BILL MCALLISTER: Landmark anniversary year for enduring Highland icon Flora Macdonald whose handsome brass memorial was created by sculptor Andrew Davidson and stands at Inverness Castle
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This year is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Flora Macdonald, currently boxed in on her statue on Castle Hill.
Delving more into her background, I’ve actually discovered the name of the collie dog which gazes up at Flora’s face in the handsome brass memorial created by Inverness sculptor Andrew Davidson.
And the man who stumped up most of the cash for the statue appeared to be a riddle, with two different surnames, but it turns out there’s a simple explanation.
Flora was, of course, living in Skye but visiting Benbecula when Prince Charles Edward Stuart and a small group took refuge there after Culloden. The Prince’s aide, Captain Conn O’Neill from County Antrim, was a distant relative of Flora and asked for her help.
As is well known, the Prince was disguised as a woman as Flora arranged for a ‘speed bonny boat like a bird on the wing, over the sea to Skye’. Despite claims and rumours, she never saw him again after they parted at Portree. When two boatmen confessed, 24-year-old Flora was imprisoned in the Tower of London and her prospects seemed grim – until the Inverness connection.
Flora had been brought up by her father’s cousin, whose wife Lady Margaret Macdonald was secretly a co-conspirator in the plot to rescue the Young Pretender. Lady Margaret approached Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Scotland’s Lord Advocate, a Hanoverian supporter. Forbes’ influence was such that Flora was allowed to live in house arrest in London, besieged with visitors and well-wishers.
Flora was released in the summer of 1747 and three years later married Allan Macdonald of Skye, an Army captain. This year is the 250th anniversary of their inheriting Allan’s family estate.
Macdonald fought in the Seven Years’ War but his estate debts mounted and in 1774 he and Flora emigrated to North Carolina. Their timing wasn’t ideal as the American Revolution began the next year, when Allan raised a 1000-strong royalist militia which included their sons Alexander and James.
In 1776, 30 years after she helped the Prince escape, her husband was taken prisoner and held for 18 months, with the family’s land and goods confiscated.
Allan was appointed Commander of the 84th Regiment of Foot in Nova Scotia, where Flora joined him before returning to Skye in 1780, living with relatives. Her husband rejoined her four years later to take up farming.
Flora was 68 when she died in 1790 and was buried in Kilmuir, Skye. Lady Margaret had preserved the bedsheet in which Bonnie Prince Charlie had slept, and Flora was buried in it in front of 3000 mourners who are claimed to have seen her off in the proper spirit – with 300 gallons of whisky drunk!
Almost a century later there was gathering interest in Inverness in raising a statue to the heroine and it was made possible when Captain John Henderson Macdonald donated £1000. He had served in the 78th Highlanders and was from Caskieben, near Inverurie.
He had been born John Henderson, to William and Alexia Henderson, but later confusion over his surname is triggered by the fact that he opted to take his mother’s maiden name.
Captain Macdonald was living in Brighton, where he was to die in 1894, when the Inverness statue was completed. But his daughter, a Mrs Fraser, performed the official unveiling in 1889, a vast crowd assembling as the wraps fell off what is now an enduring landmark.
Simon Johnson and his friend James Boswell had gone to Skye to meet Flora and Boswell wrote: “To see Dr Johnson, champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora Macdonald was a striking sight”. The cross at Flora’s grave bears Johnson’s tribute: “Her name will be mentioned in history and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.” The phrase is repeated on her Castle Hill plinth.
And the name of Flora’s dog? It turns out to be Flossie! So next time you’re in Castle Street, smile across to Flossie nestling up to his mistress, who has been gazing down the glen towards Skye these past 123 years.
• Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
