The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
The Jacobite who stood tall before the king at 108
Jacobite Peter Grant was either a living legend or a big old spoofer; or maybe he was a bit of both. The Angus farmer laid waste to government troops at Culloden, escaped over the wall of Carlisle jail in highland dress with a seven-foot pike and later, when he was 108, impressed King George IV, who granted him a £50 a year pension.
Grant’s story resurfaced in 1891 when Argyllshire man John Campbell recounted to the press a meeting with the ’45 veteran.
Peter Grant was born in 1714 on a farm called Dubrach, near Braemar.
He worked peaceably as a tailor until the rebel standard was raised on the Braes of Mar.
At the age of 31 he joined the Jacobite army and met Prince Charles at a review of troops at Glasgow Green.
Grant survived the campaign and was there on Drumossie Moor on April 16 1746 when James, Duke of Perth, his son John Drummond and Lord George Murray, son of the Duke of Atholl led those loyal to Prince Charles into battle against the Duke of Cumberland’s troops.
Our veteran did not say which unit he was attached to but it seems likely he was with the Monaltrie regiment, given his Braemar connections.
According to his own accounts, he distinguished himself in battle but was later captured and imprisoned in Carlisle.
Even that prison could not contain Grant, who was known as Dubrach, after the farm he was born on. He shinned the walls and walked back to Scotland, still dressed as a rebel soldier and carrying his pike. This, of course, was at a time when highland dress was banned.
Grant settled back on Deeside, married Mary Cumming and had at least two children, Peter and Anne. Even though there was a price on his head, he evaded capture.
When the lease on his Deeside farm expired, the family moved over the hill to Lethnot near Edzell. Dubrach’s wife died at Lethnot in 1811.
In 1822 two gentlemen out shooting in the glen chanced across Dubrach’s cottage. He invited them in and enthralled them with his life story.
The men left some money and then raised a petition, signed by the minister and elders, to ask the king for a pension for the old man, then aged 108.
It is at this point the story takes a remarkable twist. It seems the king agreed to meet Dubrach and the Hon. William Maule, later Lord Panmure, provided fine clothes for the old man to wear.
Dubrach refused and insisted on wearing his Culloden battle dress of Royal Stuart tartan coat, brown kilt, brogues with large brass buttons, a glengarry with eagle’s feather and a pike with a brass knob on top.
The old man, still an imposing and strongly built six footer, travelled with Maule to Edinburgh to meet the king on his first visit to Scotland.
According to John Campbell’s account, Dubrach refused to uncover his head in the presence of the king who was said to be intimidated by this fierce and powerful highlander aged 108.
King George asked Dubrach if he regretted siding with rebels. The wily old man answered in Scots, which the king did not understand. He did, however, give Dubrach his liberty and a £50 pension. It was at that point the old man uncovered his head and thanked the king. Well, so Dubrach told John Campbell.
While there is a record of Maule being presented to the king, there is not even a passing mention of Dubrach.
However, it seems the petition calling for a pension did reach the king because the old man received money in his later years.
That pension later passed to his daughter Ann, for whom Lord Panmure built a cottage in Lethnot, where she died in 1840. She dined out on her father’s fame and styled herself as Lady Ann.
John Campbell encountered Dubrach at an estate in Argyllshire in 1823. Campbell’s father was under gardener for the Fletcher family and Dubrach’s son, Peter, was head gardener. The meeting happened when Dubrach travelled from Angus to Argyllshire for a holiday.
Campbell said people travelled from all over the county to hear the old man’s stories.
Anyway, William Maule must have been convinced by Dubrach because he commissioned Colvin Smith to paint his portrait. He looks remarkably good for a man of 108 or 109.
Memories of Culloden did linger on in this area well into the 20th Century. In 1904 a David Burns of Brechin claimed he had conversed with Dubrach as a youth.
Even as the Great War was about to break out, there were those alive who had heard accounts of the battle passed down from veterans.
One of those was Elizabeth Mackenzie, granddaughter of a Mrs Mylne of Mylnefield, Invergrowrie.
Mrs Mylne was born in 1750 and died in 1852. She was known as Granny Mylne because of her great age and could recount conversations with Jacobite combatants and was well versed with the misery that followed the defeat. Her granddaughter, Elizabeth Mackenzie, died in Bath in October 1913.