Note 387 — MEMOIRS OF THE REBELLION IN 1745 AND 1746, SO FAR AS IT CONCERNED THE COUNTIES OF ABERDEEN AND BANFF

This was an incident that occasioned fierce indignation in Aberdeen. August 1st was the date of the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty. Lord Ancram ordered the bells to be rung and the houses to be illuminated. It had not been the custom to illuminate, and the magistrates only ordered the bells to be rung. The soldiers of Fleming’s regiment (36th, now the Worcestershire), egged on by their officers, broke the windows, stoned the inhabitants, and did damage to the extent of £130, a large sum in those days to a town of the size of Aberdeen. In spite of the pretensions of the military authorities, who maintained that they were not liable to the civil government, the magistrates arrested a Captain Morgan and other officers, who were ringleaders in the riot. Morgan had been very active in hunting fugitive Jacobites, and his commanding officer, who calls Aberdeen ‘this infamous town,’ attributes his arrest to this cause. Representations were made to the Lord Justice-Clerk and to Lord Albemarle, the Commander-in-chief in Scotland, who both took a serious view of the case, the former writing to the latter that ‘the officers in the army were trampling on those very laws that they so lately defended at the expence of their blood.’ Ancram was rebuked by Albemarle, and removed from Aberdeen; though the trouble still smouldered it was temporarily patched up. (Alb. Pap., p. 27 seq.; Scots Mag., viii. 393.) Six months later the regiment left Aberdeen, marching out (it is said) to the tune ‘We’ll gang nae mair to yon toun.’ Cf. post, p. 189.