Allan Stewart (Jacobite)

Ailean Breic Stuibhairt was an 18th-century soldier and Scottish Jacobite resistance figure. He was the centre of a murder case that inspired novels by Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Life and the Appin murder

In accordance with the fosterage customs of the Scottish Clans, Allan Breck Stewart and his brothers grew up under the care of his relative, James Stewart (known as "James of the Glen") in Appin, Scotland. He enlisted in the British Army of George II in 1745, just prior to the Jacobite rising of 1745. He fought at the Battle of Prestonpans, but he either deserted to or was captured by the Highland Jacobites. Whatever it was, he changed sides and subsequently fought for the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden. After the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden, Stewart fled to France, accompanying his commander and Clan Chieftain, Colonel Charles Stewart of Ardshiel. Joining one of the Scottish regiments serving in the French Army, he was given the job of returning to Scotland to collect rents for the exiled clan leaders and to recruit soldiers for the French Crown.

On May 14 1752, Colin Roy Campbell, the Royal agent collecting rents from the Ardshiel Stewarts, was killed. As Allan Stewart had previously publicly threatened Campbell and inquired Campbell's schedule for the day in question, a warrant was issued for his arrest. However, he evaded capture, and so he was tried "in absentia" and sentenced to death. His foster father, James of the Glen, was also convicted as an accessory to the murder and hanged.

In the murder of Campbell, the British government saw the potential danger of Jacobite assassinations of their agents in the Highlands, on the one hand, and also the potential renewal of a Campbell/Stewart feud, on the other. The execution of James of the Glen increased Clan Stewart's discontent, and, locally (and especially after he became "Allan Breck" in fiction), Allan Breck Stewart was portrayed as a romantic figure. There is no record of what happened to Stewart subsequent to the trial. One common story, derived from Walter Scott, is that he returned to military service of the French Crown and served against the British in North America during the French and Indian War.

Portrayal in historical fiction

In his Introduction to 'Rob Roy' (published in 1817), Sir Walter Scott tells us of the Appin Murder, the description that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write Kidnapped, and claimed that a friend of his accidentally met the elderly Al(l)an Stewart in Paris in 1789, just before the French Revolution, in the house of a Scottish Benedictine priest, where people had gathered to view a procession: "Some civilities in French passed between the old man and my friend, in the course of which they talked of the streets and squares of Paris, till at length the old soldier, for such he seemed, and such he was, said with a sigh, in a sharp Highland accent, "Deil ane o' them a' is worth the Hie Street of Edinburgh!" On enquiry, this admirer of Auld Reekie, which he was never to see again, proved to be Allan Breck Stewart. He lived decently on his little pension, and had, in no subsequent period of his life, shown anything of the savage mood, in which he generally believed to have assassinated the enemy and oppressor, as he supposed him, of his family and clan."

However, readers should be cautious. Scott's friend's description of the elusive Alan Breck in old age: "His eyes were grey. His grizzled hair exhibited marks of having been red, and his complexion was weather-beaten, and remarkably freckled." does not match earlier descriptions of the fugitive who is reported to have had black hair and eyes, and his complexion was not freckled, but pitted by smallpox (hence the Gaelic sobriquet 'breac' - 'spotted'). Also, Scott's friend describes the old man as wearing "the petit croix of St Louis", but no such decoration existed.

Scott's portrait of the persecution of Jacobites and the allegiances of clan warfare in "Rob Roy" gives a sense of the popular image of rebels like Stewart, and Robert Louis Stevenson based his character 'Alan Breck' in his novel "Kidnapped" (1886), upon the historical Allan Breck Stewart. Henry James described him as "the most perfect character in English literature", but it was a very flattering portrait, the real Alan Breck had none of the fine qualities that Stevenson attributed to him, and his guardian James of the Glen, who was hanged for the murder as Breck's accomplice, described him as "a desperate foolish fellow".

Walter Scott had got his background information on Rob Roy, the Jacobite Rebellion, and Allan Breck and the Appin Murder from one source. At the age of 15, as a trainee lawyer, Scott had traveled into the Highlands on a pony to meet one of his father's client's, an old Highlander called Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle (pronounced - Invernile). This old man had fought with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and had been wounded at Culloden, but it was Alexander's personal experience of the earlier Battle of Prestonpans (where the red-coated Allan Breck fought on the Government side) that Scott used in his first novel 'Waverley', and Alexander's remarkable pardon was the model for Scott's hero Waverley's reprieve. Alexander knew Rob Roy personally, but Scott was mistaken when he said that Alexander had beaten Rob Roy in a sword-fight, and although living on the southern border of Appin, and a staunch Jacobite, Alexander was also first-cousin to Colin Campbell of Glenure 'The Red Fox' (his near neighbour), the government factor that Alan Breck was accused of killing, so had first-hand experience on this fascinating episode in Scottish history.

ources

*Nicholson, Eirwen E. C. "Allan Stewart," in Matthew, H.C.G. and Brian Harrison, eds. "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography." vol. 52, 628. London: OUP, 2004.
*Nimmo, Ian (2005). "Walking with Murder: On the Kidnapped Trail". Birlinn Ltd. Paperback.
*Gibson, Rosemary. "The Appin Murder: In Their Own Words" "History Scotland." Vol.3 No.1 January/February 2003
*MacArthur, Lt. Gen. Sir William: 'The Appin Murder and the Trial of James Stewart' (1960) JMP Publishing.
*Hunter, Professor James.'Culloden and the Last Clansman'

External links

* [http://heritage.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1267&id=2013922005 Scottish Heritage site on James of the Glen's death]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/2420153.stm The Appin Murder in Pictures, from the BBC]
* [http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/uswalks/stevensonway/index.html A recreation of "Alan Breck's" walk after the Appin murder]