50955: Imprisonment of Lady Grange on St Kilda
An account of the imprisonment of Lady Grange on the island of St Kilda, circa 1733, from Travels in the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790 by Rev John Lane Buchanan. Lady Grange was Rachel Chiesley (1682-c1745), wife of James Erskine, Scottish Lord Advocate. They separated and she accused him (with good reason) of Jacobite sympathies.
Her death was reported in Edinburgh while she was abducted in Niddry’s Wynd and transported to Heisker, North Uist and then to St Kilda, and held against her will, presumably with the complicity of the landowner, Macleod of Dunvegan. Contrary to the suggestion below, she did leave St Kilda and died in Skye. She is popularly believed to have inhabited a large cleit in the centre of the village.
This island will continue to be famous, from its being the place of imprisonment of the Hon Lady Grange, who was, by private intrigue, carried out of her own house, and violently put on board a vessel at Leith, unknown to any of her friends, and left her great personal estate in possession of that very man who entered into this horrid conspiracy against her; he sent her to this wild isle, where she was barbarously used, and at last finished her miserable life, among those ignorant people, who could not speak her language.
A poor old woman told me, that when she served her there, her whole time was devoted to weeping; and wrapping up letters round pieces of cork, bound up with yarn, and throwing them into the sea, to try if any favourable wave would waft them to some Christian, to inform some humane person where she resided, in expectation of carrying tidings to her friends at Edinburgh.
This affair happened about the year 1733, owing to some private misunderstanding between her ladyship and Lord Grange, whom she unfortunately married. But the real cause continues a secret, since her ladyship never returned.
This shocking affair would never have been heard of from that quarter, where secrecy is reduced into a solid system of dangerous intrigue, against residing, but unconnected strangers, had not her ladyship prevailed on the minister’s wife to go with a letter concealed under her clothes all the way to Glenelg, beyond the Isles, and deliver the letter into the post-office, where it found its way to her friends. They immediately applied to Parliament to make enquiry into this barbarous conspiracy; and though a vessel was fitted out from Leith immediately, yet it was supposed a courier was dispatched over land by her enemies, who had arrived at St Kilda some time before the vessel. When the latter arrived, to their sad disappointment, they found the lady in her grave. Whether she died by the visitation of God or the wickedness of man, will for ever remain a secret, as their whole address could not prevail on the minister and his wife, though brought to Edinburgh, to declare how it happened, as both were afraid of offending the great men of that country among whom they were forced to reside.
Some people imagined, that she knew something of the rebellion that broke out in 1745, at that time, and meant to have divulged the secret, which is not very probable.
The minister was the Rev Maclennan and his wife was Catherine Mackinnon; they had evidently fallen out with Macleod, and James Erskine’s agents managed to have their evidence discredited and the authenticity of the letter was questioned. Rev Maclennan accompanied the unsuccessful rescue mission.
Further historical detail is here.
Details
- Record Type:
- Story, Report or Tradition
- Date:
- 1733
- Type Of Story Report Tradition:
- Extract From Book
- Record Maintained by:
- CEU
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