One of my favourite Jacobite stories happened on February 23rd 1716 at the Tower of London.
The Tower of London is one of those places that saw much misery and death for so many, Sir William Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser, both of whom play a part in post I have lined up for tomorrow, were both held here before being Hung drawn and quartered, Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino and another Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat were also prisoners in the Tower before being executed for their part in the â45, but one of those held after the days of the previous uprising in 1715, managed to escape the fate bestowed upon him by the Government, with the help of his wife.
William Maxwell, 5th Earl of Nithsdale was a nobleman and a supporter of the exiled Stuart king James II. Raised a Catholic, Maxwell became the 5th Earl of Nithsdale in 1696. Shortly after this he met Winifred Herbert, the daughter of a Welsh baron, when both were visiting France; they were married in 1699. When the Jacobites rebelled in 1715 and attempted to restore the Stuarts, Maxwell hummed and hawed before eventually joining the uprising. He was captured by government troops during the Battle of Preston in November 1715, and sentenced to death for treason. Like most aristocrats on âdeath rowâ, Maxwell was given conformable lodgings in the Tower of London, it wasnât as barbaric as it once was, and the Tower at one point was actually a palace, although I doubt Sir William Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser,the Patriot, would have been afforded the better accommodation available to later residents.
Prisoners even had servants and of course visitation rights and the Earl of Nithsdale had all these comforts afforded to him.
On February 23rd 1716, the day before Maxwellâs execution, he escaped from the Tower, thanks to a daring plot from his wife. Using items smuggled into the Tower on previous visits, the Countess had her husband disguise himself as a woman â not an easy feat, given that the Earl was said to have had a long dark beard, although the pics I found online donât support this1
By Winifredâs own admission the chance of this escape plan succeeding was âvery improbableâ. Nevertheless the Countess managed to smuggle her husband out of the Tower, noting that âthe poor guards⊠were not so strictly on the watch as they usually had beenâ. Once outside the gates she passed the incognito Earl to another accomplice, before returning to his room inside the Tower; there Winifred sat for an hour, buying time by holding an imaginary conversation with her non-existent husband. The Earl, meanwhile, was being ferried to a hiding place in London. After several days underground he was secreted out of England, disguised as a Venetian coachman. Both the Earl and Countess of Nithsdale spent the rest of their days living in exile in Rome. The Countess would later be governess to Henry Benedict Stuart, the wee brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie.
