince on his arrival
on the islands the year before. Such were the complexities of politics and vocation
in those challenging times. One day Flora is asked if she's ever met the Prince
and she replies that she'd not had that happiness before, and didn't seek it now.
Okay then, how about spending a night in a mountain hut in South Uist and see what happens?
Now in spite of rampaging Redcoat soldiers and troublesome times, Flora says aye all right.
In the hut she's woken in the middle of the night and introduced to Bonnie Prince Charlie
and a small entourage. It's suggested that she should take a boat back to the Inner Hebrides,
over the sea to Skye you might say. Her motivation for the trip would be to visit her mother
and more importantly, she'd take with her a maid servant, who would bear a striking resemblance
to a Pretender and drag. Now if you're struggling to capture the image, then think
Freddie Mercury in the Queen video, 'I Want to Break Free'. I wish I had a hoover (vacuum cleaner). Now, initially
Flora refused, complaining of the impact on her reputation, until the Prince himself implored her
with all the charm, eloquence, and self-centred determination, for which he was famed.
The next day, on the way to organise the ugly sister's outfit, Flora is detained by Redcoats
from the Macleod militia. You see she has no travel papers, and she has to spend the night in jail,
but the next morning she's taken to the local Officer in charge, who happens to be
her stepfather. He says Cinders, you shall go to the ball and releases her with a gold-plated
travel document that she and her maid servant would need to cross to Skye, along with a letter
confirming that she's visiting her mum and that her maid Betty Burke's awful good at sewing.
She's thus able to collect her high status drag queen and some oarsmen who happen to
be soldiers in the same militia searching for the Prince, and captained by her stepdad,
and so they make the journey through the night in British shipping. In Skye the next day
they turn up at Monkstad, the house of a chief of Macdonald, to find out that he's not there, but the
Captain of the Macleod militia is. Macdonald's Jacobite sympathising wife, starts running around like
a chicken that's lost its hat, and something even more important that it can't quite remember.
Flora calmly chats to the captain the Macleod militia as if there's nothing wrong, and she saves
the day. Bonnie Prince Charlie later escapes and Flora finds herself shipped to the Tower of London.
When the Prince of Wales himself visits her in prison, he asks her why she's helped this
rebellious Pretender, and she says that she would have similarly helped him if he was in need. Flora
Macdonald might be considered an innocent young woman with her life ahead of her, transformed by one
weekend's events, partly engineered by Jacobites and her British army militiaman's stepfather.
She's a celebrity to this day because of her role in the closing events of the '45.
That was all the 1745 Jacobite uprising. In my video about the end of the 1715, which you can find
using this white tab, or maybe a link at the end. I talked about the leaders of the captured
southern Jacobites. Of William Maxwell, Fifth Earl of Nithsdale I said that I'd have to come back
to his story in another video. The Earl of Nithsdale had met his wife, and our other heroine Lady Winifred
Maxwell at the Jacobite court in exile. He'd taken a prominent role in the Jacobite army of the 1715
uprising. Now this was no cloak and dagger militiamen operating in the shadows from
within the British army, no no no, the Maxwells were out and out, no holds barred, balls to
the wall, definitely my final answer, come on the Celtic Jacobites, and as such the Earl of Nithsdale
was sentenced to be removed from his head, and he was awaiting execution in the Tower of London.
Lady Nithsdale rode on horseback from the Scottish borders, through winter snow to seek
an audience with King George the First, where she pitifully pleaded for her husband's pardon,
but to no avail, and so on the eve of his execution, Lady Winifred Maxwell went to the
Tower of London for her last, sorrowful visit with her husband in this life.
With her she took a friend, a tall pregnant woman called Mrs Mills. On the way in Mrs Mills covered
her face with a handkerchief, natural enough to cover wailing and sobbing wouldn't you say?
Once inside, Mrs Mills removed a second layer of clothes which she'd worn over her own.
These, along with pregnancy, had made her look more large and ungainly than a normal large woman in
real life. You might even say a bit like a man dressed in drag. All the time the piteous wailing
covered the sound of scaffolding being erected around about the head of Lord Nithsdale, so after
serious sandblasting, heavy rouging and the most complete reconstruction of his male features that
powder and paint would allow, he emerged from the chrysalis a woman, probably even more ugly
sister-ish than Betty Burke who crossed the Minch 30 years later. The question is, would the guards
buy it? Mrs Mills left first, this time upright and dignified, clearly not the same woman who'd entered.
I suppose we must have miscounted. With Mrs Mills now waiting outside, Lord and Lady Nithsdale
dallied until late enough for the winter's day to consider putting on its cloak,
but just before anyone thought to brighten it with candles. It was the perfect time for Lady Nithsdale
to leave with a large woman, hunched and sobbing into that same handkerchief that covered her face,
even more manly than on the way in. Can you imagine how slow time must have passed as they walked
past the guards, every step weighed down by the terrifying possibility of two heads rolling in the
morning instead of one. Once passed, the façade had to be maintained as you walked away, all the time
hearing the sound of your each vertebrae grinding as suspicious eyes bore deep into them. Outside Mrs
Mills greeted her masculine doppelganger, to whisk him off into the London night, but for Lady Maxwell
the terror wasn't over. She had to walk back past the guard into the death chamber, to spend the next
few hours holding a mock conversation with her husband, mimicking his voice followed by hers
all the time knowing that if discovered, his release would have been her sacrifice.
She finally left the Tower of London to find her husband in an upstairs attic room
in a non-descript street in London. They spent three days with nothing but some bread and wine.
As the nooks and crannies of London were searched, they remained in bed, no doubt shivering, but not
from cold. If they stayed in bed, there'd be no noisy footsteps to be heard by any investigators
downstairs, and then by night, Lord Nithsdale was spirited to the house of the Venetian Ambassador,
and then to the Continent via Dover. Lady Maxwell continued her risks as she remained in Great
Britain to settle affairs, before escaping to the Continent. They lived out their lives where they'd
met at the Jacobite Court in exile. They tell me Lady Winifred was even a nanny to the Bonnie
Prince, who emulated her great escape with his trip over the sea to Skye, all those years later.
Now here's the important bit where you've got to choose, who's the greater heroine, Winnie or Flora?
Both were involved in daring escapes, both accompanied men in drag, both brushed the Tower of
London. On the one hand, Flora Macdonald, a clans woman from a middle ranking family, in the Outer
Hebrides, who eventually gave in to persuasion and accompanied the Prince who'd started the 45. She'd
shown grace under pressure, but hoped to return to her daily life after the events of that weekend
with her life changed forever. On the other hand, Winifred Maxwell, a high-born noble woman and
committed Jacobite, whose husband had risked all for the cause, and for whom she now risked all in
return, pleading, planning, devising and carrying out an audacious escape, knowing that she must live out her
life in exile, should she survive. Let me know your choice in the comment section below, and click here
for the story of Flora after her escapades with Bonnie Prince Charlie.
In the meantime, tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.