23rd February 1716 saw Lady Winifred Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale, help her husband William escape from the Tower of London.
This is a great tale of a brave woman putting her own life on the line to help her husband escape.
Winifred Herbert was the daughter of William Herbert, 1st Marquess of Powis. Her parents accompanied James VII into exile in 1688 and her mother became governess of the young James Francis Edward Stuart, later to be known as the “Old Pretender”. Winifred herself became a lady-in-waiting at the Jacobite Royal Court. On 2 March 1699, at the age of 27, she married William Maxwell, 5th Earl of Nithsdale, a member of a Scottish Catholic family.
The family returned home to Scotland in 1699 an settled back into life at their home at Terregles Castle near Dumfries. Maxwell worked hard to dispel suspicions of him in Scotland because of his Catholicism and his links with the Jacobites. However, he did come out in support of the Jacobites in the 1715 Uprising, and joined with the Northumbrian Jacobites under General Thomas Forster at Hexham. He was captured with other Jacobites at Preston and sent to the Tower of London. He was subsequently found guilt of treason the sentence was death and was to be carried out on February 24th 1716.
Winifred travelled to London to ask George I for clemency, but none was forthcoming. On the night of 23 February, the eve of the date set for her husband’s execution, Winifred her maid, and two friends visited William at the Tower of London. Winifred distributed a generous amount of drinking money to the guards, and the women proceeded to come and go from William’s cell, mingling with the wives of the guards and generally raising confusion about who was in the cell and who was not. Meanwhile, Winifred shaved William’s beard and dressed him in spare women’s clothing brought in for the purpose, including what has since become known as the “Nithsdale Cloak”. William was then led from the Tower disguised as a woman by Winifred’s maid, Evans, while Winifred herself covered the escape by carrying on a loud conversation with her - now departed - husband in an otherwise empty cell, before making good her own escape.
Winifred and William hid in London until he could be smuggled to France disguised as a servant of the Venetian Ambassador. Winifred herself then rode to Traquair House in Scotland to retrieve a number of family papers and arrange for their property to be cared for. She then, despite a huge search for her and her husband, returned to London, and traveled to the Continent. She eventually rejoined her husband at the exiled court of James Francis Edward Stuart in Rome. Winifred later became governess to Henry Benedict Stuart, the younger brother of Bonnie Prince Charlie
