Lurking!
The north-west angle of the castle courtyard. There was probably a small chapel in this end of the west range as indicated by “a dressed stone holy water stoup in the courtyard wall at the northern end” which I have read about but never remembered to look for.
After the 1745 rebellion, the government published lists of Jacobites that had participated, and against each name they recorded the last known status of the individual. As their houses were often watched or raided without warning, quite a number of returning rebels lived in the vicinity of their houses, perhaps on the moors nearby, from where they could come down periodically for food. On the government lists these individuals were listed as “Lurking”!
After making his way back to Pitsligo Castle after the Battle of Culloden, Lord Pitsligo like other “lurkers” was able periodically to visit his wife, where clothes were provided to enable him to disguise himself as a mendicant or beggar. Lady Pitsligo’s maid was employed to help make the clothes. “He sat beside her while she made them, and she long related with wonder how cheerful he was, while thus superintending this work, which betokened the ruin of his fortune, and the forfeiture of his life.” He was to lurk around Buchan for the remaining 16 years of his life.
Particularly in the early years, while the search was being prosecuted with great enthusiasm, he was often forced to live in conditions severe for any man, let alone one of 66 years of age. He lived for a while in a hollow under a bridge near Craigmaud, spending the days lying out in heather on the bleak moors nearby, hoping that the alarmed behavior of the lapwings would not give his position away.
He was to have numerous close escapes. On one occasion while out walking the road across the Craigmaud moors, a troop of dragoons came cantering towards him. With nowhere to hide, he sat down on the roadside and played his role as a mendicant, begging alms of the dragoons when they approached him. The situation brought on an asthma attack so severe that one of the dragoons donated a coin to the venerable old man, “condoling with him at the same time on the severity of his cough”.
On another occasion “Lord Pitsligo had sought and obtained shelter in a shoemaker’s house, and shortly after, a party of dragoons were seen approaching. Their errand was not doubtful; and the shoemaker, who had recognized the stranger, was in the greatest trepidation, and advised him to put on one of the workmen’s aprons and some more of his clothes, and to sit down on one of the stools, and pretend to be mending a shoe. The party came into the shop in the course of their search; and the shoemaker, observing that the soldiers looked as if they thought the hands of this workman were not very like those of a practiced son of king Crispin, and fearing that a narrower inspection would betray him, with great presence of mind, gave orders to Lord Pitsligo, as if he had been one of his workmen, to go to the door and hold one of the horses, which he did accordingly. His own composure and entire absence of hurry, allayed suspicion, and he escaped this danger. He used afterwards jocularly to say,—‘he had been at one time a Buchan cobbler.’”
Lurking!
The north-west angle of the castle courtyard. There was probably a small chapel in this end of the west range as indicated by “a dressed stone holy water stoup in the courtyard wall at the northern end” which I have read about but never remembered to look for.
After the 1745 rebellion, the government published lists of Jacobites that had participated, and against each name they recorded the last known status of the individual. As their houses were often watched or raided without warning, quite a number of returning rebels lived in the vicinity of their houses, perhaps on the moors nearby, from where they could come down periodically for food. On the government lists these individuals were listed as “Lurking”!
After making his way back to Pitsligo Castle after the Battle of Culloden, Lord Pitsligo like other “lurkers” was able periodically to visit his wife, where clothes were provided to enable him to disguise himself as a mendicant or beggar. Lady Pitsligo’s maid was employed to help make the clothes. “He sat beside her while she made them, and she long related with wonder how cheerful he was, while thus superintending this work, which betokened the ruin of his fortune, and the forfeiture of his life.” He was to lurk around Buchan for the remaining 16 years of his life.
Particularly in the early years, while the search was being prosecuted with great enthusiasm, he was often forced to live in conditions severe for any man, let alone one of 66 years of age. He lived for a while in a hollow under a bridge near Craigmaud, spending the days lying out in heather on the bleak moors nearby, hoping that the alarmed behavior of the lapwings would not give his position away.
He was to have numerous close escapes. On one occasion while out walking the road across the Craigmaud moors, a troop of dragoons came cantering towards him. With nowhere to hide, he sat down on the roadside and played his role as a mendicant, begging alms of the dragoons when they approached him. The situation brought on an asthma attack so severe that one of the dragoons donated a coin to the venerable old man, “condoling with him at the same time on the severity of his cough”.
On another occasion “Lord Pitsligo had sought and obtained shelter in a shoemaker’s house, and shortly after, a party of dragoons were seen approaching. Their errand was not doubtful; and the shoemaker, who had recognized the stranger, was in the greatest trepidation, and advised him to put on one of the workmen’s aprons and some more of his clothes, and to sit down on one of the stools, and pretend to be mending a shoe. The party came into the shop in the course of their search; and the shoemaker, observing that the soldiers looked as if they thought the hands of this workman were not very like those of a practiced son of king Crispin, and fearing that a narrower inspection would betray him, with great presence of mind, gave orders to Lord Pitsligo, as if he had been one of his workmen, to go to the door and hold one of the horses, which he did accordingly. His own composure and entire absence of hurry, allayed suspicion, and he escaped this danger. He used afterwards jocularly to say,—‘he had been at one time a Buchan cobbler.’”