riding furiously through the country in quest of the fugitives.

NOTE 23.—­JACOBITE SENTIMENTS

The Jacobite sentiments were general among the western counties, and in Wales.  But although the great families of the Wynnes, the Wyndhams, and others, had come under an actual obligation to join Prince Charles if he should land, they had done so under the express stipulation, that he should be assisted by an auxiliary army of French, without which they foresaw the enterprise would be desperate.  Wishing well to his cause, therefore, and watching an opportunity to join him, they did not, nevertheless, think themselves bound in honour to do so, as he was only supported by a body of wild mountaineers, speaking an uncouth dialect, and wearing a singular dress.  The race up to Derby struck them with more dread than admiration.  But it was difficult to say what the effect might have been, had either the battle of Preston or Falkirk been fought and won during the advance into England.

NOTE 24.—­THE CHEVALIER’S IRISH OFFICERS

Divisions early showed themselves in the Chevalier’s little army, not only amongst the independent chieftains, who were far too proud to brook subjection to each other, but betwixt the Scotch and Charles’s governor O’Sullivan, an Irishman by birth, who, with some of his countrymen bred in the Irish Brigade in the service of the King of France, had an influence with the Adventurer much resented by the Highlanders, who were sensible that their own clans made the chief, or rather the only strength of his enterprise.  There was a feud, also, between Lord George Murray, and James Murray of Broughton, the Prince’s secretary, whose disunion greatly embarrassed the affairs of the Adventurer.  In general, a thousand different pretensions divided their little army, and finally contributed in no small degree to its overthrow.

NOTE 25.—­FIELD-PIECE IN THE HIGHLAND ARMY

This circumstance, which is historical, as well as the description that precedes it, will remind the reader of the war of La Vendee, in which the royalists, consisting chiefly of insurgent peasantry, attached a prodigious and even superstitious interest to the possession of a piece of brass ordnance, which they called Marie Jeanne.

The Highlanders of an early period were afraid of cannon, with the noise and effect of which they were totally unacquainted.  It was by means of three or four small pieces of artillery that the Earl of Huntly and Errol, in James VI’s time, gained a great victory at Glenlivat, over a numerous Highland army, commanded by the Earl of Argyle.  At the battle of the Bridge of Dee, General Middleton obtained by his artillery a similar success, the Highlanders not being able to stand the discharge of musket’s-mother, which was the name they bestowed on great guns.  In an old ballad on the battle of the Bridge of Dee, these verses occur:—­