Description
of slightly tapered cylindrical form with concave lip and three moulded girdles, with attached handwritten note
Dimensions
22.5cm high, rim 8cm diameter (approximately)
Footnote
Notes:
The attached note reading 'Drinking cup belonging to Forbes of Culloden 70 years ago given by him to his ghillie whose son and daughter, an old pensioner before her death gave it to Mrs Souter Byrnie (?)'
Duncan Forbes, Lord Culloden 10 Nov 1685 - 10 December 1747 was a Scottish politician during the first half of the 18th century. During his years at school in Inverness he and his brother became well known for their sociable nature, to such an extent that the pair became well known as 'the greatest boozers in the north'. Indeed, on the death of his mother in 1716, Forbes and the rest of the funeral party became so drunk that they turned up to the burial place, only to find they had forgotten the body!
In his later years, ill health having curbed his alcohol consumption, Forbes became increasingly politically active, particularly in the Whig cause. During the Jacobite uprising of 1715 he was notable for his loyalty to the Hanoverian cause, his brother joined forces with the infamous Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, to raise forces in support of the government. However, his increasingly public admonitions of the way the rebel prisoners were treated after the Battle of Sherrifmuir, aligned him more and more with the Jacobite cause. In the lead up to the 1745 uprising, Forbes travelled to the highlands to talk to many of the clan leaders, particularly Lovat in an attempt to dissuade them from supporting the Stuart claim to the throne, and after Culloden was again vocal about the cruelties inflicted by the Duke of Cumberland.
The increasing stress caused by his difficult position during the uprising ultimately lead to his death in 1747, however his legacy had by then become one of endeavouring for humanity, rather than of drunken prowess.