PRINCE CHARLIE’S TARGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 October 1928, Page 5

PRINCE CHARLIE’S TARGE

TALE OF STUART RELICS. - - L .i --- ,. ,. W New Zealand Jacobites will be glad to have particulars of a sale at Sotheby’s of the collection of Stuart relics, belonging to Cluny Macpherson of Cluny, chief of the Clan Chattau, which produced £12,300. The Stuart relics which, owing to the exigencies of the times, were preserved by Jacobite adherents after the battle of Culloden from the various places of refuge temporarily occupied by Prince Charles in hi? hasty flights to the Western Isles. The description

stated:—■ What happened to them in the ensuing' forty or fifty years before they were finally collected in their most suitable resting place, Cluny Castle, can only be a matter of conjecture, because, as is well known, the original edifice on the banks of the Sprey burnt down by Cumberland’s soldiers immediately after Culloden, and its burning was watched from the opposite hillside at JJreackachy by Cluny himself and by Lady Cluny, as it was then the custom to style the wives of Highland chieftains.. The same night, or very shortly afterwards, Lady Cluny became a mother, and her son, nicknamed “Duncan of the Kiln,” was boin in a hovel on the estate; this baby, born within a few months of the battle of Culloden, was the greatgrandfather of to-day’s chieftain’ and the owner of these relics. The “star” lot was Prince Charles Edward’s (the Young Chevalier) Medusa head targe, a circular shield nineteen inches in diameter, covered in leather and lined at tlhe back with leopard skin, the front with various applied decorations in silver in the finest style of French eighteenthcentury work, the centre with a Medusa head in liigh relief. The targe is well known and has frequently been illustrated and exhibited; yesterday Mr Rurlacher started the bidding at £5OO, and at £4OOO it fell to Mr A. Eraser, of Inverness. A lace ruffle of fine work with scalloped edge, thirtysix inches, worn by Prince Charlie and left behind him at Fassefem House, the day after he set up his standard at Glenfinnan, was bought by Mr Keiller for £220 for the National Museum at Edinburgh. A copper plate for printing currency notes, with eight designs, 23-4 inches by nearly two inches, with C.P. and-the Prince of (Wales’ feathers, was bought at £430 by Dr Borenius, with the aid of a grant from the National Art-Collections Fund, * for the West Highland Museum at Fort William — this copper plate was found near the west end of Lodh Loggan, .and had probably been thrown aside during the flight from Culloden in April, 1746. A pair of pistols by Allevin, Paris, engraved with laureated heads of Louis • XIV. and Prince James Francis Edward, brought £2OO (Durlacher).