New Spalding Club > Records of Invercauld MDXLVII - MDCCCXXVIII [1547- 1828]

480 RECORDS OF INVERCAULD.
inveterate Enem}', therefore his Sentence is already engraved on a Brass
Plate, with a Steel Pen to this Purpose, Let him be despised and hated
by those whom lie supported rather through Fear than Love ; Let his
corrupt and carnified Soul become one Substance with his rotten,
nauseous, putrid Body, linger and dwindle away his wretched Life
with unpitied Remorse, and a Complex of loathsome Distempers 'till the
old Woman, who shall have him in Charge, after he is forsaken by his
Physicians, smother him between the Blankets, lest she should catch his
unheard-of Distempers. At that Juncter shall Satan stand at his right
Hand to receive the inseparable Sfiul and Body, in order to bear them
hence to his dark Regions, and there to be used as his Perfidy here upon
Earth deserved.
" I was just going to ask him what should become of Sir A — x — d — r
McD[onal]d, when he prevented me, by giving me to understand that he
could not exceed his Commission, and telling me that he, when in Time
was called Lord Straithellen, who was killed or rather butcher'd in the
Battle of C[ulloclen], and with all commanding me to write all I had seen
and heard, and enclose it in a Strong Box, which I was to cast into the
Lake, that it might fall into some friendly Hands, and escape those of the
Enemy, who wou'd not hesitate to brand it with the Epathet of a Fiction,
and use it accordingly.
" Having thus spoke he claped his Wings to his Side, and soar'd up
towards Heaven, in a Pillar of Light, leaving me in the Dark, with regard
to my Question with inumerable others, which I design'd to propose,
had ills Lordship stayed longer
P' I N I S."
Sir Alexander McDonald and the Laird of McLeod, "the two chiefs
who reigned in Skye," declined to join the Prince in Glenfinnan. " It
was their good fortune, as the first appealed to, to have taken up this
position, for they were perseveringly kept to it by President Forbes."
There was therefore no breach of " oaths or protestations " on their part
— conduct veiy different from the false protestations of Lovat.
In the article {Estate Pa/>ers) on Easter Migvie the record there
given extended only to the acquisition of the property by Invercauld.
The following two papers, since discovered, carry the proprietory history
much further back, and may be of some interest to many of those who
are now connected with it under its new designation of HOPEWELL.