Heroines of History - Anne McKay

We’re back this month with another woman of the past whose actions should be remembered. Sticking with the events of the Jacobite uprising in 1745 and 1746, this time we’re getting to know Anne McKay.

Unlike Flora MacDonald, discussed last month, Anne was not from a wealthy family and sadly, I have not been able to find any portraits of her.

Anne McKay was born on the Isle of Skye as Anne MacLeod. Her husband went to fight for Prince Charles Edward Stuart in in the spring of 1746, she was living with her children in Inverness, waiting for news of him. She later learned that he had died at Carlisle.

After the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, the Hanoverian forces in Inverness took more prisoners than there was space for in the jail, so that two prominent Jacobites - Robert Nairn, deputy paymaster of the Duke of Perth's Regiment, and Ranald Macdonald of Bellfinlay, a Captain in Clanranald's Regiment - were held captive in a cellar of the house where Anne was boarding. Both men were seriously injured; Nairn’s arm had been nearly hacked off by a dragoon, and Bellfinlay’s legs were shattered by grapeshot.

Left untended in the damp cellar, both men would likely have died from their injuries, but Anne took pity on them and brought food an medicine for them, treating their wounds as best she could. She also served as a messenger between them and some Jacobite ladies who hoped to help.

Bellfinlay’s injuries were too serious and he ultimately died in the cellar, but a plot was hatched to rescue Robert Nairn. Anne McKay was instrumental to the plan, smuggling clothing and supplies for a long journey to Nairn, and then distracting the guard by using her ‘feminine wiles’ to lure him away from his post, allowing Nairn to escape.

A drawing of Inverness, showing the bridge where Anne was held prisoner, from 1771

When the escape was discovered, Anne was arrested. At first she was offered a bribe to inform on who had provided the food for Robert Nairn, but she refused. The Hanoverian Captain Leighton then threatened to have her placed in the Bridge Hole, a cell that was only wide enough to stand up in, built into the bottom of the bridge. Though Anne pleaded with him for mercy, she would not give the names of those involved in the escape. Leighton had her placed in the Bridge Hole for three days.

During that time, Anne was unable to sit down or to rest, forced to stand for three full days with no respite, with the constant noise of wagons and horses passing close to her head. In addition to this, people took it upon themselves to shout abuse at her while she endured this torture. Leighton sent an Irish woman to bring bread and whisky to Anne in the Hole, in an attempt to get her drunk so that she would talk.

When the woman offered Anne the whisky to rink to the health of Prince Charlie, Anne refused, stating that she was not a Jacobite, and that the MacLeod’s supported King George and the Duke of Cumberland. She also stated that she would only drink milk and whey.

Leighton finally had Anne removed from the Bridge Hole and was preparing to have her whipped though the town but Lady Anne Mackintosh and others made such an outcry over it that she was finally released after seven weeks of imprisonment. The Hanoverians did however track down her seventeen-year-old son and beat him so severely that he subsequently died of his injuries.

Anne McKay was not a Jacobite. She did not act out of any loyalty to a cause, or to a king or other authority. Anne McKay risked her life and her freedom to help Robert Nairn escape because of her own sense of decency and humanity. She did what she believed to be right, regardless of whose side anyone was on, and she paid dearly for it.