Historical trivia

[regshoe]

So, something that's puzzled me for a while about the opening of Flight of the Heron: there were, historically, two companies of the Royal Scots ambushed at High Bridge and taken captive by the MacDonells, and (if my knowledge of army structure is correct) each company ought to have had a captain, but the history books I've read so far only ever mention one captain, Captain John Scott—who appears in FotH. There, of course, the other captain is Keith Windham, and I wondered whether the identity of the real second captain was lost to history and Broster simply slotted her character into the gap. But now I'm reading The Lyon in Mourning, a collection of letters, journals, speeches and eyewitness accounts relating to the 1745 rising put together by the Jacobite clergyman Robert Forbes, and it appears the name of the other captain is recorded: he was a Captain James Thomson, and he was taken prisoner alongside Scott and the rest. He must have escaped at some point, because he turns up again later on, in charge of a party of Jacobite prisoners and attempting (unsuccessfully) to persuade his superiors to treat one of these prisoners more humanely:

...dreading the worst from this harsh usage he [Buchanan of Arnprior] sent for Captain Thomson, who very readily came to him, and after some conversation upon the unexpected change of treatment desir'd to know what he could do for him. Mr. Buchanan beg'd he would wait upon the commanding officer... Captain Thomson frankly undertook to do as he desir'd, and without loss of time, honestly represented the whole affair to the commanding officer, who said he was heartily sorry for the gentleman, but that it was not in his power to do him any service, because the Solicitor-General was come to Carlisle, and that (now he was in the place) his province it was to determine in these matters. Captain Thomson did not stop here, but like one of generosity and compassion, went directly to the Solicitor-General and laid before him the case of Mr. Buchanan, requesting him to consider it and to allow the gentleman a more easy and comfortable confinement.

I like to think Keith would have approved of his real-world counterpart. :D

Comments

[regshoe]

Huh, there was a mention of Sweetenham (or Switenham—the inconsistency of eighteenth-century spelling keeps you on your toes when reading contemporary accounts!) as a prisoner being handed over to the Prince in one of the bits I read today, but I didn't know he was in a similar situation to Scott—that is interesting. I suppose Scott and Thomson/Keith would have heard of what happened to Sweetenham before they set out—the Government forces clearly weren't having great luck at this time!

Sweetenham was actually the one who, on his way back, warned Cope not to go over the Corryarrick, which pleases me, because it means that when Keith fails to escape at Fassefern in my current AU, the battle at the Corryarrick is not actually a separate AU branching point. : D

How very neat :D