The Prisoner of St Kilda: The True Story of the Unfortunate Lady Grange

by Margaret Macaulay

More than a history of scandal and infamy, The Prisoner of St Kilda gives a balanced account of Lord and Lady Grange, their flaws and strengths, and the role played by the powerful men who saw the unpredictable Lady Grange as a threat.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Scotland

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Margaret Macaulay was born in Campbeltown, Argyll, in 1934 and educated at Campbeltown Grammar School. She graduated from Glasgow University in 1956 with an M.A. Hons. in History. She worked on The Herald, as a freelance journalist, a teacher and as a bookseller.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short but highly readable book telling the strange story of Rachel Erskine – Lady Grange – (1679-1745) who reputedly got her husband to marry her after literally putting a gun to his head, and who years later was kidnapped from her Edinburgh home at the instigation of same husband. She was subsequently taken to, and held as a prisoner on, the ultra-remote island of St. Kilda, which the author aptly describes as “Scotland’s Ultima Thule”.

Rachel’s father, John Chiesley, had been hanged for murdering the President of the Court of Session (Scotland’s most senior law court for civil cases), and Rachel seems to have inherited her father’s hot tempered and volatile disposition. The Chiesley family were minor gentry, but Rachel’s husband, James Erskine, was a younger son of the Earl of Mar, far above Rachel in wealth and social status. He took the title Lord Grange when he too was appointed to the Court of Session. It is assumed the marriage came about after they had pre-marital sex. Doubtless James and Rachel had very different ideas on where this would lead, but when James expressed opposition to marriage, Rachel is supposed to have produced a loaded pistol, levelled it at James’ forehead, and reminded him that she was the daughter of a man who murdered a judge!

The couple lived together for about 25 years and had nine children, three of whom died in infancy. However, relations between them gradually deteriorated. James kept a mistress in London, which infuriated Rachel, and she was no less concerned about James’ political activities. The Mar family were Jacobites, (supporters of the exiled King James II, who had been deposed in 1688) and Rachel viewed her husband’s clandestine Jacobite links as a threat to the family’s fortune and status. Her eventual kidnapping came after the couple had separated, and seems to have been prompted by a fear that she would reveal her husband’s Jacobite activities.

The author is described as “having an interest in individual women in Scottish history, especially those who have been maligned or forgotten.” She openly states that her sympathies lie with Rachel and at one point gets quite hot under the collar over a joke made about Lady Grange by Dr Johnson, some decades afterwards. She is though fair in her research. Reading Lord Grange’s diary, she concedes that “…he comes across as quite an agreeable chap.” before adding “Always supposing you are fortunate enough not to be married to him.” Lady Grange, by contrast, was not very agreeable. Contemporary descriptions speak of uncontrollable rages at her servants and children, who were all terrified of her. The author notes that none of her children raised any questions or concerns about her sudden disappearance. Some of her behaviours suggest to me that she had mental health issues. None of that of course, justifies her being abducted and held against her will on a remote island.

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. The author has made a decent job of re-telling this curious tale.

[Adam Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lady Grange was married to a Scottish senior lawyer. She threatened to expose his secret Jacobite connections if he did not give up his mistress in London but unfortunately she did not realise the consequences of this threat and the fact that many senior Jacobite sympathisers would prefer to keep her silent. She was abducted in 1732 and forcibly removed at length from Edinburgh to the island archipelago of St Kilda where she was a prisoner for seven years from 1734 -41. A rescue attempt was made in 1741 following the arrival in Edinburgh of two letters from her but by the time the ship arrived she had been removed from the island. She was never rescued and died on the isle of Skye in 1745. This is a meticulously researched and very attractively written account of her and the circumstances of her unique abduction based on contemporary documents and her own letters. An intriguing and astonishing true story.

[Karen Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

The harrowing but riveting true story of Lady Rachel Grange and the years of misery and cruelties inflicted upon her by her philandering, Jacobite husband as he uses his political and familial connections to rid himself of an unwanted wife (and the mother of his many children) who threatened his, and his Jacobite friends', very existence. Constructed as a scold, madwoman, evil, and so much worse, Margaret Macaulay uses contemporary sources to try and discover the real Rachel Grange and and expose the misogynist falsehoods of her husband and his cronies that saw them escape any form of justice while Rachel only suffered. Incredible.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading this, I only knew the basic facts about Rachel Erskine, Lady Grange. Married to a senior Scottish lawyer in the early eighteenth century, she tried to blackmail her husband into getting rid of his London mistress by threatening to expose his Jacobite connections. In response, he and his friends (including no less a personage than Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat - you knew he had to be involved somehow!) arranged to have her abducted and packaged off to the Highlands, where she spent the rest of her life being passed around the Hebrides, spending the better part of that time on the incredibly remote island of St Kilda.

It's an incredible story, a true case of truth being stranger, and more outrageous, than fiction, and Macaulay tells it well, making this a compelling read as well as an informative one. She also does an admirable job of sifting through the various and extremely partisan sources, pointing out what makes them valuable as well as suspect, to come at a balanced account of the story of the Granges. In her hands, the lady herself becomes a figure deserving of our sympathy for her ruthless treatment, though with serious anger management issues that gave her a singular talent for making enemies.

My main criticism is that although the social and political context is well laid out, the book felt a bit short on the more personal details you might expect from a biography. Assuming the information still exists, I'd have liked to know a bit more about the Granges' earlier relationship, or Lady Grange's friendship with the minister of St Kilda and his wife, which is mentioned, but never really delved into. I could also have wished for more information about their children, and about Fanny Lindsay, Lord Grange's mistress and second wife. Or more about Lord Grange scuppering his later political career by ranting about witches in Parliament! However, I can well understand why Macaulay might have chosen not to go there, to keep to the thread of the main story and not get bogged down in too much unnecessary fluff.

Macaulay also states that "Grange destroyed his wife's character so successfully that she has never shaken off the image of an unbalanced termagant," and to be honest, the book does little to redress the balance. Even the more sympathetic sources, like the letters from her children while they were still trying to keep the peace, suggest Lady Grange was - um - something of a harridan. There are flashes of more sympathetic traits: as well as her friendship with the minister, there's a mention of how she tried to alleviate the poverty of the St Kildans as best she could in her situation - but there's no mention of how. And nice little touches, like her picking up enough Gaelic to enjoy listening to the islanders' songs and stories, or asking the St Kildan girls to come and dance for her, are only mentioned in passing, or even relegated to a mention in the appendices at the end. I fully understand that this might be inevitable, if the relevant sources are only fleeting themselves, but if it was possible to spend a bit more time on these things, it might have allowed us a glimpse of a more rounded personality. As it is, the book didn't do much to shake off my previous, relatively uninformed opinion that the Granges might not have been well-matched, but they rather deserved each other!

Despite these criticisms, I did enjoy the book a lot. It's good history, and a good read too.

[Laura (Reading is a Doing Word) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an incredibly well researched and gripping account of the abduction and imprisonment of Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange.

The intractable wife of James Erskine, Lord Grange - an advocate and Lord Justice Clerk - Rachel was a "difficult" character. Not content to quietly acquiesce to her husband's infidelity, she threatened him with exposure of his Jacobite connections, unless he give up his mistress. These men could not tolerate the presence of such a loose canon and it was arranged that Lady Grange should "disappear".
Abducted from her home in Edinburgh she was transported over an extended period, to the Highlands - being held initially on the Monach Isles and then taken to St Kilda for a number of years. She died in captivity on the Isle of Skye, having never returned to Edinburgh after over 13 years of imprisonment.

Margaret Macaulay's account of this unbelievable sequence of events is insightful and thought provoking. It seems universally accepted that Rachel Erskine was a wilful and tempestuous character. She didn't fit the mould of a submissive wife and society lady of the time. Despite his adultery her husband received the public's sympathy. It is noted that in the written accounts available, it is always men that are assessing Rachel's character and behaviour and often with a premeditated motive to cover their own backs should her treatment at their hands ever be discovered.

This account also highlights the stark division in Scotland at the time - not only politically but socially and culturally. During the period of the Jacobite uprisings, although there was some support in Lowland Scotland, and even in England, the majority of Jacobites came from the Highland Clans.
Getting Lady Grange out of Edinburgh and into the Highlands as quickly as possible was effectively removing her from everything she had known. The lifestyle and language were completely different. She didn't speak Gaelic and therefore could not communicate with the majority of her captors or the communities in which she was held.

After 8 years, she eventually managed to get letters to Edinburgh through a sympathetic minister and an attempt at a rescue was launched but her captors were a step ahead and she was moved before she could ever be found.

The story is engrossing and enraging and unfortunately one that still happens in parts of the world today when outspoken women are occasioned to "disappear".

Further information and digital copies of her letters are available here: https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/diu/...

https://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servl...

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story that might have come from the pen of Walter Scott. Except that it is not fiction.

Lady Grange, née Rachel Chiesley, wife of James Erskine, Lord Grange, later Westminster MP, for a time Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland, was indeed kidnapped by her husband’s allies from respectable Edinburgh and conveyed to St Kilda, that island at the end of the earth.

Her father had been publicly executed, when she was about 10, for murdering in broad daylight, on the Royal Mile, Sir George Lockhart, Lord President in the Court of Session, whom he considered to have awarded an excessive aliment (alimony) to his wife and children.

You couldn’t make it up!!

Nobody seems to have bothered their bonnets about her disappearance, including her older children who were young adults at the time.

Politics (Jacobite sympathies, possible conspiracies) played a rôle, too.

Lady Grange doesn’t seem to have been very likeable and her reputation was further blackened even after her lonely death, still in captivity.

Lord Grange- being a mixture of piety and worldliness- waited till her death to marry his long term bidie-in.

The Sobieski Stuart brothers- a pair of the most outrageous chancers ever to claim royal lineage - continued the calumnies into the 19th century. They were total bampots who, in another century, would have enjoyed Twitter/tabloid newspaper fame.

Imagine life on St Kilda for an upper class Edinburgh lady!!

[Saila Routio · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and incredible story. The author is very knowledgeable in history but also has the talent for telling a story so that it comes to life - a very enjoyable read for anyone interested in the history of Scotland, or that of women. Very much appreciate the thorough work into explaining the context - and that did not come at the expense of the flow of the story.

[Pansy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a really interesting story and decently written. My problem with it is her extensive use of source material which is suspect at best.

[Janneke]

fascinating stuff

[Karen Steel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good overview of the history of St Kilda told through the story of Lady Grange.