There’s no gold in them thar hills after all

Silver cup unlocks mystery of the missing hoard said to have been buried in the Highlands… or does it?

IT HAS been a long-held obsession of the metal detectorists who spend their spare time poring over the Scottish Highlands to track down Bonnie Prince Charlie’s missing gold.

History tells us that the gold was sent on two French ships by Louis XV in support of the Prince’s Jacobite rebellion against the English in 1746.

The money arrived too late for the Scottish patriots however, reaching the country’s shores after the Jacobites had been defeated at the Battle of Culloden.

All that the clansmen loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie could do was bury the gold hoard on the banks of Loch Arkaig, just north of Fort William, ready for the next rebellion. Ever since, detectorists and amateur archaeologists have had their eyes on the banks of the loch, hoping to one day find the hidden gold.

But, it now appears their efforts may have been in vain all along.

An antiques expert has concluded that the gold was in fact retrieved shortly after it was first buried, when the Prince sent a secret message to his supporters asking them to recover the money and send it on to him in exile.

Martyn Downer stumbled on the truth of the missing gold while researching the whereabouts of a silver cup given by the Prince to Charles Selby, the English Catholic and Jacobite sympathiser.

He established that the cup was given to Selby as a mark of gratitude for him risking his life to retrieve the Arkaig treasure. While researching the provenance of the cup – which is shortly going under the hammer at Spink Auctions with a guide price of £150,000 – Mr Downer discovered a series of letters in the Royal Archives, which he says show that the gold has long left the shores of Loch Arkaig.

“For 250 years, this mystery of the missing gold has led to scores of treasure hunters looking for it,” he said. “However, the truth is that the money was recovered shortly after it was buried and, after Jacobites had taken a share, the rest was conveyed to France.”

The gold was originally dispatched by Louis XV aboard the privateer ships Mars and Bellone, in April 1746, to finance the fight to regain the British throne for the Stuarts.

The hoard, which was first landed at Loch nan Uamh, before being carried 20 miles overland to Loch Arkaig, consisted of £35,000 worth of Louis d’Or – gold coins – which would be worth an estimated £5million today.

Following the rebels’ historic defeat at Culloden, Prince Charles Edward Stuart – better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie – fled to France via Skye, using elaborate disguises and famously aided by Flora MacDonald. It is thought that Selby managed to return £6,000 of the Arkaig treasure, with the rest dispersed to Jacobite loyalists to continue the fight or simply pilfered. Selby refused payment for his endeavours and was instead given the silver cup as a reward.

Mr Downer said: “There was no mention in any official documents of the cup because it would have been extremely dangerous for Selby and he’d have been executed if his role was uncovered. Indeed, only many years later, when it was safe, did his son have it engraved, explaining it was presented to his father for his ‘…many services’ to Prince Charles Edward Stuart in ‘1745 & 1746’.”

But even then the cup did not willingly give up its secrets. It took a brief reference to a portrait of Selby with the cup for the link to be established, and with it a clue to the gold’s whereabouts.

“I spent many months following the Selby family line until I found the descendant who had the portrait hanging on his wall,” said Mr Downer.

“I could then link the cup with Charles Selby and in doing so found letters in the Royal Archive that explained how the money had been secretly moved – and I think it’s safe to say there is no gold left to find.”

That will be a blow to treasure hunters such as Garnet Frost, from London, whose obsessive quest to find the buried gold was documented by the 2014 BBC Storyville documentary Lost Gold of the Highlands.

But local detectorists are convinced some of the treasure is still buried there. “It’s unlikely it would have all been buried in one spot, for safety’s sake,” Ross Hunter, of the West Highland Metal Detectors, said. “Even if some of it was retrieved shortly after being buried I’m sure there’s still some of the treasure left to be found.”

Mr Hunter said the problem lies in establishing where precisely, among the hundreds of acres around the Loch and further afield, the gold was buried.

Furthermore, landowners are reluctant to grant permission for digs.

“Local rumour has it the gold was buried in four or five places, and that some years ago someone found a portion of it buried near a stream,” said Mr Hunter, 34, a vehicle mechanic by day, whose discoveries include a musket trigger guard thought to be from the first skirmish between the Jacobites and the English redcoats at Highbridge, Lochaber, on Aug 16, 1745.

“A lot of people believe there’s something in the myth. It’s still worth pursuing, without doubt.”