Archibald Cameron of Lochiel

Mezzotint of Archibald Cameron

Archibald Cameron of Lochiel (1707 – 7 June 1753) was a Scottish nobleman, physician, and prominent leader in the Jacobite rising of 1745. He was the personal physician of Charles Edward Stuart and appears in the Jacobite Army muster roll as "ADC to the prince." Dr Cameron was the younger brother of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who led Clan Cameron in the rising, and outlawed Roman Catholic priest Alexander Cameron. After returning to Scotland in 1753, he was captured by the government and, at Tyburn, he was executed for high treason, being the last Jacobite to be executed. In popular memory, he is sometimes referred to as Doctor Archie.

Early life

Cameron arms

Archibald Cameron was born in 1707 at Achnacarry Castle, the sixth child (and third surviving son) of John Cameron, Lord Lochiel and Isobel Cameron, Lady Lochiel (née Campbell).

His father, made Lord Lochiel in Jacobite peerage, had participated in the failed 1715 Jacobite rising and, as a result, had become an exile, living first in Paris and then Boulogne. Archibald Cameron's elder brother was Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who was the Clan Cameron chief in the absence of their father, and is known in Jacobite history as "The Gentle Lochiel".

Aside from Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the Doctor's brothers included John Cameron of Fassiefern (1698–1785), future Roman Catholic priest Alexander Cameron (1701–1746), and Colony of Jamaica sugar planter Ewan Cameron.

Archibald Cameron initially attended the University of Glasgow to study law, before transferring to study medicine at University of Edinburgh. He completed further studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He subsequently returned to the Scottish Highlands, married within the clan to his Lochaber cousin, Jean Cameron of Dungallon, and fathered seven children.

1745 uprising

When Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") first arrived in Scotland Cameron was despatched by his brother to Loch nan Uamh to communicate the futility of the enterprise and persuade the Prince to return to France. However, Prince Charles persuaded Cameron otherwise and soon the Camerons joined him in armed revolt.

Archibald Cameron first saw action in late August 1745, when he helped to lead a fairly futile attack on Ruthven Barracks. In the campaign that followed Cameron seems to have been promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in his brother's clan regiment. The Newgate Calendar's hagiography portrays him as a non-combatant during the Rising, who refused to offer more than his surgical skills, but some historians consider this very likely to be inaccurate since Cameron was slightly wounded in action at the Battle of Falkirk in January 1746.

During the Battle of Culloden, Donald Cameron of Lochiel was shot through his ankles and carried off the field by four of his clansmen, two of whom were later alleged by John Home, based on interviews with John Cameron of Fassiefern, to have been Lochiel's brothers Dr. Archibald and Fr. Alexander Cameron.

Dr. Cameron is also recorded as having performed surgery on his brother's two broken ankles and other injuries after the Battle of Culloden.

The Year of the Pillaging

See also: Raids on Lochaber and Shiramore

The defeat at Culloden ended the Jacobites' hopes, and all three Cameron brothers, along with their father, became fugitives from government troops. After the burning of the family seat, Achnacarry House, the Cameron family hid at Badenoch.

While hiding with him and being treated for the ankle wounds he had received at Culloden, Archibald Cameron's brother, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, was informed, according to historian John S. Gibson, that the people of Clan Cameron were facing starvation due to the confiscation of all their food supplies by government troops. In response, Lochiel immediately took out his purse and gave all the money he could spare to be used to buy food for his Clan. Sir Stuart Threipland, who was in hiding with the Cameron chief, also opened his purse and contributed the additional sum of six guineas.

After a covert meeting and interview with Jean Cameron of Dungallon, the Doctor's wife, about (Scottish Gaelic: Bliadhna nan Creach lit. "the year of the pillaging") on 25 August 1747, Robert Forbes took very detailed notes. According to Forbes, it was very common practice by the red-coats, dispersed up and down the Highlands, to engage in grave robbery in a quest for the linen burial shrouds or whatever other burial goods could also be sold at a profit. The bodies were then left above ground. Mrs Cameron recalled how two of her own children died at that time. Although she was advised "to bury them privately in some remote healthy brae, to prevent their being taken up again; but she could not think of burying them in any other place than where their forefathers were laid". Therefore, both children were buried upon the island cemetery in Loch Arkaig and she had to bribe a Hanoverian sergeant to keep the redcoats from digging up and robbing her children's bodies. According to Forbes, "She and her poor children were behooved to take to the hills, no houses being left in the whole country about them. Mrs. Cameron said she never saw the Prince in his skulking, nor knew not where he was."

In early July 1746, the Doctor's elder brother, Roman Catholic priest and former Jacobite Army military chaplain Alexander Cameron was taken prisoner on the White Sands of Morar, while hiding along the coast of The Rough Bounds in Lochaber. He died on 19 October 1746 after months of prisoner abuse and incarceration in inhumane and unsanitary conditions aboard the prison hulk H.M.S. Furnace.

In his biography of Rob Roy MacGregor, W. H. Murray summarized the traditional code of honour expected and demanded of Scottish Gaels as rooted in the obligations that, "right must be seen to be done, no man left destitute, the given word honoured, [and] the strictest honour observed to all who have given implicit trust..."

Under this code, the events of the "Year of the Pillaging" in Cameron country, as well as the religious persecution and church arsons being committed by the British armed forces against the Scottish Episcopal Church, to which Dr Cameron proudly belonged and particularly the attainder of his elder brother's heirs and the confiscation of the Lochiel estates under the Attainder of Earl of Kellie and Others Act 1746 (19 Geo. 2, c. 26), represented extremely severe insults. Along with the harsh treatment of Cameron clan members still living on the former Lochiel properties by the Forfeited Estates Commission, they very likely contributed to the motivation for Dr Cameron's refusal, even long after other high ranking Jacobite Army veterans had made their peace with the House of Hanover and the Whig political establishment, to abandon his fight for a Stuart restoration.

Meanwhile, despite the danger, the Prince was determined to meet The Lochiel. Archibald Cameron was sent to Loch Arkaig to escort the Prince to the family's hiding place (3 September). The whole party then moved to Ben Alder, the seat of Ewen MacPherson of Cluny, keeper of the Loch Arkaig treasure. At Ben Alder Castle on 13 September 1746 word came that the French Royal Navy were waiting at Loch nan Uamh, and, on this sixth attempt ordered by the Comte de Maurepas, the French Minister of Marine, to find and rescue the Prince, the whole party was finally evacuated to France on 19 September 1746.

Betrayal and execution

Anti-Jacobite broadside depicting Cameron being drawn on a sledge to Tyburn

In exile Cameron remained in Prince Charles's service, travelling with him to Madrid in 1748 and returning to Scotland privately in 1749. In 1753, he was sent back to Scotland again to obtain money from Loch Arkaig and to participate in plans for a decapitation strike of the Government by assassinating George II and other senior members of the House of Hanover. However, while he was staying secretly at Brenachyle near Loch Katrine, his location was leaked to the government by Alastair Ruadh MacDonnell of Glengarry, the notorious "Pickle the spy", and members of Clan Cameron who by this time were sickened by his Jacobitism. For a long time, however, the source inside the Jacobite movement of Dr Cameron's betrayal was incorrectly believed to be Prince Charles' mistress, Clementina Walkinshaw, particularly as her sister was then a lady in waiting to the dowager Princess of Wales.

Archibald Cameron was arrested and, as he had already been attainted for high treason under the Attainder of Earl of Kellie and Others Act 1746 (19 Geo. 2, c. 26) for his part in the 1745 uprising, he was sentenced to execution without trial. He was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle then taken to Tower Hill in London. His wife was pregnant with their eighth child at the time and was among those who begged in vain for a reprieve for the “gentle and humane” physician.

Over the four days before his execution, Dr. Cameron was spiritually counselled and prepared by James Falconar, a non-juring Scottish Episcopal clergyman resident in London, who had been held as a prisoner aboard the prison hulk HMS Furnace with the prisoner's late brother, Alexander Cameron.

On 7 June 1753, Cameron was drawn on a sledge to Tyburn. He addressed the crowd before his death, "Sir, you see a fellow-subject just going to pay his last debt to his King and country. I the more cheerfully resign my life, as it is taken from me for doing my duty according to my conscience. I freely forgive all my enemies, and those who are instrumental in taking away my life. I thank God I die in charity with all mankind. As to my religion, I die a steadfast (tho' unworthy) member of that Church in which I have always lived, the Church of England, in whose communion I hope, thro' the merits of my blessed Saviour, for forgiveness of my sins, for which I am heartily sorry."

According to James Falconar, "Turning to the clergyman he said, 'I have now done with this world and am ready to leave it.' He joined heartily in the commendatory prayer, etc., then repeated some ejaculations out of the Psalms. After which he embraced the clergyman and took leave of him. As the clergyman was going down from the cart he had like to have missed the steps, which the Doctor observing, called out to him with a cheerful tone of voice, saying, 'Take care how you go. I think you don't know the way as well as I do.'"

Archibald Cameron was hanged for 20 minutes before being cut down and posthumously beheaded. James Falconer later wrote a detailed account of his death for non-juring bishop and historian Robert Forbes. Dr. Cameron's remains were buried in the Savoy Chapel, Westminster. He was the last Jacobite to receive the death penalty. In his final papers, written from prison, he still protested his undying loyalty to the House of Stuart and his non-juring Episcopalian principles.

Cameron was buried in the vaults of the Savoy Chapel, off the Strand in London. The Rev. John Wilkinson, who was thought to have Jacobite sympathies, was said to have paid the burial costs himself. There was previously a stained glass window to Cameron, but this was later destroyed. A brass plaque now records the event.

The Clan's territory was being administered by Forfeited Estates Commission factor Mungo Campbell, whose perceived harshness was widely believed in Cameron country to have been at least part of what motivated Dr Cameron's involvement in the 1753 plot. Following the American Revolution, however, the Lochiel estates were belatedly restored to Dr Cameron's grandnephew, Donald Cameron, 22nd Lochiel, under a far more general Act of Amnesty in 1784. The 22nd Lochiel, however, went on to become quite notorious, both for financial extravagance and his role in the Highland Clearances in Clan Cameron country.

Legacy

Assessment

Archibald Cameron is generally regarded as a benevolent figure; his betrayal and execution in 1753 was greatly lamented. According to James Browne in his work A History of the Highlands: "his fate was generally pitied". His benevolence is demonstrated by his having prevented the execution of prisoners after Prestonpans and for treating a wounded Hanoverian officer. It is not certain whether he ever took part in battle with some arguing that he probably did, while others insist he was a noncombatant and that his role was limited to being a physician. Furthermore, there was also perceived indignation surrounding the cruel method, and place of execution: Tyburn was the location for the executions of low-born criminals, whereas the nobility were traditionally executed at Tower Hill, where for example in 1747, Lord Lovat was beheaded.

There have been numerous proposals as to why Cameron was executed. Generally, it is thought that his overt attainder and execution served as a final warning to the Jacobite cause and any further attempts conceived. His own account given in his memoir is that it was "to cover the Cruelty of murdering me at [such a] Distance of Time from the passing of [the act of attainder]." According at least one 20th-century historian, the real reason for using an old bill of attainder as grounds to execute Dr Cameron without a formal trial was to protect the cover of Alastair Ruadh MacDonnell, the then-Tanist of Glengarry, as the highly damaging Hanoverian mole inside the Jacobite movement known as "Pickle the Spy".

Even so, Sir Walter Scott later commented that Dr. Cameron's execution, "threw much reproach upon the Government, and even upon the personal character of George II, as sullen, relentless, and unforgiving."

In popular culture

• In 1753 John Cameron (Scottish Gaelic: An Taillear Mac Alasdair) of Dochanassie in Lochaber, composed (Scottish Gaelic: Òran d'on Doctair Chamshròn) "A Song to Doctor Cameron", an Aisling song in Gaelic in commemoration of Cameron's life and lamenting his absence from the Clan's lands after his death. The Gaelic text of the poem and a parallel translation into English blank verse were included in John Lorne Campbell's groundbreaking volume Highland Songs of the Forty-Five.
• Cameron appears in D. K. Broster's novel The Flight of the Heron (1925), and is a leading character in its sequel The Gleam in the North (1927), which fictionalises the events leading up to his execution.

Sources

• Kybett, Susan Maclean (1988). Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography. London: Unwin Hyman. ISBN 0044402139.
• Mackenzie, B. W. (1971). Dr. Archibald Cameron, Medical History. pp. 230–240.
• Scott, Sir Walter (1824). Redgauntlet.
• Stewart of Ardvorlich, John (1974). The Camerons: A History of Clan Cameron. Clan Cameron Association.
• Turner, Roger (2004). "Cameron, Archibald". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4435. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

External links

• Clan Cameron Archive