Masonic Miscellany

political apostasy meant there would be no mercy. Also tried with Kilmarnock was George Mackenzie, 3rd Earl of Cromarty, Scottish Grand Master in 1737-38, who similarly pleaded guilty: “I was unhappily seduced from that loyalty [to George II], in an unguarded moment, by the arts of desperate and designing men,” but no sooner did I awake from that delusion, “than I felt a remorse for my departure from my duty; but it was then too late.” This was disingenuous, for Cromarty had engaged to support Charles Edward in 1740. Cumberland was determined to destroy him, because of his role in pursuing General Loudoun after the humiliating “Route of Moy.” But the pregnant Lady Cromarty’ s passionate appeals to the Prince and Princess of Wales won a reprieve for her husband, who was kept in prison for two years and then ordered to never leave the south of England. His son, the eighteen year-old John Mackenzie, Lord MacLeod, who also fought against Loudoun, pleaded his youth and duty to his father, and he too was imprisoned for two years. After his release, MacLeod traveled to Berlin, where Field Marshall James Keith wrote Chancellor Tessin, to recommend him to Swedish military service. MacLeod then provided a valuable liaison between Jacobite-Prussian-Swedish military planning, while rising to a prominent position within Swedish Masonry.

The third prisoner was Arthur Elphinstone, who inherited the title of 6th Lord Balmerino on 5 January 1746. After his arrest in 1716, he escaped to France, where he became close to Mar, who expressed his full trust in him. He resided in France until 1734, when his dying father gained a pardon for him, without his own knowledge. After receiving permission and financial support from James III, he returned to Scotland, where he maintained a low profile and periodically visited France. Andre Kervella affirms that Balmerino was “a Freemason of high rank,” and some French historians claim that he served as a Grand Master and initiated Masons at Avignon in 1736. As noted earlier, the term Grand Master was still sometimes used in France and Britain to address the Master of a lodge, a usage that probably pre-dates the Grand Lodge of England.

In 1745 Kilmarnock’ s son Charles Boyd served in Balmerino ’s regiment in Scotland. After Culloden, Balmerino helped Prince Charles escape and then told his Masonic brother Elcho that if the prince’s troops did not reassemble he would give himself up. He knew that he would lose his head, but he was too old to hide out, and he “could meet death with firmness,” which “would gain reputation thereby.” In prison he calmly requested that his friends drink him “ain degrae ta haiven,” which a later Masonic commentator interpreted as a reference to taking his “last degree” as a Master Mason.

Unlike Kilmarnock and Cromarty, Balmerino did not plead guilty and defiantly defended his role in the rebellion as a just and honorable cause. He was so disturbed by the allegation that Kilmarnock and Prince Charles had ordered “ no quarter” be given to government troops that he interrogated Kilmarnock and continued to reject the charge as “an invention” by the government “to justify their own murder, or murderous scheme.” He was probably correct, for no copy of the letter which supposedly contained the order has been found, and William Lowe notes that “doubts exist about the authenticity of the order that came into Cumberland’s hands.”

By Marsha Schuchard