National Records Scotland
A brave Jacobite heroine
The countess and her family had been treated with hostility for years due to their Catholic faith and in 1703, their home in Dumfriesshire was attacked by a Presbyterian mob ‘upwards of six score’, who were convinced that her husband William Maxwell, 5th earl of Nithsdale, was hiding a priest. In the absence of her husband, Winifred confronted them, asking them to ‘come by day light in a fair & legal way’.
Instead, the mob broke into the house, smashing the gates and ransacking the property.Winifred and her family were forced to flee in the winter night. The hostility continued for years, with their names included in a ‘list of the papists’ by the general assembly of the Church of Scotland.
In 1715, Winifred’s husband – now a Jacobite – was captured at the battle of Preston. He was tried for treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London to await his execution. Winifred went to London in December to petition the king for clemency but he ignored her, making it clear her husband would not be pardoned.
Winifred continued to appeal against the sentence but, as a contingency, planned her husband’s escape. Over several days, she bribed the guards at the tower to gain access.
Accompanied by three other women, one of whom ‘being with child, would be the same bigness’ as the earl, she smuggled in a disguise and tried to ‘persuade him to make vse [sic] of them which I had much difficulty to doe [sic]’.
On 22 February, through misdirection and disguise – with the dress-clad earl pretending to weep into a hankie to hide his face – Winifred walked her husband through the guard room and out of the Tower to freedom. She then returned to his cell, pretending to talk with him, giving him time to get safely away.
She went into hiding for several days and as soon as she knew her husband was safe in France, wrote to the countess of Buccleuch for help, which she later related to her sister:
I told her that I heard that I was suspected to have procured my Lord’s escape; that realy it was so naturaly to be believed if I had been so happy as to have had it in my power; that I do not blame them for thinking it, but their suspission without prouf, was not sufficient to make me suffer for a supposed crime, but enough to occasion my being secured, so beg’d she would be pleased to obtain me leave to goe with safety about my business. Despite being a wanted fugitive, the countess returned to Scotland to salvage what she could from their forfeited estates and thereafter made her way to France to her husband. They subsequently joined the court of James Stuart – the old Pretender and exiled son of James VII/II – in Rome, where they remained for the rest of their lives.
Clare Stubbs is a member of the digital services team at National Records of Scotland.