Tales Of The Wayfarers Tavern

Beyond The Revenge

After Betrayal comes Revenge... The Chisholms take revenge for past betrayals, with the help of several local Highland Clans. Find out how Alexander Chisholm and her father John, cope with someone or something guiding their destiny for good and evil. Their destiny affects many others too. Is revenge ever worth the retributions that may follow?

More exciting adventures with the Chisholms as the 1745 Jacobite risings loom ever closer, and how that starts to shape their lives.

If you enjoy Outlander or the Jacobite Chronicles, you'll love this series.

Latest Review... I have now read both books available so far in this series. Absolutely love them both! If you are an Outlander, Lady of Hay type of reader these will definitely appeal to you. The books are very well researched with great historical and geographical accuracy. Most important of all they are a good read, a "can't put down" book. Highly recommended.

Images below are all tagged when clicked on. These can all be visited to bring the novels alive.

Fort William, although it wasn't visited by the Chisholms in the tales, except James, it is mentioned.

Two more images of the Wayfarers Tavern. One showing inside and how it looks like everyone just got up and left one day!

Another image of Castle Lachlan showing how it was well protected by water, or from those attacking by land anyway.

The other four images are Drovers Inn on the A82. Looking almost the same as when it would have been visited by the Chisholms, the MacGregors and many others in the 18th-century. 

Historical Notes And References. 

Prologue – Prince Regent – French Invasion

Charles became increasingly supportive of the idea of rebellion unassisted by invasion or by support of any kind from abroad. On 23 December 1743, owing to his limited ability to travel to Britain, James named his son Charles Prince Regent, giving him the authority to act in his name.

In January 1744, his father believed he had managed to obtain the de facto renewed support of the French government. Following this mistaken belief, Charles Edward travelled covertly to France from Rome, initially under the guise of a hunting party. However, neither the French Government nor King Louis XV had officially invited Charles. Nevertheless, by February, the French government had agreed to support a planned invasion of England, hoping to remove British forces from the War of the Austrian Succession Charles then travelled to Dunkirk with the purpose of accompanying a French Army across to England. The invasion never materialised, as the French fleet was scattered by a storm in the spring equinox, losing 11 ships. By the time it regrouped, the British fleet realised the diversion that had deceived them and resumed their position in the Channel.

After the failure of the planned invasion, Charles remained in France, staying at several places, including Gravelines, Chantilly and Paris, leasing a hilltop house in Montmartre in May 1744. Owing to his expenditure on his wardrobe, attendants and drinking, Charles became in debt to the amount of 30,000 livres. With news of this and following the failed invasion, the French attempted to encourage Charles to return to Italy by refusing to pay him a monthly subsidy. However, when he could no longer afford the rent on the house in Montmartre, the Archbishop of Cambrai agreed to lend him his country estate near Paris where he stayed until January 1745. Charles then moved to the country house of Anne, Duchess of Berwick in Soissons, following repeated attempts by the French to encourage him to leave the Paris region. However, Charles continued to travel regularly to Paris during this period, often incognito and frequenting the hotels of the city to meet with supporters.

Chapter 2 – Pennyroyal

Pennyroyal has a strong fragrance similar to spearmint and was used for centuries to flavour food, wine and herbal teas. Pennyroyal extracts were also used as a traditional herb and folk remedy; a particular use was to stimulate menstruation and, in higher concentration to induce abortion . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK548673/

Chapter 3 – Regular and Irregular Wife/Marriage

https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/article/irregular-marriage-and-kirk-session-scotland

Chapter 4 – French Invasion & Jacobite Plot Discovered

 In 1743 a group of leading English Tories including the Duke of Beaufort, the Earl of Barrymore, Lord Orrery, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Sir John Hynde Cotton and Sir Robert Abdy sent a letter to Lord Sempill, the chief Jacobite agent at the French court in 1743.

They asked Sempill to approach the French government on their behalf with an invitation to invade England on behalf of the Old Pretender. French troops under the Protestant Marshal de Saxe were to join the Young Pretender and invade at Maldon in Essex, where they would join local Tories. An invasion force was fully prepared for February 1744, only for the worst storm of the century to ravage the French fleet, sinking several ships and forcing the rest back to shore.

Chapter 5 – Consummation Of Marriage

For my storylines I needed some form of Consummation - In Scotland, although marriage was formed by simple consent and required no formalities or consummation, the bedding rituals were widespread but unstructured; a couple simply wanted someone to see them in bed together. A couple could also be pressured into marriage in this way: The bedding ceremony refers to the wedding custom of putting the newlywed couple together in the marital bed in front of numerous witnesses, usually family, friends, and neighbours, thereby completing the marriage. The purpose of the ritual was to establish the consummation of the marriage, either by actually witnessing the couple’s first sexual intercourse, or far more often symbolically, by leaving before consummation. It symbolized the community’s involvement in the marriage. The legally binding nature of the ceremony varied greatly from place to place.

Chapter 6 – Drover’s Inn – Tolbooth – Town Guard

DROVERS INN - Opened in 1705, The Drovers Inn is one of the oldest licensed premises in Scotland and located at the northern tip of Loch Lomond. It takes its name from the Highland drovers who used to drive their cattle down the side of Loch Lomond to the markets. One of the most famous drovers was Rob Roy MacGregor (1671-1734), the famous Scottish folk hero and outlaw.

https://www.exploringgb.co.uk/blog/the-drovers-inn-scotland

TOLBOOTH - The Old Tolbooth was an important municipal building in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, for more than 400 years. The medieval structure, which was located at the northwest corner of St Giles’ Cathedral and was attached to the west end of the Luckenbooths on the High Street in the Old Town, was first established in the 14th century by royal charter. Over the years it served a variety of purposes such as housing the Burgh Council, early meetings of the Parliament of Scotland and the Court of Session. The Old Tolbooth was used as a jail where judicial torture was routinely carried out. From 1785 executions, which previously had taken place at the Mercat Cross or the Grassmarket, were carried out on the roof of a two-storey extension on the west side of the Old Tolbooth which provided a platform equipped with a gallows so that the public could view hangings. Prisoners taken to the Old Tolbooth were tortured using implements such as the boot or pilliwinks. Jougs were attached to the exterior of the building. These were iron collars for chaining up offenders in public view, like a pillory. Spikes were also employed to exhibit body parts taken from executed prisoners. The heads of the most notorious were placed on, “the prick of the highest stone”: a spike on the Old Tolbooth’s northern gable facing the High Street. For instance the Regent Morton’s head was stuck there from 1581 for 18 months. The head of Montrose was on view from 1650 to 1660 until replaced by the Marquis of Argyll’s head in 1661.

Edinburgh’s foremost 18th century historian, Hugo Arnot, wrote the following detailed description of the prison to expose the shocking conditions within. - The liberality and humanity of the English, in erecting so magnificent a building for a jail as Newgate, deserve the highest applause. The state of Edinburgh Tolbooth is far otherwise. There the austerity of the law, and the rigour of an unfeeling creditor, may be gratified, in their utmost extent. In the heart of a great city, it is not accommodated with ventilators, with water-pipe, with privy. The filth collected in the jail is thrown into a hole within the house at the foot of a stair, which, it is pretended, communicates with a drain; but, if so, it is so compleatly chocked, as to serve no other purpose but that filling the jail with disagreeable stench. This is the more inexcusable, since, by making a drain to the north, over a very narrow street, such a declivity might be reached, that, with the help of water, of which there is command, the sewer might be kept perfectly clean. When we visited the jail there were confined in it about twenty-nine prisoners, partly debtors, partly delinquents; four or five were women, and there were five boys. Some of these had what is called the freedom of the prison, that is, not being confined to a single apartment. As these people had the liberty of going up and down stairs, they kept their rooms tolerably clean swept. They had beds belonging to themselves; and in one room, we observed a pot on the fire. But, wherever we found the prisoners confined to one apartment, whether on account of their delinquencies, or that they were unable to pay for a little freedom, the rooms were destitute of all accommodation, and very nasty. All parts of the jail were kept in a slovenly condition; but the eastern quarter of it (although we had fortified ourselves against the stench), was intolerable. This consisted of three apartments, each above the other. In what length of time these rooms, and the stairs leading to them, could have collected the quantity of filth which we saw in them, we cannot determine. The undermost of these apartments was empty. In the second, which is called the iron room, which is destined for those who have received sentence of death, there were three boys: one of them might have been about fourteen, the others about twelve years of age. They had been confined about three weeks for thievish practices. In the corner of the room, we saw; shoved together, a quantity of dust, rags, and straw, the refuse of a long succession of criminals. The straw had been originally put into the room for them to lie upon, but had been suffered to remain till, worn by successive convicts, it was chopped into bits of two inches long. From this, we went to the apartment above, where were two miserable boys, not twelve years of age. But there we had no leisure for observation; for, no sooner was the door opened, than such an insufferable stench assailed us, from the stagnant and putrid air of the room, as, notwithstanding our precautions, utterly to overpower us.

TOWN GUARD - “His Majesty’s Company of Foot within the Town of Edinburgh” The City or Town Guard was the Scottish capital’s main defence and police force throughout the 18th century. The Town Guard of Edinburgh was a civic unit of armed guards founded to keep the city’s streets and wynds safe. It was unique in the world because, despite its red uniform and hierarchy of captains, sergeants and corporals, the Guard was an entirely civic institution acting as the strong arm of the Town Council with the Lord Provost at its head. The Guard was founded in the 1680s at a time when religious and political turmoil made Edinburgh a dangerous place. Their duties included patrolling the streets by day and by night to suppress any riots or disturbance, attending official occasions such as the King’s birthday, and keeping law and order during public executions. They were initially based in a purpose built Guardhouse on the High Street, just uphill from the Tron Kirk, but in the 1780s they moved in to the infamous Tolbooth. The Town Guard was not popular in Edinburgh. They were the object of hatred and ridicule, and contemporary accounts and portraits of the time do little to restore their reputation. Drunkenness and violence were rife among the recruited men, and corruption and abuse of power among the captains.

Chapter 7 & Chapter 16 – Edinburgh – Nor Loch

A fetid, disease-ridden abyss. Life in Edinburgh’s Old Town was miserable. The rapid expansion of the Old Town within the confines of the city walls committed tens of thousands of citizens to unbearable suffering with little chance of escape. The sky-high tenements, rooms stacked upon rooms in an ungainly fashion, became gaols for rich and poor, the wealthiest commandeering the top floors to be as far away as possible from the maze of foul-smelling streets and wynds below. Typically, families resided in a single room, sometimes together, and the narrow thoroughfares became a putrid sea of human and animal excrement. Scavengers, paid by the council, swept the streets each evening, removing the filth and depositing it beyond the walls; however, rain often washed it into Nor’ Loch, the swamp that bordered one side of Castle Rock, a site for public executions and witch trials, and the only source of water for many of the Old Town’s residents.

‘Auld Reekie’, as Edinburgh became known, was not a reference to the stench of the city’s streets, but a nod to the smoke pollution that hung cloud-like over the Old Town, produced by the open fires in the crowded tenements. During the daytime, the streets were packed with market stalls of fishmongers, butchers, bakers, candle-makers, weavers and other craftsman, many of whom had been attracted by Edinburgh’s royal burgh status from as far afield as France and the Netherlands. The bloodletting of carcasses and the degutting of fish took place on the streets, with the bodily fluids pooling beneath. But the Old Town was a vibrant and noisy place, dominated by the sounds of tradesman selling their merchandise, animals freely milling around, residents laughing, calling and chatting, and crowds jeering at the sight of miscreants being punished, or hanged, at the Mercat. Each evening, at ten o’clock, the sound of a drum would instruct residents to retire to their tenements, with the gates to the closes, the small courtyards that led off the main streets, locked overnight. Life in Edinburgh’s Old Town trapped the city’s residents in more ways than one.

https://hiddenscotland.com/journal/the-history-of-edinburghs-old-town

As the Old Town became ever more crowded during the Middle Ages, the Nor Loch became similarly polluted, by sewage, household waste, and general detritus thrown down the hillside. The loch was never used as drinking water but there were wells beside it.

The Nor Loch fulfilled a variety of other roles during this period including:

Defence: Edinburgh was repeatedly attacked by various factions from the Middle Ages to the 18th century, including during the Wars of Scottish Independence, Anglo-Scottish wars of the early modern period and the Jacobite risings. The Nor Loch provided an important defensive obstacle for any faction which was attempting to capture or defend Edinburgh.

Suicides: The Nor Loch was a common spot for suicide attempts.

Crime: The loch appears to have been used as a smuggling route.

Punishment: It is a popularly held myth that the Nor’ Loch was the site of ‘witch ducking’ in Edinburgh. ‘Witch ducking’ or ‘the swimming test’ was employed by witchcraft prosecutors in some areas of Europe as a method of identifying whether or not a suspect was guilty of witchcraft. However, according to the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft there is little evidence that ‘witch ducking’ was utilised as a means of identifying witches in Scottish witchcraft trials.[5]

However, in 1685, the law of Scotland outlawed drowning as a form of execution. Before then many lives were taken. On one day in 1624, eleven women were drowned. Four years later, George Sinclair confessed to committing incest with his two sisters. All three were sentenced to death, but it was said[by whom?] that the clergy commuted the sentence on the younger sister. Sinclair and his older sister were placed in a large chest with holes drilled in it and thrown into the loch to drown. Two centuries later, in 1820, the chest was rediscovered by workmen digging a drain near the Wellhouse Tower of the Castle. James Skene of Rubislaw, who was present at the work in the gardens, reported that the skeleton of a tall man was found between those of two women. Later 19th-century accounts report only two skeletons being found in the chest. Draining of the Nor Loch began at the eastern end to allow construction of the North Bridge. Draining of the western end was undertaken 1813 to 1820, under supervision by the engineer James Jardine to enable the creation of Princes Street Gardens. For several decades after draining of the Loch began, townspeople continued to refer to the area as the Nor Loch.

The Nor Loch was never a source of drinking water, and indeed was probably highly polluted, being largely stagnant and used as a dumping ground for rubbish over and above being the termination point of many of the Old Town’s open sewers. However, there was a drinking water source at its edge. The Wellhouse tower was built in 1362 and had two functions: bridging the small gap in the city fortifications between Edinburgh Castle and the Nor Loch; and protecting and covering a well going down to natural ground water level below the loch. The two storey structure was a drinking water source for the castle. It had timber steps leading up the steep slope back to the castle but most water was taken up by crane.[8] It was in ruins by the seventeenth century and little remains today.

Although the Nor Loch was drained during the 19th century, neither its legacy nor its name are entirely forgotten. During the construction of Waverley station and the railway lines through the area, a number of bones were uncovered. Princes Street Gardens were created in the 1820s and now occupy much of the loch’s former extent.

Chapter 9 – Rob Roy, Glen Shira.

Rob Roy MacGregor lived in Glen Shira for a short time under the protection of John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll, also known as Red John of the Battles (Iain Ruaidh nan Cath). Argyll negotiated an amnesty and protection for Rob in 1716, and granted him permission to build a house in upper Glen Shira after disarmament. Duncan was apparently a cousin adopted by Rob Roy although there are several different opinions on this. For my storyline he was “related”.

Chapter 10 – Spadroon

In its double shell form, the Spadroon can be traced to the Mortuary and Walloon hilted broadswords of the mid to late 17th century. These were commonly military weapons fitted with broadsword blades, though many of the lighter examples could well be considered Spadroons. https://www.pastchronicles.com/a-brief-history-of-one-of-the-best-military-weapons-during-the-18th-century-the-spadroon/

Chapter 11 – Forced Marriage

Forced marriage is a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without their consent or against their will. A marriage can also become a forced marriage even if both parties enter with full consent if one or both are later forced to stay in the marriage against their will. This was often done for titles, land or money.

A forced marriage differs from an arranged marriage, in which both parties presumably consent to the assistance of their parents or a third party such as a matchmaker in finding and choosing a spouse. There is often a continuum of coercion used to compel a marriage, ranging from outright physical violence, rape, to subtle psychological pressure. A forced marriage is also often the result of a dispute between families, where the dispute is ‘resolved’ by giving a female from one family to the other.

Marriage by abduction, also known as bride kidnapping, is a practice in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry. Marriage by abduction has been practiced throughout history around the world and continues to occur in some countries today.

Chapter 12 – World’s End – Netherbow Port (Chapter 7)

Dates back to a time when the entire city, or burgh, of Edinburgh was contained within the stretch of road between the castle and the junction at which the World’s End pub stood. In the 1700s, before the city expanded to the New Town areas to the north, this half-mile long city had a population of around 50,000 people. It was this density of occupation which had led to the city becoming so notoriously dirty and run-down.

From the 15th century onwards, the city had been formally contained within a series of city walls, with a number of gates in these walls to allow access to (and egress from) the city. The main gate used by visitors to the city was the Netherbow Port, which stood on the site of the World’s End junction — it was a heavily fortified entrance, with a gate that could be closed over the road, bordered on either side with stout towers.

The Netherbow Port was dismantled in the 1760s, the outline of the old gateway can still be seen, marked out with brass plaques in the cobbled roadway of the Royal Mile. The original bell which was housed in the Netherbow Port, which was rung every evening to warn people that the gates were soon to be closed for the night, still survives at the top of a grey concrete tower adjoining the Scottish Storytelling Centre, which stands on the north side of the street. The clock that used to be mounted on the Netherbow Port was kept when the gate was demolished, and today can be found at the top of the portico leading in to one of the Modern Art Galleries at the west of the city.

Access into Edinburgh through the Netherbow Port required payment of a fee or a toll, and this applied whoever you were, even if you were a resident of Edinburgh – but for many of the city’s impoverished occupants this fee was simply too much for them to afford, and consequently they were literally trapped within the city walls. This junction, with its enormous gate, was as far as they could travel from their homes along the Royal Mile. It was, figuratively, the edge of their world — for the city’s residents, this was the World’s End. It is somewhat astonishing to think that for such a long time, Edinburgh’s residents may have known little of the world beyond the city walls — even once-independent towns of Leith and Holyrood, along with many other smaller villages beyond the city walls, would have been foreign places that they could only rarely, if ever, afford to visit. https://www.edinburghexpert.com/blog/old-town-edinburgh-welcome-to-the-worlds-end

Chapter 14 – Paper

18th century paper was created by tearing clothes into strips, sorted and shredded and then washed before transfer to a water-filled tub, and beaten into a pulp. The pulp was then diluted with water to the correct consistency. Dipping a wire screen called a mould and deckle into a vat of pulp to form each sheet individually, leaving all four edges with a feathered “deckle edge”. This was the cheapest paper for everyday letters. Parchment was used for more important documents.

Chapter 18 – Fiona’s Research

Fiona’s research pointed toward the Glenmoriston Seven. When researching the Chisholm’s as my ancestors, this cropped up and gave me the basis for the novels. More will come to light in other novels. Chisholms have played many important roles in Scottish history. When Bonnie Prince Charlie fled following his final crushing defeat at the Battle of Culloden, he was hidden from the Hanoverian troops in a cave in Glen Moriston. The famous seven men of Glen Moriston who guided the Prince included three Chisholms, Alexander, Donald and Hugh. The Prince then lay hidden in a cave in Fasnakyle Wood for ten days while local farmer John Chisholm brought him food.

Patrick Grant (Padruig Grannd)

John MacDonald (Iain Domhnallach)

Alexander MacDonald (Alasdair Domhnallach)

Alexander Chisholm (Alasdair Siosal)

Donald Chisholm (Domhnall Siosal)

Hugh Chisholm (Huisdean Siosal)

Grigor MacGregor (Griogair MacGriogair)

Latterly joined by an eighth man: ...

The words of Charles Edward Stuart, “a great sum of money or reward did not cause them to betray me, the memory of these devoted men will go down to generations yet unborn”

Chapter 20 – Medicine in Paris 1740

Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for drowning victims was first recommended by the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1740, and in 1767, a group of concerned citizens in Amsterdam formed the Society for Recovery of Drowned Persons and issued the first set of recommendations for reversing death. Historically, suggested procedures have included the inflation of the victim’s lungs using mouth-to-mouth breathing or a bellows, applying pressure to the abdomen, warming the victim’s body, stimulating the body internally via rectal fumigation with tobacco smoke, and bloodletting. By the early 19th century, the role of electricity in restarting a heart was recognized, and in 1809, the Scottish surgeon Allan Burns first suggested the combination of electrical shock and ventilation as a means to reverse death. https://med.nyu.edu/research/parnia-lab/cardiac-arrest-death/brief-history-resuscitation-cardiac-arrest

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1016/j.wem.2021.08.007

Chapter 21 – All Hallows’ Eve

Hallowe’en, All-Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Eve, Allhalloween ... Halloween has its roots in the Gaelic festival of Samhain, first attested in the 16th century. The word Halloween itself is Scottish, and derives from the Scots shortening of All-Hallows Eve. It was a Harvest Festival, the Celtic New Year and the time of the year when the Veils Between the Worlds were thought to be thin, and the Ancestors and those who had died during the previous year were believed to return to visit their loved ones. Traditionally a Celtic festival which divided the year between the light and the dark half, Samhainn, pronounced ‘Sa-wayne’, was the celebration of the end of the harvest and a time where the boundary between our world would become weaker allowing ancestors and fairies to roam.