Description
the small lock of hair pinned to a velvet pad, contained in an envelope, with various hand written notes and description
Footnote
Provenance:
Previously in the collection of Colonel MacDonald, great-grandson of Floral MacDonald. Given by him to a Mrs MacLeod of Inverness, and thence to a Mr Paterson of Bridge of Allan in 1884.
Sold by Lyon & Turnbull circa 1975-80, to the current private Scottish collector.
Note:
Flora MacDonald was born in 1722 to a tenant farmer on the island of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Her father died when she was still a child, and her mother was abducted and then married by Hugh MacDonald of Skye, leaving Flora to be brought up by the chief of her clan, the MacDonald's of Clanranald and was later educated in Edinburgh.
After his defeat at the Culloden in 1746 Bonnie Prince Charlie fled to the island of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, and the twenty-four year old Flora was at that time visiting her brother on the island. After persuading her to help him escape the island undetected, Flora persuaded the commander of the local militia, her stepfather, to grant her a pass of the mainland by boat for herself, two servants and a crew of six. The young pretender was disguised in a dress as Irish spinning maid Betty Burke, until he reached Skye where Flora was able to find him help; and thus she became the quintessential heroine of the Jacobite cause.
Unfortunately upon arriving in Skye people became suspicious, and though Bonnie Prince Charlie was able to escape, Flora was arrested and sent to the Tower of London, she was allowed to live out with the confines of the tower for a time, under the watch of a gaoler, until her release in 1747. She later married, and moved with her new husband to North Carolina for a period, however her husband was captured while fighting for the Hanoverian forces during the War of Independence, and upon his release they returned to Scotland via a short stay in Nova Scotia. The voyage home was anything but quiet, and after their ship was attacked by privateers, she was injured in the arm after refusing to take shelter below deck.
Flora and her husband took up residence on the Isle of Skye and she remained there until her death in 1790. During her time in Skye she met Samuel Johnson, the English essayist who was travelling in Scotland for a period, and after meeting her he recorded ''her name will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour."