Series 1 > Loyall dissuasive

INTRODUCTION
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may have gone to London, where he came within reach of the
Penny Post, p. 182. He was free apparently up to March
1692, as the descent on England expected about that time had
changed his purpose of going to France in that month. He
was again arrested and sent to the Edinburgh Tolbooth.
Here his imprisonment now became more miserable. The
Edinburgh Tolbooth was the filthiest place of the sort in the
kingdom, the public passage near it being termed the ‘ stinking
stile.’ In this disgusting den we find our friend in 1695,
when proceedings were taken against Breadalbane on 10th
June. These long imprisonments without trial are a lasting
disgrace to William of Orange and his Scottish advisers.
Nevil Payne was ten years in prison untried. Sir yEneas seems
to have been already five years off and on untried, and Lord
Breadalbane was also imprisoned for some considerable time,
and discharged untried. The Lord Advocate Stewart knew
that Breadalbane and the Macphersons were on opposite sides,
and that Sir yEneas was conversant with all the questionable
proceedings in the pacification of the clans, in which the noble¬
man had a principal hand, and he turned to the prisoner in
hope of supplying the missing links in his evidence against the
peer. We have only Sir yEneas’s own account of the thoroughly
correct attitude he maintained, but it is supported by the
result of Breadalbane’s discharge, no case being found, and by
the general esteem in which the name of Sir yEneas was, and is,
held in the Highlands. Had he betrayed even an enemy and
a Campbell in the circumstances, his name would not have
maintained its lustre. His imprisonment lingered on after
that of Breadalbane, and terminated in an act of banishment
by the Privy Council. Reaching London on his way to
France, he was again arrested, and after long detention and a
new act of banishment, he at length reached the footstool of
King James at St. Germains. There an allowance was given
. him, but inferior to that of several who had suffered less, and
had smaller claim.