Dance Culloden's Fancy 1476

The Right Honourable Duncan Forbes, M.P., 5th Laird of Culloden, Lord President of the Court of Session, was one of those great men who are little understood in their own time and little known in later times. He was a statesman, an advocate, a genealogist, a peacemaker, a poet and, above all else, a Highlander dedicated to the best interests of his country and its people.

Forbes was born in Inverness-shire, at Bunchrew on the Beauly Firth, on 10 November, 1684. His early education was at Inverness where his family maintained a town house, The Horns. He continued his studies at Edinburgh and Leiden in the Netherlands. In 1709 Forbes became Sheriff of Mid-Lothian and was a member of Parliament for Inverness in 1722. In 1725 he became Lord Advocate and in 1737 Lord President. It has been suggested that his meteoric rise to positions of power was brought about by the Campbells of Argyll combined with his own personal loyalty to the Hanoverians. This is probably quite true, for both John, 2nd Duke of Argyll (1678–1743) and his brother Archibald, Lord Islay and, later, 3rd Duke (1682–1761), were the puppeteers of the Scottish members of Parliament. The House of Hanover he recognised as the legitimate rulers of Great Britain. It was also said that Forbes was the unofficial servant of John Hay, 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale, the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Forbes must have known that there was agonising trouble ahead for Scotland for, after the Rising of 1715, he proposed that the government raise Highland regiments, their colonels to be leaders whose loyalty to the Crown was above reproach, or at least relatively stable, and whose officers would be chosen form the highest ranks of the clan hierarchy throughout the Highlands. Thus was brought into existence the famed Highland regiments, the earliest being the Black Watch, the Royal Highland Regiment, the 42nd regiment of the line.

When the first rumours of another Jacobite rising became a nightmare in the flesh, Forbes did everything in his power to thwart it. Through his efforts and persuasive ability, the town of Inverness remained loyal to the Whig government and many of the chiefs of the most powerful Highland clans did not order their people into battle for Prince Charles Edward. As the only representative of the government in the north after Sir John Cope’s defeat at Prestonpans on 19th August, 1745, Forbes redoubled his peacemaking activities. He recognised the handwriting on the wall and he saw only too clearly, after the bitter experiences and savage reprisals that followed the massacre at Glencoe, 13 February, 1692, and the Rising of 1715, what would be the terrible fate of the Highlanders who took up the burning cross for the Jacobites. It is, indeed, a paradox that the battle of Culloden, when the hungry, weary and ill-equipped volunteers for Prince Charles Edward clashed with the trained and seasoned professionals under Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, should have taken place very nearly on the doorstep of old Culloden House, the ancestral seat of Duncan Forbes, on 16 April, 1746.

In spite of all his good offices, the punishment meted out to the defeated Jacobites was as horrible as Forbes had imagined. Again he pleaded, this time for the rebel Highlanders after Culloden, and for his pains he was dubbed “that old maid” by Cumberland and fell into Hanoverian disfavour. Forbes died on 10 December, 1747, less than six months after the Disarming Act, which forbade on pain of death or transportation the wearing of the kilt or of tartan in any form as well as the playing of the bagpipes, wsa made into law.

There are other sides to the character of Duncan Forbes besides that of a misunderstood arbiter who tried so heroically to prevent battle between two twenty-five year old royal boys. Forbes enjoyed entertaining and he was an expansive host. He was reputed to be a rather heavy drinker and even as a young man he and his brother were called “the greatest boozers in the North”. To have earned such a reputation he must have been capable of drinking vast quantities for Scotland then boasted many of the gentry who spent as much upon spirits as they did upon home, family and farms. Perhaps with one eye on the national revenue and the other upon his own table at Culloden House which was stained red from spilled claret, he deplored heartily the fact that Scots of all classes were giving up their traditional early morning tumbler of ale, brandy or whisky in favour of the newly introduced cup of tea. Even more infamous to Forbes was the government’s curtailing of the import of claret in the hope that the British would drink more domestic port.

Forbes courted and married the acoomplished and elegant Miss Mary Rose, the daughter of Hugh Rose, 15th Laird of Kilravock Castle in Nairnshire. Unhappily, his young wife died soon after the birth of their son and Forbes remained a widower for the rest of his life.

Duncan Forbes also had time to turn his hand to poetry and song writing and some sources claim for him the authorship of “Ah, Chloris” to the tune of “Gilderoy”, “Lucky Nancy” and “Love is the Cause of My Mourning”, but the honour is up to critical debate.

Stenhouse wrote a fitting epitaph for Forbes in his Illustrations when he said: “It may safely be affirmed, that a worthier man, a better lawyer, a more discerning and upright judge, or a more clear-headed, steady and patriotic statesman than Duncan Forbes of Culloden, never existed in any country or age. A chaste and masterly marble statue, reckoned to be the chef d’œuvre of the celebrated sculptor Roubillac, has been erected in the Parliament-house at Edinburgh, as a tribute of gratitude and resepect to the memory of this truly great and good man.”

A trifle hyperbolised, perhaps, but better too much than too little in this instance.