This thread was originally written and published in July 2019.

The year is 1715 and over in France, James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, is plotting once again to try and regain the Stuart Crown, which would make him King James VIII of Scotland and III of England and Ireland.

In London, Scottish noble and politician John Erskine, Earl of Mar, jumps the gun. He returns to Scotland from serving the Hanoverian government and raises the Jacobite standard at Braemar on September 6th. He was nicknamed “Bobbing John” for the frequency with which he would change sides.

Drawn to Mar’s rising is one William Mackintosh( the younger) of Borlum. The Mackintoshes of Borlum were minor Scottish landowners, relations of Lachlan Mor, 16th Chief of Clan Mackintosh.

Borlum was raised and educated in Aberdeen. Not much is known of this part of his life but he does seem to have been at (or hanging around) Oxford University and he did marry an English lady there. So at the very least he was important enough to be ingratiated into society. Sometime around 1688, Borlum found himself in the service of the French Army. As a Jacobite sympathiser it was logical that he may have left his adopted home to fight for its enemy because of the Glorious Revolution which ended the Stuart line that year.

We lose track of Borlum until around 1698 when he returned to Inverness-shire as a seemingly successful career soldier; Brigadier Borlum. With this he gets himself a “commission of fire and sword” from the Privy Council and a Commission of Supply from the Scottish Parliament; fundamentally he is to enforce the law, as he sees fit, on the behalf of the crown, and collect taxes on its behalf too. We pick up his trail again in 1714 when he is acting as an agent on behalf the Old Pretender, trying to persuade Clan Mackintosh and its forces to take the Jacobite side in any future rising. And when Mar raises the standard in Braemar the following year, the Mackintoshes were there front and centre.

However the rising was handicapped by its leader, Bobbing John, who was anything but a competent military strategist. The 1715 will become characterised by his indecisiveness and poor decision making. In October, Mar and the Mackintoshes, formed into a battalion of 13 companies, were at Perth, as is Borlum. Mar wants to encourage the Jacobites in the south of Scotland and north of England to rise and join the cause, so hits on the idea of sending a raid into the Lothians to capture Edinburgh. The eager and seemingly competent Borlum is put in charge of this mission.

The forces assigned to him were 2,500 men in 6 regiments; Strathmore’s, Mar’s (including the Farquharsons), Logie Drummond’s, Nairne’s, Lord Charles Murray’s and the Mackintosh’s. All except Strathmore’s Fifers were of the Gàidhealtachd – Gaelic-speaking highlanders.

It’s not clear what the precise orders or plans given to Borlum were. He may have just been given the gist of Mar’s idea and left to get on with it. But all along the East Neuk of Fife he had fishing boats rounded up and impounded as transport for a cross-Firth raid. The 11th and 12th of October were chosen for departure; you can imagine the prospect of crossing the Forth in small, open boats; a distance of some 18-20 miles from the East Neuk; in the dark, at the start of winter. Unsurprisingly, things didn’t start well. Strathmore’s regiment ended up marooned on the Isle of May. The Excisemen of Leith, patrolling in their cutter, picked up 40 of them men and arrested them. Other boats were driven back to Fife by the weather.

But somehow or another 1,500 men, including all of Borlum’s Mackintoshes, managed to make the Lothian coast. But they were scattered miles from Edinburgh and he now had to waste time rounding up his forces between Haddington and Tranent. On the morning of October 14th, Borlum took a roll call and then marched rapidly west for Edinburgh, striking out while the iron was hot (ish) but before any of the forces he left behind in Fife could catch up and join him. He was to have been reinforced by Haddingtonshire (East Lothian) Jacobites under George Seton, the 5th Earl of Winton, but the authorities had foreseen this and “invited” Seton to appear before them in Edinburgh. When he refused and called out his men, they arrived with Dragoons and thoroughly ransacked the family seat. He had to scatter, and ended up joining with other Jacobites later on in Kelso.

By now, Borlum’s situation was as follows; at least 1/3 of his men were missing, he was days behind schedule, his reinforcements were non-existent and his arrival was forewarned. But despite all this, our hero was not to be discouraged and pressed on with the mission and towards Edinburgh. In his task of capturing the city, he is to be assisted by Major Thomas Arthur, who had a month previously with his brother tried to take the castle by surprise for the Jacobites. This raid had been something of a farce, let down by a drunk or double-crossing carpenter who had arrived late with assault ladders which were 6 feet too short and by impetuous (and drunk) youths who talked too loud in a tavern and gave the game away.

But there is a snag with Thomas Arthur’s assistance however as he happens to be stuck on the wrong side of the Forth, having been on one of the boats that turned back. So when Borlum arrives at Jock’s Lodge on the outskirts of Edinburgh, he does not have his inside man with him. This is doubly unfortunate as apparently the company of local volunteers holding the Bristo Port (the south gate to the city) were Jacobites to a man and were keeping the gates unlocked and their weapons trained the “wrong” way. Borlum could have walked right into the city, but of this intelligence he knew nothing.

Enter stage right one Alexander Malloch of Moultriehill. Moultriehill, or Multree’s Hill, is the higher ground to the north of the Old Town of Edinburgh, between the present day Picardy Place and St. Andrew Square. Malloch is a Jacobite and convinces Borlum that the town is “crowded with armed militia” and that reinforcements of regular government soldiers under John Campbell, Duke of Argyle, are expected imminently.

So instead of pressing on west into Edinburgh, which he believes on Malloch’s advice to be a trap, Borlum turns north instead for Leith. He walks into the undefended town without a shot being fired and takes the Tolbooth; the main civic building, which included jail facilities. Here he finds and liberates the 40-odd men (minus their officers) that had been captured by the Excisemen on the Isle of May.

Having freed his men, this called for a celebration and so Borlum’s forces took the Customs House too and liberate the quantities of wines and spirits located within. Devoid of any real plan, Borlum finds Cromwell’s 60-year old Citadel in better repair than anyone imagined and so holds up there behind the remains of its walls and bastions. The missing gates are barricaded shut, ships cannons are requisitioned as defensive firepower and supplies (inevitably including more drink) are gathered.

It seems that Malloch was right about Argyle’s reinforcements however; the general was indeed on his way and the next morning he arrives outside the Citadel with 2 squadrons of cavalry; 2 companies of The Earl of Forfar’s Foot; 300 volunteers of the Edinburgh Regiment; 650 other militia and for good measure; and the Edinburgh Town Guard, who had been most insistent on coming along.

Argyle too was surprised to find The Citadel to be quite such a sturdy defence, with Borlum well dug in behind its walls. This poses both sides a problem; Argyle has brought no artillery to attack the walls, but Borlum has little gunpowder. So Argyle draws his men up outside the Citadel‘s wals, well within the range of a musket shot, and challenges the Jacobites to surrender. Borlum in response laughs and taunts Argyle, but cannot fire upon his men. The sensible Argyle sees he has no reason to risk his forces and make an assault that will likely cost him heavily and so turns about for Edinburgh to summon his artillery. Borlum is also sensible – he realises that when Argyle returns with his fire support that he cannot hope to hold out and so under cover of darkness and at the low tide, his men sneak out of The Citadel, ford the Water of Leith and skirt round the north of the town along the beach. For some reason the 40 men freed from the Tolbooth are left behind (possibly because they are officer-less and can’t or won’t join one of regiments formed of the other clans). Abandoned in Leith, they make the best of a bad situation and occupy themselves with the remains of the Custom House.

Borlum’s Jacobites, probably down to 1,000-odd men by now, sneak along the coast as far as Musselburgh, at which point they encounter the militia of the Honest Toun and a brief and ineffective firefight ensues. Once again his presence has been given away, so they simply bypass Musselburgh and press on east. The encounter has made them alert to the prospect of chasing forces and when a horseman is spotted on the road somewhere near Prestonpans he is challenged by an advanced party of Borlum’s men. However the challenge is apparently issued in Gaelic and the horseman can’t understand the Highlanders (and neither they him) and so just to be sure be sure he is shot. Alas, the body is found to be Alexander Malloch of Moultrieshill, who had set out on his own initiative to find and help Borlum.

Shortly afterwards, more men are discovered on the road and just to be sure, they are given the shoot first, ask questions later treatment too. Alackady, those bodies are found to be Borlum’s own scouting party, heading back to report after checking the route ahead of the main column. Things really weren’t going well. Borlum’s flight from Leith ends at Seton House, home of the Earl of Winton. But he finds no warm welcome as the Laird had already departed and the government Dragoons have turned the place over.

A brief attempt was made by Borlum to regroup at Seton house but Argyle has dispatched General Wightman (victor at Glenshiel in the 1719 Jacobite uprising) who is on his way. Finding the position indefensible, once more Borlum melts away into the night. He marches south for Kelso where he hopes to find the other Jacobites, but finds that the Earl of Winton and the Haddingtonshire Jacobites had fallen out with their Northumbrian “allies” and had retreated to Perth to join the main body of the Earl of Mar’s forces. And so Borlum joins up with the Northumbrians and seals his fate alongside the other Scottish Jacobites who enter England to support the rising there. Like most of his kin he is captured after surrendering to vastly superior forces at Preston. He and the other leaders are spirited south to London to stand trial for high treason.

Borlum is held at Newgate to await sentencing, but he and his compatriots manage to overcome and disarm the guards, knock through a wall and fourteen others escape into the maze that is 18th century London. Escaping with Borlum is the leader of the English Jacobites, Thomas Forster. There is a theory that the escape was all too convenient and that Forster was a turncoat; his surrender at Preston betrayed his cause and was connived with the Government

Despite the £500 bounty on his head, Borlum slips out of London. Apparently the mob romanticised him as some sort of noble Highland hero, and ballads were composed in his honour. Note the last line.

Mackintosh is a soldier brave,
And did most gallantly behave,
When into Northumberland he came
With gallant men of his own name.

Then Mackintosh until Wills he came,
Saying “I have been a soldier in my time,
And ere a Scot of mine shall yield,
We’ll all lie dead upon the field.”

Mackintosh is a gallant soldier,
Whit his musket over his shoulder,
“Every true man point his rapier,
But damn you, Forster, you are a traitor”

Brigadier Mackintosh of Borlum makes it successfully to France and joins the other Jacobite exiles there. But ever true to the cause, he declines to stay on in the relative safety of France and returns instead to Scotland to take part in the even less successful rising of 1719. He is at the Battle of Glen Shiel when his old pursuer, the efficient General Wightman, snuffs out the rising by introducing the Highland army to mortar fire.

On the run yet again, Borlum heads for Caithness and hides out in the hills for a while. But he is soon apprehended and is taken to Edinburgh. Despite by now being an old man he is thrown into solitary confinement at the castle, where he lives out his days. How solitary his imprisonment actually was seems to be debatable as he is apparently engaging with Edinburgh society at this time. And so ends the tale of our unlucky adventurer; spends the last 25-odd years in captivity. Too important to let go and not important enough to be worth pardoning in exchange for loyalty. He departed this world aged 85 of decay* on the 11th January 1743 at the age of 80.

* – decay was used to records deaths due to unknown causes, usually old age.

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